Observing Students' Response Toward Material Authenticity in Senior High School

Abstract

Teaching and learning material is an important aspect to increase the students' interest, enthusiasm, concentration, and enjoyment in English classroom learning. Since the issue toward material authenticity becomes a debatable issue among scholars and there are still a lot of arguments on how material authenticity is best applied, this study was aimed to find out the senior high-school students' response toward material authenticity. One research question was asked “How is students' response toward the material authenticity in the level of Senior High School?” Thirty first-grade students of SMA N 1 Salatiga were selected to be the participants of this study. They were taught using both materials, authentic and nonauthentic for 4 times. After that, they were asked to fill in the questionnaire (Peacock, 1997) which showed the students' responses toward both materials, authentic and non-authentic. Then, the data were analyzed based on two different categories proposed by Peacock (ibid.) which covered: (1) overall class interest & enthusiasm and (2) self-reported interest & enthusiasm. The results of the study indicated that the students' positive responses to authentic (80.55%) and non-authentic (81.46%) materials did not differ significantly