Authenticity

Authenticity' is a frequently invoked and, at the same time, keenly debated notion in ELT which became an issue when the advent of Communicative Language Teaching in the 1970s brought with it a new focus on 'realism' in language learning materials and activities.More recently, the development of large corpora of 'naturally occurring' English and the way the internet has provided easy access to varied language material and options for telecollaboration and micropublishing, coupled with an increasing emphasis on autonomy in language learning, have further fuelled interest in this notion (see Mishan 2005; Gilmore 2007).In its widest sense, 'authenticity' is related to notions of 'realness' or 'trueness to origin'.As a technical term in the field of ELT, authenticity has been used to characterize texts (both written and spoken), learning material, tasks, cultural artefacts, multimedia products, forms of assessment, and even types of teacher and audience.Unsurprisingly, a variety of definitions co-exist, and Gilmore (2007) outlines a total of eight different meanings or uses for the term 'authentic' in ELT professional discourse.For the sake of clarity here, however, the focus will be on two major aspects, namely text and task authenticity.