Copyright 2017 University of Michigan. All rights reserved.

Introduction

Most language teachers would probably agree that using authentic mate-
rials is desirable. Authenticity is unequivocally a positive attribute: We
value authenticity in cuisine, artwork, and merchandise. By the same
token, authentic materials in language classrooms are prized as accurate
and reliable representations of the target language. Nevertheless, there is
considerable disagreement with respect to what kinds of authentic mate-
rials should be used, how they should be used, when they should be
used, and how much of the curriculum should revolve around them.
Even defining what constitutes something authentic is a matter of
debate. In a book about using authentic materials, defining authentic
must no doubt be the first task at hand, so this is where we begin.

Definition of Authentic Materials

Gilmore (2007), in his review of authentic materials, provided several
definitions that were used over the years but eventually settled on one
from Morrow (1977, cited in Gilmore, 2007), which defines authentic
materials as “a stretch of real language, produced by a real speaker or
writer for a real audience and designed to convey a real message of
some sort” (p. 98). Noting that this definition includes a wide variety
of language (including teacher-talk in the classroom), we opt for this
modified definition:

Authentic materials are those created for some real-

world purpose other than language learning, and
often, but not always, provided by native speakers for
native speakers.

We use this definition to ensure that the language found in such mate-
rials is not modified for second language (L2) learners and has the pri-
mary intent of communicating information.

1
Copyright 2017 University of Michigan. All rights reserved.

2 —— Introduction

This definition, too, is not without problems for two reasons. First,
words like authentic, real, and native speaker tend to be evaluative. The
point of this book is not to argue that non-authentic materials (i.e.,
those created for language learning purposes) are without merit, but
rather that authentic materials are essential and can be used much
more broadly than most teachers might envision. Materials created by
proficient non-native speakers are quite common in some contexts
where English is a lingua franca (i.e., where it is used as a common lan-
guage among speakers who have other first languages) and are there-
fore included in our definition of authentic materials. Second, even
with this definition, gray areas exist, and it is important to discuss the
possible benefits of such materials for language teaching. On a final
note, we will use the terms text and materials interchangeably through-
out the remainder of this book. However, text generally refers to any
spoken or written language that is part of a set of materials. Materials is
a slightly broader term that includes texts but also, for example, may
simply be a set of pictures without any language.

Types of Authentic Texts

Authentic texts comprise both spoken and written language samples.
For example, newspaper articles, short stories, advice columns, maga-
zine ads, and graphic novels are commonly used authentic written
texts. Spoken texts include, but are not limited to, television commer-
cials, movies, radio broadcasts, lectures, songs, podcasts, and conversa-
tions or service encounters among native speakers. This last category
would fall under what Wagner (2014) has called unscripted texts. He
argued that unscripted oral texts contain additional features not found
in scripted texts such as television shows. These types of texts would
certainly fall under our definition of authentic, but they are much
more difficult to collect.
The internet is a plentiful source of authentic texts that are not lim-
ited to one modality. We do not address multimodal texts (e.g., web-
sites with audio and video) specifically, but most of the principles in
this book apply to such texts. Even less text-laden materials—such as
Copyright 2017 University of Michigan. All rights reserved.

Introduction —— 3

train schedules, menus, and nutrition labels—are unambiguously

authentic. There remain some texts that may be useful but deserve
additional discussion. These include teacher-made materials, children’s
books and graded readers, translations, and materials written for lin-
gua franca contexts. We address each of these in turn.
Consider the following example of a teacher-made text. There is a
unit in the textbook on food in the target culture, so the teacher inter-
views several native speakers about common foods found in their
country. The interviews would be an excellent supplement, but would
not fall under what we consider authentic texts because the speakers—
in this case the people being interviewed—might naturally modify
their speech when talking to non-native speakers, the students. In addi-
tion, there is no real-world activity associated with such an interview. If
the teacher did not tell the interviewees what the recording was for, the
language used might have been different, but there is still no real-world
purpose that would guide the speakers. These types of materials are
examples of useful texts, but ones that we do not consider in this book.
Children’s books and graded readers are sometimes considered
authentic. Many teachers use children’s books because, intuitively, the
language seems simpler. Nevertheless, children’s books should be used
with caution because they sometimes include slang, language play, and
inaccessible cultural information. If teachers find appropriate chil-
dren’s books and note that their students enjoy such materials, the
texts can be used as supplements. Graded readers for children, by defi-
nition, control the grammar and vocabulary used. One of the authors
(Charlene) enjoyed using graded Chinese readers while studying
Chinese in Taiwan because Chinese characters were added gradually,
and because the books were replete with cultural information.
Interested readers can also see Cho and Krashen (1994) in which
adults became enthusiastic readers of a children’s book series. The
authors argue for the value of using such materials with adults. We will
not, however, be considering the use of children’s books or graded
readers here.
Translated texts are an interesting matter. These materials are
intended for native speakers for a certain purpose, such as the enjoy-
Copyright 2017 University of Michigan. All rights reserved.

