DEVELOPING AUTHENTIC MATERIALS FOR GENERAL ENGLISH BASED ON MULTIMODAL APPROACH FOR NOVICE LEARNERS OF ENGLISH

The materials development for General English as English for Academic Purposes (EAP) at higher education is the basis of language teaching and learning practices as the global language. The university students must keep abreast with the needs of the English language skill . Therefore, this study aimed at designing a model of teaching materials to meet the demand for good English proficiency. This study attempted to design materials through selection and adaptati on under the framework of the multimodal approach and authentic materials and focused on developing materials for receptive skills. The needs analyses underlying this study w ere the students' needs of reading text, the needs of multimodal texts, the difficulties in reading and listening skill, the students' level of critical thinking for critical reading, and the attributes from lecturer 's factors. The total respondents of 230 students of Management Program participated in this study and passed the General English subject in the first semester. The findings indicated that students need to read authentic materials with visual images and dynamic level of difficulty, which delineate to the level of their reading skill as novice readers. The reading materials should also accommodate activities based on Bloom's Taxonomy to trigger students' critical thinking. The results also revealed that listening materials should supplement the reading materials in terms of giving more exposure to authentic materials which are useful to link the subject matter to the students' prior knowledge .