A Review on the

Effectiveness of Using
Authentic Materials in
ESP Courses

Pribadi Hadhi
Linguistics Department, Faculty of Humanities
University of Indonesia

ESP

Authenticity

Authenticity
and
Motivation

Authentic
Materials
And Textbookbased
Materials

Criteria in
Choosing
Authentic
Materials

Conclusion

courses which aimed

at meeting the
students needs and
objectives and which
were consequently
tailored to students
needs and objectives

ESP

Pragmatic
Paradigm

Cognitive
Paradigm

Teaching
Paradigms
in ESP

(Palmero, 2003)

(Balcher, 2004

English for
General
Purposes
References
(Grammar
book)

ESP Materials

Authentic
Materials

ESP
materials
sources

Students
(Palmero, 2003)

Provenance
and authorship
of the text

Original
communicative
and socio-cultural
purpose of the
text

Original
context of
the text
Learning
activity
engendered
by the text

Authenticity

(Mishan, 2005)

A text may be genuine,

but to be authentic
there is a need for
some social interaction.

Genuine
vs.
Authentic

(Widdowson, 1998)

Authentic Materials
Advantages

Disadvantages

Give the real example of

language used by native
speakers

Contain cultural aspects

Advised for intensive and

extensive reading

Improve learners'
motivation when they read
in literature

Authentic materials are

interactive

Help to understand the

meaning of unknown words
in a set

Authentic Materials
And Textbook-based Materials

Textbook-based
Materials/Simplified
Advantages

Disadvantages

Easy-to-comprehend
language

Less interesting and not

introducing real world
reading

More familiar structures

and words

Artificial and unvaried

language

Advised for intensive

reading

Not enough to achieve

near-native proficiency

Learners are poorly

motivated to work

Teacher-centered rather
than learner-centered

Far from reflecting real

Materials
language use

Authentic
And Textbook-based Materials

If learners interaction with

authentic materials is
established with interest and
without difficulty they can
participate actively in learning
and in the same way their
motivation levels may raise.

Authenticity
and
Motivation

(Oguz and Bahar, 2008)

Tasks

Content

Teacherlearner
relationshi
p

Learning
Strategies
Social
Values and
Attitudes

Learning
Environmen
t
Criteria in
Choosing
Authentic
Materials

Culture
issue
(Karpova, 1999)

Authentic materials, being a

part of the real world, can
serve as excellent resources
for introducing language in its
real form to ESP learners
whose final goal in taking ESP
courses is to communicate
properly in real-world
contexts.

Conclusion