4 —— Introduction

ment of a movie, but the cultural references are often not related to the
target culture. For example, should a Spanish instructor in the U.S. use
the Spanish version of a popular U.S. television show such as Friends?
Should a French teacher ask students to read Harry Potter in French? We
think that such translations should definitely be considered authentic
in that they serve as a vehicle for real language that native speakers
would be engaged with. In addition, students often have the back-
ground knowledge to understand the materials. When Charlene was
living in China, she could not understand Chinese television shows or
movies very well. One day, a U.S. made-for-TV movie with an easy-to-
follow plot was on, and she found she could understand much more.
Similarly, she found that it was easy for her Chinese students to under-
stand stories about China written in the English newspaper The China
Daily. Thus, we recommend using these types of materials, but only
with the caveat that they do not include information about the target
culture.
Finally, we address the very complex issue of materials created for
contexts in which the target language is the lingua franca—namely, a
situation in which native speakers of two different languages use
English to communicate because it is their common language. For
example, speakers of two Asian languages such as Thai and Japanese
often speak English in multinational companies. It is also likely that
workplace materials such as emails are written in English. In a context
such as Hong Kong or Singapore, the situation is more complex in that
the creator of the materials might speak a local dialect of English but
the listener is a second language learner. These dialect issues surface as
well in Spanish materials produced in the U.S., such as a McDonald’s
menu, where the Spanish used may be different from the Spanish
found in Spain or Mexico. We don’t address these issues in this book,
but we want to mention that they will be a factor in choosing which
materials to use. Such materials are clearly authentic and have real-life
purposes, but should also be considered carefully for each instruc-
tional context.
Copyright 2017 University of Michigan. All rights reserved.

Introduction —— 5

Authentic Texts in an Historical Context

Authentic texts have been used in language classrooms since the early
days of the grammar-translation method, which was aimed at teaching
students to read (and translate) literary texts. However, as language
teaching methods evolved, the status of authentic materials also
shifted. In other words, the perceived usefulness of authentic materials
is closely linked to the dominant pedagogical approach of the time. For
example, in the audiolingual method, authentic texts were dismissed in
favor of a bottom-up approach beginning with sounds, words, phrases,
and moving up to sentences, dialogues, and paragraphs. When
Krashen’s natural approach (Krashen & Terrell, 1983) achieved popu-
larity, the focus was on comprehensible input or input that was just a
bit above the students’ level (i+1). Thus, using authentic texts with
beginners was not advocated unless the teacher could find just the
right materials. In other words, authentic texts were not excluded per
se, but they could not be too difficult. The communicative approach,
which advocated a focus on communicative competence, certainly took
a favorable view toward authentic texts, particularly because these
materials could help learners achieve sociolinguistic and discourse
competence.
Most recently, and especially in foreign language contexts, there
has been a general trend toward integrating language and content at all
levels of instruction, as advocated by the Modern Language Association
(MLA). The impact of the MLA report (2007) has been an increased use
of literary texts in lower-level language courses with the goal of increas-
ing students’ cultural knowledge and analytical skills.
Authentic texts can also be discussed in relation to content-based
and task-based teaching. In 1989, in a seminal book on content-based
instruction, Brinton, Snow, and Wesche presented different models of
content-based teaching that might use authentic texts to varying
degrees, although the emphasis in Brinton et al. is clearly on authentic
texts in every model. (This book was reissued in 2003.) They said specif-
ically that language teaching materials can be used in conjunction with
authentic texts but that “these materials must be selected carefully for
their relevance to the course objectives” (p. 92). However, they defined
Copyright 2017 University of Michigan. All rights reserved.

