Abstract:The goal of learning English language in a class is to demonstrate the use of the language in real life application. Hence, the teaching and learning process must reflect, in such away, fits the reality. This calls for the use of real materials or authentic materials (AM) in the teaching and learning process. Though the positive result has been yielded by many researchers, the implementation of AM in teaching and learning English is not implemented fully in EFL setting. This research is conducted to investigate how teachers' perception toward the use of authentic material in teaching and learning process. In depth -interview toward eight EFL school teachers, observation and documentation toward 4 English teachers are done to get the necessary data. In addition, focused group discussion (FGD) is done to triangulate the data. The finding showed that teachers perceived the important use of AM. Yet, they mostly fail to define what is AM and how it is implemented in the classroom. Their perception and action somehow do not match revealing a conclusion that they don't' fully understand what is AM; moreover the misconception of why it should be implemented matter the most.
Keywords: Authentic Materials (AM), EFL School teachers, teachers' perception
BACKGROUNDEnglish language became one of the subjects to be taught in our curriculum since 1970s, the teaching procedure had implemented several approaches from grammar translation method, audio-lingual method, communicative approach, and genre based approach and the current approach (applied in Indonesia), a scientific approach. These methods have sounded changes in the way teacher taught EFL to students. Yet, the most interesting fact about the teaching and learning process emerged when it comes to communicative approach where in this approach the term authentic material begin to exist and profoundly applied during the teaching and learning process of EFL. Moreover, this approach focused on how the teaching and learning English in the classroom really useful when real situation is engaged. Krashen (1983) implied that Native-like fluency is what all learner and teacher expect to have. However, learning second language could be exciting and productive, yet it could be vice versa; painful and useless. The difference of both lies in how students learn the language and how teachers teach the language. Krashen above indicates the importance of creating condition where native like conditioning occurs.