ESL Teachers’ Attitudes and Challenges in Utilizing Authentic ELT Materials in the Language Classroom

The use of authentic materials in English Language Teaching (ELT) has gained prominence as communicative teaching approaches necessitate the teaching of real language to students based on how it is used in the outside world. As curriculum implementers, teachers play a significant role in deciding, selecting, utilizing, and evaluating authentic ELT materials that will foster learners’ linguistic development and communicative competence. This study aimed to determine ESL teachers’ attitudes and challenges in using authentic ELT materials in the language classroom. This study used a descriptive research design. Participants were chosen using a non-probabilistic sampling strategy with 195 English teachers from public secondary schools within Area 1 in SDO-Batangas Province. The research instrument used in this study was partially adopted survey questionnaires from the studies of Omar & Mekael, 2020; Huessein, 2012; Canh & Barnard, 2009. The study revealed that most teacher-respondents have a positive attitude toward using authentic ELT materials where exploitability ranked first as one of the indicators. On one hand, most respondents also agreed that a lack of teachers’ professional knowledge and technical know-how is the primary challenge that they encounter in utilizing authentic ELT materials in the language classroom. Moreover, there is a significant relationship that exists between ESL teachers’ attitudes in terms of ELT authentic materials’ readability and the challenges they encountered in terms of teachers’ professional knowledge and technical know-how, and environmental factors. A Teacher’s Guide for ESL teachers in utilizing authentic ELT materials in enhancing. the four language skills of the learners is proposed as the output of the study.

Keywords – Attitudes, Authentic Materials, Challenges, Second Language