ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to explore the notion of authenticity in relation to materials and show how the term has been discussed from the beginnings of communicative language teaching (CLT) until the present day. The discussion centres on the idea that for some researchers ‘authentic’ can be defined by the nature of the material itself while for others authenticity is connected to how a learner ‘experiences’ material. The chapter then moves on to a focus on authentic materials from spoken texts, exploring the extent to which materials reflect authentic, spoken language; the extent to which scripted materials (such as soap operas) provide a realistic model of authentic, unscripted conversations found in corpora; and the effects of spoken and written authentic materials. The last section of the chapter focuses on the challenges and possibilities for teachers and course designers in creating materials based upon spoken corpora and corpora of online language.
