Authentic and Non Authentic Materials

The term materials can apply to virtually anything that a teacher uses to help the teaching process in the classroom. Common teaching materials include items such as worksheets, newspapers, pictures, text books and video recordings.

These teaching materials are often classed as either authentic or non authentic depending on their origin and how they are used. ‘Authentic material’ refers to items that have not been designed or adapted for use in an English language classroom such as magazines, newspapers, video clips and song lyrics. In contrast, ