Summary 2: The Effect of Using Authentic Materials in Teaching

Citation 

Al Azri, Rashud Hamed, & Al-Rahdi, Majid Hilal. (2014). The Effect of Using Authentic Materials in Teaching. In the International Journal of Scientific and Technology Research (Vol. 3, pp. 249-254).

Summary

In this article, Rashud and Majid talk about the effect of using authentic materials in teaching. This article is done by doing literature review. What means by authentic materials are materials which are not design for the pedagogical purposes. The use of authentic materials has advantages and disadvantages. Some of the advantages are the authentic materials can motivate students, increase their interests, and make them feel facing the real world. However, there are some disadvantages of using authentic materials that the authentic materials are can be too difficult and kind of wasting time to select, edit, and prepare. Although having disadvantages, from the literature review, it can be concluded that authentic materials may be more effective to improve the students motivation by using the appropriate and relevant authentic materials. So, in choosing authentic materials, the teacher should be able to choose the suitable materials which are relevance with the student needs, read abilities, and their interests. 

Application 

Authentic materials have advantages and disadvantages. In this case,the teacher can ask the students to choose their own reading materials then consult it to decrease the disadvantages faced by the teacher.

Summary 1: Reading in Foreign Language: What Else Is Important Besides Skills and Strategy?

Citation 
Renandya, Willy A. (2015).  Reading in a foreign language: What else is important besides skills and strategies?. In the Developing indigenous models of English language teaching and assessment (pp. 81-94). Bali, Indonesia: Udayana University Press. 

Summary 

In this article, Renandya talks about Reading in Foreign Language: What Else Is Important Besides Skills and Strategy? Strategy can improve students comprehension but there’s no strong evidence that all of those strategies are equally effective. Good readers differ from poor readers, so that the relationship between strategy use and reading ability is not always straight-forward. Good readers are having high proficiency in language. Teaching students a reading strategy may not be useful or may even confuse them. In order to make the strategy effective, teachers may make it brief and monitor them to have more practices to build their consistency in applying the strategy.

Students must have abilities in mastering the reading skills in order to be a good reader. Many students may be understand the strategy given by the teacher but they can’t apply it because they are too busy trying to catch the meaning of unfamiliar words in the text. It can be like that because they lack of experience reading in foreign language, because they don’t have any skills for doing skimming, scanning or so on.

In this case, Renandya thinks that a text-based approach [extensive reading] is a good way of teaching students reading in foreign language. There are some benefits of ER such as improve their fluency in reading because they will read faster when they are familiar in foreign language words, develop their ‘feel’ in grammar rules, increase their vocabulary and knowledge, boost their confidence and motivation, build a positive attitude towards reading then finally they find reading becomes their habit. 

Issues given here is from the teacher's point of views. May teachers say that it’s hard to implement ER in school because they have limited sources and limited time because of the school’s curriculum. Some school prefer using the traditional approaches to teaching such as intensive reading. It is difficult to monitor the students ER activity because they do it out of the class. It makes them delay even not giving the ER to the students.

Application 
Teachers should identify the students' reading ability in order to prepare the appropriate material for all the students. The materials can depend on the students' interests and level of competence and comprehension.