AUTHENTIC TEACHING: IT’S
TIME TO BRING THE
SENSE OF UNIVERSE INTO THE CLASS
Teaching,
teaching, and teaching! What do you think about that? Are it just functioned as the transfer of knowledge, science, theory,
value or maybe
speech? If you assume that one of them is right, please think again. Recall
your memory about what was your parent do to make you learn in the process of
your growth. When you can’t speak, your mother always teach
you how to speak naturally, isn’t it? Do you know the technique used by your mother
to do that? Are they immediately teach you about the language grammatical
structure? I think it’s impossible because the children always learn about everything
indirectly. One of the techniques used is
your parent always encourage you to interact with them by asking you to respond
their speech continually. Whatever your respond your parent always give you
applause, although sometimes your parent did not know about what did you
talking about. Do you know what’s your parent means by letting you free to
respond their speech? Because your parent wants you to learn naturally and
authentically. In general, this is can be assumed as the nature of authentic
teaching. Authentic teaching refers to the teaching activity executed by the
teacher using the materials which comes from the daily life of the student that
actually these materials are not intentionally made for the learning activity
in the class as the parent who is always teach their children by using the
material provided by them and by their environment. Unfortunately the concept
of authentic teaching is begin to vanish when the children learn in the formal
education institution such as in Elementary School, Junior High School, or
Senior High School. It happened because the teachers of those schools mostly
prefer use the textbook than create the materials themselves to undergo the
teaching process no matter do this way is effective or not. They think that the
textbook is everything, the textbook is the guidance, the textbook is the goal,
and the textbook is the source of all learning source. To change these
paradigms, this essay try to persuade the teachers of all education level to
implement the concept of authentic
teaching into their class. It wants to
elaborate some advantages providing in the authentic teaching method, viewed from Teacher’s role, the material’s
use, the students role, and the effect of teaching to the students
Teaching activity using
authentic teaching method encourages the teacher’s role to gain the students’
motivation and students’ participation more effective and efficient. It caused
by the basic concept of authentic teaching which can automatically invite the
students’ participation in the learning process because basically these materials
come from the students’ daily life. By using the Authentic Teaching, the
teacher will knows about the background knowledge of the student. Background
knowledge is the early ability of the student obtained from their environment.
When the teachers know about the background knowledge of the student, they will
be able to determine the teaching strategies used in the learning process.
Authentic teaching also gives the teacher a wider space to be more creative in
determining their teaching material to engages their background knowledge. An
authentic teachers can used everything provided in the class to be a learning
materials, for example, when the teacher teach about the descriptive text in English, they can use the picture provided in the class such as President and
the vice president, heroes, or maybe the teacher can also use the properties of
the class such as student chair, teacher’s table, teacher’s cupboard, and
ruler rather than the teacher show the material and picture on the textbook. Unfortunately
many teachers think that the preparation of the teaching activity in authentic
teaching is wasting time, meanwhile the government have been determine the time
allocation to undergo the learning process in the class during 1 semester. So,
the teacher assumes that this teaching technique is impossible to cover all
materials to be taught during 1 semester. Maybe, its becomes a big problem by
the less experience teacher, but for the experienced teacher having been know
about the concept of authentic teaching this is not a serious problem. They can
ask the students to learn outside the class and learn together about the lesson
given by using the material provided by the nature. This activity break the
less experience teacher’s assumption that teaching activity using authentic
materials are wasting time in preparation.
The
second advantage provided by the authentic teaching is the material used.
Materials’ used in this teaching method absolutely comes from the students’
environment. So, the learning activity
can be executed naturally. The authentic teaching try to make all materials
provided by the nature become useful. The materials also easy to gained by the teacher and do not
require much money. According to Martinez (2000:1) the authentic material makes the students can exposed to
real discourse, as in videos of interview with famous people where intermediate
students listen for general idea, it means that the authentic materials help the students to have a link between the lesson
learned and the students’ experience in the real life, so the learning activity
is meaningful. Secondly, authentic materials keep students informed about what
is happening in the world, so they have an intrinsic education value. The
authentic material give a sense to the students that the world are always evolved
and change periodically, it makes the students are able to think critically to
the issues happened in the world and always think more about solution of the
word problem then just gives some critics. Fourth, the authentic materials support
the students to extend their vocabulary and to memorize them in a number of
meaningful recycling. It indicates that the authentic materials also empower
the students’ brain to memorize what they have learned easily.
The
third advantage is the students’ role. As we know that recently the world education paradigm demanded the students to
becomes the educational agent. Meanwhile the students need the new teaching
strategies to accommodate these demand. Unfortunately some teaching strategies
used by the teacher must be require the use of technology in the learning
process, it invite the anxiety from the education’s experts because not all
education institution applying the technologies in the learning process. To
support the students fulfill the demand, the teacher should be determine the
teaching strategies in the class with or without the support of technology. Authentic
teaching here provide an active student’s participation system, where the students
becomes the main actors of the leaning activity. the authentic materials make
the students have the high sense of responsibility. It caused by the sense of
belonging of the students. One major factors of the successful English
learning and teaching is growing and embodying the sense of responsibility and
the sense of belonging in the learning activity .
The
last advantage is the authentic teaching will give the long life learning
experience to the student. The long life learning experience is very important
for the student because the material learned will memorized in the long term
memory. In the psychology science there are two memory systems containing in
the brain. The first one is short term memory. The short term memory is the
part of the brain that catch the memory and save it only for the short time. the
second one is the long term memory, the long term memory can catch the memory
and save it for a long time. the long
term memory usually used by the students to receive something meaningful in
their life such as childhood memories, embarrassment memory, and exciting
memories. while, the short term memory used by the students to remember something
abstract which never embody on the students’ daily life such as theory,
formulation, concept and system. The authentic teaching created to make not
only the learning activity but also the learning materials can be received by
the long term memory because the authentic teachers always try to give the
student the concept together with the application in the daily life. In language
science like English, when the authentic teachers teach about the sentence
structure they will not teach about the concept and position of the subject and
predicate in the sentences, but they will teach the use of this sentence, so
the student will be able to know the function of the sentence in the daily
communication. If the students know about the use of sentence, the students
automatically becomes highly motivated to learn the language which directly
gives the direct influence to the student to mastering the English language
especially on the use of English sentences, and this is THE AUTHENTIC TEACHING.
Basically,
the role of authentic teaching is bringing the science into the reality. Where everything
that actually are not directed to the learning activity used as the learning
materials. The authentic teaching are always try to raise the students
background knowledge and engage the relationship between the students experience
and the learning materials because the material learned mostly comes from the
students’ daily life. It will makes the learning activity in the class
meaningful and exciting. The authentic teaching method has a purpose to return
the real concept of teaching having been long dissapeared that states: TEACHING
IS NOT ONLY ABOUT AN EFFORT TO BRING THE KNOWLEDGE AND VALUE TO THE STUDENT,
BUT ALSO IT’S AN EFFORT TO BRING THE SENSE OF UNIVERSE IN TO THE CLASS.