6 —— Introduction

content-based instruction more narrowly than others might; they used

the term to refer to sustained content (e.g., a history class taught in
Spanish) in contrast to textbook units or classes that address different
topics throughout the course. Because of the varying definitions of con-
tent-based instruction, our focus in this book is on exploiting authentic
texts in a variety of contexts, but we want to emphasize that using
authentic texts is a way to integrate language and content.
Authentic texts can also play a central role in task-based instruc-
tion. In Willis’ (2004) comprehensive review of task-based instruction,
she noted that among the various definitions of tasks, the commonal-
ity is that they have an outcome or that there is a goal to achieve (see
also Van den Branden, 2006, who came to the same conclusion). In
addition, Skehan (1998) has suggested that tasks have some real-world
relationship, meaning that the kind of discourse that arises during the
task resembles naturally occurring discourse (Ellis, 2003, calls this
interactional authenticity). Most importantly, tasks can incorporate
authentic texts at various points in a lesson. Norris (2009) describes a
task-input phase in which the target task is introduced “as it is realized
in actual communication” (p. 583) without manipulation. For exam-
ple, if the target task is buying a train ticket at a Madrid train station, a
student could start by listening to authentic announcements, reading a
train schedule, or better yet, listening to an authentic service encounter
in the train station. (This last example, however, highlights the diffi-
culty of getting access to native speakers completing real-world tasks.)
Norris goes on to discuss pedagogic tasks using authentic texts.
Pedagogic tasks are activities that are different from real-world tasks
and can include something like a cloze activity or a jigsaw reading. We
provide examples of pedagogic tasks as well as more traditional exer-
cises throughout this book to show what teachers can do with authen-
tic texts to make them comprehensible and usable to language
learners.
Copyright 2017 University of Michigan. All rights reserved.

Introduction —— 7

Why Use Authentic Texts?

When teachers are asked about their rationale for using authentic texts,
a common response is that students are motivated by them. Students
have various reasons for studying a language (including satisfying a
requirement), but the majority of students ultimately want to be able
to communicate with native speakers, either locally or abroad.
Accordingly, authentic texts may bring students closer to this goal by
giving them a tangible sense of how the language is used in concrete
situations. Although we certainly don’t deny that authentic texts can
motivate students, the relationship between authenticity and motiva-
tion is not as straightforward as we might assume. In fact, authentic
texts that are too challenging for the students and not properly pre-
sented by the teacher will likely result in frustration rather than
enhanced motivation. For example, Busse (2011) documented how
university students in the U.K. became less motivated to learn German
partially as a result of struggling with difficult German literature. These
results are not entirely surprising: we cannot be motivated by texts that
we don’t understand. Indeed, it may be the sense of accomplishment
that comes from understanding authentic texts that results in greater
motivation. Viewed in this way, authentic texts are not inherently moti-
vating; it is the process of understanding (and enjoying) authentic texts
that helps language learners to feel more confident in their abilities,
which results in increased motivation. As Gilmore (2007) explains,
“The success of any particular set of authentic materials in motivating a
specific group of learners will depend on how appropriate they are for
the subjects in question, how they are exploited in class (the tasks) and
how effectively the teacher is able to mediate between the materials
and the students” (p. 107).
Another powerful reason for using authentic texts is that they pro-
vide richer input than textbooks or other instructional materials
designed for language learners. Although the quality of textbooks can
vary, research on English as a second language (ESL) and foreign lan-
guage textbooks has consistently shown mismatches between text-
books and natural language use. First, textbooks often present a
Copyright 2017 University of Michigan. All rights reserved.

