University of Essex | Authenticity in TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages)

This lecture is intended for students who specialize in the teaching of English to speakers of other languages (TESOL) and is delivered as part of the MA TESOL and MA TEFL courses. It carefully examines an important concept related to materials development for English language teaching - 'authenticity'.

Authenticity can mean different things to different people. For example in a TESOL context we talk about 'authentic language' in some cases meaning language used by native speakers of English communicating amongst themselves. But the idea has been further developed to include any language that is recognizably English used by anyone for communicative purposes. For some analysts language used in the classroom can never be regarded as authentic as it simulates 'real language' used in 'real situations' outside the class. Others disagree, arguing that classroom language is authentic in its own right.

Why does this matter to language teachers? Because decisions that concern the type of language that needs to be taught greatly affect syllabus content and the design of teaching and learning materials. 'Authentic' is a label often used to describe the materials themselves, but once again it is highly ambiguous. For example, graded readers which contain simplified language and content are often classified as 'non-authentic' even though they are clearly self-standing texts. 'David Copperfield' may be recognized as an authentic text but what about the simplified or the comic-book version?

The 'authentic' label is also applied to certain language-learning activities and tasks. But which ones can justifiably be included or excluded? It could reasonably be argued that asking learners to look at 'real' railway timetables when they have no need to catch a train is completely different from a situation where this is demonstrably the case.

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