The authenticity continuum: Towards a definition incorporating international voices

What is it about?

Why authenticity in ELT should be seen as a continuum with social and contextual axes. This paper aims to highlight the fact that English is still taught as an Inner-Circle language in many EFL contexts, such as Japan (Matsuda, 2003) and other parts of Asia. As a result of culturally-embedded and Anglo-American oriented views of English, the concept of authenticity in such contexts still lies in the hands of the ‘native speaker’.

Featured Image

Why is it important?

In this paper I have attempted to provide a necessarily brief overview of the concept of authenticity, and developed a continuum which can be used to recognise different aspects of authenticity and invite teachers and materials writers to consider authenticity from various perspectives.