8 —— Introduction

distorted view of grammar, overemphasizing certain structures at the

expense of others (Goodall, 2010). In aiming to provide simple gram-
matical rules, textbooks may fall short of presenting fully accurate
descriptions of language. Words and phrases, too, can be underrepre-
sented. For example, Simpson-Vlach and Ellis (2010) compiled an aca-
demic phrase list from an oral and a written corpus. One of the phrases
on their list from oral academic language was blah, blah, blah. We feel
confident that this is not the type of phrase that would appear in a
scripted lecture for an academic listening textbook.
An additional problem is the fact that textbooks generally present
little information about pragmatically appropriate language use.
Speech acts (e.g., giving advice, expressing agreement, making sugges-
tions), as presented in textbooks, may differ quite dramatically from
how they are realized in real-life conversations. One example of this is
a study by Eisenchlas (2011), who compared advice-giving as presented
in intermediate Spanish textbooks to online interactions. She found
that textbooks seriously underrepresented the range of linguistic
resources that Spanish-speakers use to give advice and gave no infor-
mation regarding the pragmatic norms that underlie such interactions
in the target culture. Consequently, researchers who study second lan-
guage pragmatics have argued strongly for authentic texts as a way of
providing learners with models of language that exemplify social, cul-
tural, and discourse conventions.
Another reason to use authentic texts is that they provide a vehicle
for integrating language and content and form and meaning. As men-
tioned, the MLA report (2007) advocated more integration of language
and content, but at the lower levels, instructors may struggle with mak-
ing content in authentic texts comprehensible to lower-proficiency stu-
dents. At the higher levels, instructors may focus too much on content
and too little on the language found in the texts (e.g., as found in Pica,
2002, and Polio & Zyzik, 2009). Thus, we emphasize throughout this
book the importance of bringing more content to beginners and more
language-focused instruction to advanced students through the use of
authentic texts. Our recommendations stem from the understanding
shared by many SLA researchers that learners need opportunities to
Copyright 2017 University of Michigan. All rights reserved.

Introduction —— 9

focus on language forms (e.g., pronunciation, vocabulary, grammar),

but not in isolation from meaningful language use. This is what Spada
(1997) called form-focused instruction, defined as “pedagogical events
which occur within meaning-based approaches to L2 instruction but in
which a focus on language is provided in either spontaneous or prede-
termined ways” (p. 73). In this sense, authentic texts encourage a focus
on meaning (e.g., understanding a message created for a real-world
purpose), but teachers can intervene in various ways to provide the
much-needed attention to language form.
A final argument that has been used to advocate for authentic texts
is that they are associated with some real-world purpose. In task-based
language teaching, as previously mentioned, it is vital to expose stu-
dents to authentic texts that learners will encounter while doing real-
world tasks. However, as will be discussed in Myth 7, what one does
with an authentic text in a class may not resemble what one does with
the text in real life. For example, students may be able to understand
only a few words or sentences from a newspaper article, but a teacher
might create an activity in which students have to match headlines and
stories. Arguably, this is something no one would do in real life, but it is
an excellent way of increasing students’ familiarity with authentic texts
and developing reading strategies such as skimming and scanning.

Practical Problems
There are a myriad of problems that come with using authentic materi-
als as well, not the least of which is that it is time-consuming to find
appropriate authentic texts and to then create good activities to accom-
pany them. Of course, it’s easy to say that teachers can share and reuse
texts and activities, but one benefit of authentic texts is that they are
often timely and so it’s not clear how long they can be used. One solu-
tion is to fully exploit a text and use it with a variety of activities, some-
times even over the course of a semester. In addition, once you decide
on some successful activities with your students (e.g., dictogloss, cloze,
sentence ordering), you can quickly recreate these activities using new
texts.
Copyright 2017 University of Michigan. All rights reserved.

