Teaching materials in EFL classroom: teachers' beliefs and practices

The use of teaching materials in teaching-learning processes has an important role to assist teachers to deliver the information and help achieve the learning objectives. Therefore, the teachers need to choose the appropriate materials for their students. The objectives of this study were to know the English Teachers’ beliefs about the materials they use in the classroom and how they implemented them in their practices. This study involved a qualitative approach by interviewing two English teachers and observing the classes. The results revealed that there were several aspects that teachers believe in choosing particular teaching materials that had been classified into five aspects namely making the students feel at ease, should correspond to learners’ needs, increase students’ skills such as reading, listening, speaking, and writing, should be useful and relevant for students, and should be interesting and make the learning fun. Teachers implemented the materials in three stages of the teaching process namely introduction, main-activity, and closing. In the introduction stage, the teachers used teaching materials such as flashcards and APE (Educational Game Tools). In the main-activity, the teachers mostly used course books in every meeting. Then, in the closing, the teachers reviewed all the lessons of the day by using some worksheets and quizzes. The finding of the study highlighted that the teachers manifested their beliefs about teaching materials used in their classroom by using a variety of teaching materials and implementing them in every stage of the teaching process.