Another definition suggested by Peacock 1997 is that authentic materials are materials that have been produced to fulfill some social purpose in
the language community. Bacon and Finnemann 1990:469 define authentic materials as texts produced by and for native speakers of the target language.
Adams 1995:4 refers to authentic materials as any materials which have not been specifically produced for the purposes of language teaching. Guariento
Morley 2001:347 defines authentic materials as authentic texts created to fulfill some social purpose in the language community where it is produced. Lee
1995:324 states that a text is usually regarded as textually authentic if it is not written for teaching purposes, but for a real life communicative purpose, where
the writer has a certain massage to pass on to the reader. To conclude, authentic materials can be said to be the kind of materials
which are used by native speakers, communicating orally or in writing, and which are not simplified for FLSL learning purposes.
2. Authenticity
There are some researchers define authenticity on their own ways. According to Tatsuki 2006:17-21, authenticity is taken as being synonymous
with genuineness, realness, truthfulness, validity, reliability, undisputed credibility, and legitimacy of materials or practices. Mishan 2005:18 prefers to
set some criteria for authenticity rather than defining the term. According to her, Authenticity is a factor of the:
1. Provenance and authorship of the text.
2. Original communicative and socio-cultural purpose of the text.
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3. Original context e. g. its source, socio-cultural context of the text.
4. Learning activity engendered by the text.
5. Learners‟ perceptions of and attitudes to, the text and the activity
pertaining to it MacDonald et al., 2006 introduce four types of authenticity. Authenticity
of text like what Guariento and Morley, 2001 suggest, authenticity of competence proposed by Canale and Swain, 1980, learner authenticity by
Widdowson, 1979, and authenticity of classroom proposed by Breen, 1985 and Taylor, 1994. The first three types of authenticity, as MacDonald et al.,
2006:251 propose, pertain to correspondence while the last type relates to genesis. McDonough and Shaw 2003:40 define authenticity as:
“a term which loosely implies as close an approximation as possible to the world outside the classroom, in the selection of both language material and of the
activities and methods used for practice in the classroom. ”
In other words, authenticity refers to material and method which reflect the real world of target language.
Breen 1985:61 distinguishes four types of authenticity which must be in continual interrelation with one another during any language lesson:
1. Authenticity of the texts which we may use as input data for our learners.
2. Authenticity of the learners‟ own interpretations of such texts.
3. Authenticity of tasks conductive to language learning.
4. Authenticity of the actual social situation of the language classroom
Taylor 1994 similarly states authenticity was not a characteristic of a text in itself: it was a feature of a text in a particular context. Therefore, a text can only
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be truly authentic in the context for which it is originally written. In summary, authenticity refers to the genuineness, realness, truthfulness, validity, reliability,
undisputed credibility, and legitimacy of materials or practices.
3. Sources of Authentic Materials