10 —— Introduction

Choosing topics and texts is no easy task. Topics can be related to

the students’ interests (e.g., animé in a U.S. Japanese class), textbook
topics (e.g., Mexican artists in a U.S. Spanish class), or students’ needs
(e.g., reading an academic journal article in an English for Academic
Purposes class). There is no rule of thumb for choosing a text at the
right level of difficulty because it depends on what one does with text.
Throughout this book, we provide examples of activities that can be
used with texts at a variety of levels in relation to students’ proficiency.
Thus, a related problem is deciding what to do with a text. For exam-
ple, suppose you happen to have an attractive menu from the target
culture that contains numerous dishes you have been discussing in
class. Students will likely be interested in such realia, but what then is
an appropriate activity or task? This is an issue we address throughout
the book.
Finally, we must mention copyright issues when using authentic
materials. First, copyright issues in general should not be seen as a bar-
rier to using authentic texts in the classroom. Many of the ways you
would use texts in your classroom will fall under fair use rules
(http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl102.html). Second, should you wish to
publish materials in a course pack or textbook, permission to use
authentic texts can usually be obtained, sometimes with no fee. If you
need more information about copyright issues, you can begin with the
U.S. government website (http://www.copyright.gov) or a university
web site such as the one at Stanford University (http://fairuse.stanford.
edu). Many U.S.-based universities have copyright librarians who can
assist you in understanding the copyright laws and in applying for
copyright permission. In addition, most websites have a terms of use or
a terms-of-service link where you can obtain more information about
using materials from a website.

Organization of the Book and Intended Audience

In preparing the proposal for this book, we began by generating a list
of myths based on our collective experience in working with language
teachers who try to integrate authentic materials and who have had
Copyright 2017 University of Michigan. All rights reserved.

Introduction —— 11

varying degrees of success. Subsequently, based on feedback from the

reviewers, we revised our list of myths. For example, we had originally
intended to include a chapter on use of the L1, which some teachers
believe should be strictly avoided when working with authentic materi-
als. However, upon further reflection, we opted to eliminate this myth
since it may not be very widespread. We also planned on writing a
chapter to refute the idea that “only authentic texts should be used for
language learning,” but again, there may be few practitioners who hold
this extreme view. Instead, we decided to include this topic in the
Epilogue in order to emphasize that non-authentic materials also have
a place in the curriculum, depending on the goals of the course and the
needs of the students.
This book is organized in a similar way to the other Myths books
in the University of Michigan Press series in that each chapter starts
with an actual real scenario (In the Real World) and then is followed
by a discussion of the research (What the Research Says). Note that
there is not a large amount of research using authentic materials, so we
have often had to extrapolate from research using non-authentic mate-
rials when discussing possible instructional techniques. Each chapter
also includes specific implications for the classroom (What We Can
Do). We hope this approach makes this book accessible to students,
teachers, and teacher educators. The book includes appendices with
sample activities related to each of the seven myths. We felt it was
important to include these extended descriptions of activities along
with their source texts because often teachers find great “raw material”
but do not know how to transform it into a lesson. We recommend
that each appendix be consulted after reading the corresponding chap-
ter to better understand how the principles discussed apply to the sam-
ple activities. The activities can all be modified to include authentic
texts from a wide variety of sources and for a wide variety of profi-
ciency levels.
Throughout this book, we talk about both second and foreign lan-
guage settings and both English and other languages. The language
learning principles and accompanying research, such as how vocabu-
lary is best learned and the importance of explicit instruction, apply
Copyright 2017 University of Michigan. All rights reserved.

12 —— Introduction

equally to all languages and settings, both foreign language contexts

(e.g., German instruction in the U.S., English instruction in Japan) as
well as L2 contexts (e.g., English instruction in the U.S., French instruc-
tion in Quebec). The only exceptions, as discussed in the Epilogue, are
related to learning how to read in character-based languages; some of
the activities discussed throughout this book may indeed be more chal-
lenging for use in Chinese or Japanese classrooms. Generally, it is not
so much the language being taught as it is the students’ needs that will
drive one’s choice of authentic materials. ESL teachers, for example,
will want to choose materials related to their students’ daily lives or
their academic needs. Teachers of foreign languages, including English
teachers abroad, may choose materials that might be entertaining or
that motivate and interest their students.
The majority of the research that we discuss is related to English,
but some studies have also been conducted with learners of Spanish or
French. The abundance of research on ESL learners is simply reflective
of the field and does not imply that learning or teaching English is dif-
ferent than other languages, which is why we have included examples
from French, German, and Spanish, as well as English, in the appen-
dices. We hope that teachers of all languages can see these examples as
templates for creating activities in any language.