The Use of Authentic Materials Toward Students’ Critical Thinking Skill Iis Sulyaningsih

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK 
Authentic texts are written to communicate the information and knowledge 
which is needed by the society. Furthermore, they are produced in native language, this 
means that the texts are written and purposed for native (Harmer, 2008). Authentic text 
is a real –life texts, not written for pedagogic purposes. They have been produced to 
fulfill some social purposes in the language community. In short, authentic materials is 
the text that is used native language and is purposed to communicate the message 
among the native community, and they closely relate to social life. Authentic material is 
categorized into three: 1) Authentic listening materials such as: newscast, song lyrics, 
conversation on film; 2) Authentic visuals materials such as traffic signs, pictures on 
magazine. etc., 3) authentic printed materials such as articles on the newspapers or 
magazines, menu, tickets etc. Those texts are not aimed for teaching materials.
However, reading the authentic texts is the recommended way to improve students’ 
critical consciousness which is an understanding on the goodness and the integrity 
within the social community. Thus, this will influence and build student’s personality. 
Therefore, the authentic text is the teaching material in the teaching of reading.
Regarding to build the critical consciousness, reading activity should apply 
critical thinking which is called critical reading. Reichenbach (2001) stated that “critical 
thinking is the careful, deliberate determination of whether we should accept, reject, or 
suspend judgement about the truth of a claim or a recommendation to act in certain 
context. This implies that students try to understand author’s perspective and author’s 
argument in presenting the information. Moreover, students must be able to evaluate the 
text’s credibility (Chaffee, 2002). According to Cottrell (2005) reading critically oblige 
students to discover the unstated matters within the text and go behind the text by 
analyzing it with the use of language itself. 
METHOD 
This research aimed to obtain deeper insight regarding social phenomena, which is to 
study students’ respond toward a reading text (Silverman, 2005:10). Hence, the use of 
qualitative approach was regarded suitable as this research focuses on process and 
product (Fraenkel, J. R., Wallen, N. E., & Hyun, 2017). In this case, the process is the 

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Jurnal Bahasa Inggris Terapan 
I. Sulyaningsih 
Vol. 7/ Nomor 1/ April 2021
37
practice of students in apprehending the message of a text or an article, whilst, product 
is their expression of argument, either spoken or written. 
The subject of this research was 60 students of English Department who were in 
the third semester. They were selected because they had got the subjects of Reading 1 
which is basic of reading knowledge and Reading 2 that is reading strategy. Those are 
the prerequisites for supporting their advance reading, critical reading. 
The data, which were gained by qualitative method, were students’ answers to 
10 critical questions based on authentic material text constructed by (Reichenbach, 
2001), (Chaffee, 2000). The texts used were: ‘Expensive Cigarettes; Why Not?’ (The 
Jakarta Post, 24 Octpber 2016), ‘Tiger-skin traders sentenced to 4 years in prison’ (The 
Jakarta Post, 9 September 2016), ‘Advertisement: BMW’ (http://creative-
ads.org/shocking-ads-shockvertising/bmw-spare-parts-shocking-ad/, 3 October 2016), 
‘Ride this way’ (The Jakarta Post, Jplus – volume 1 No. 17, February2014), and ‘Mice 
Cartoon’ (Kompas). 
Analyzing process of qualitative data was done through codification, 
categorization, and contextualization. The codification step was firstly done to ease 
identifying phenomenon and noting exposure frequency so that these would be useful 
for sharpening the research focus and directing it to accurate findings(Alwasillah & 
Puncochar, 2016). The next step was categorization based on main theories used in this 
research. The obtained data were then categorized based on levels of thinking proposed 
by Bloom’s taxonomy. The last step was contextualizing to connect the relation 
between the questions with the issues within its context (Alwasillah & Puncochar, 
2016). To have the result, those analysis were referred to the rubric of critical thinking 
stages, and to theories of critical reading and critical thinking as the basic principle of 
this research. The rubric of critical thinking stages is presented as follows. 

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Jurnal Bahasa Inggris Terapan 
I. Sulyaningsih 
Vol. 7/ Nomor 1/ April 2021
38