Peacock, M. (1997). The effect of authentic materials on the motivation of EFL learners. ELT Journal. 51(2), 144-156.
Language instruction has five important components: students, a teacher, materials, teaching methods, and evaluation. Why are materials important in language instruction? They do not only influence the content and the procedures but also the effectiveness of learning. Finding the right course book and supplementary materials is one of the most important tasks a teacher needs to undertake. Should teachers use authentic or non-authentic materials in teaching language? Many researchers claim that authentic materials motivate learners but some other authors maintain that authentic materials reduce learners materials.
In the article The effect of authentic materials on the motivation of EFL learners, printed in an ELT Journal volume, the author, Matthew Peacock, explores the question of how authentic materials have an effect on the motivation of EFL learners. By doing a classroom research project, the author has tested the experimental hypotheses and previous writers’ untested claims that authentic materials increase learners motivation.
The article consists of five main sections: Introduction, Background to the study, Data collection and analysis, Result, Discussion and conclusion. In the introduction, the author presents the writers, who favored the use of authentic materials. In addition, the author introduces some researchers’ two quasi-experimental studies, that researched effect of authentic materials on learner motivation. However, the author argues that the writers’ claims have not yet been tested and the assertions, based on the two inadequate, unpersuasive quasi-experiments, have not yet been satisfactorily tested. And this urges the author to do his research to find out a more exact, more persuasive answer about the effect of authentic materials on EFL learners.
In the Background to the study, the author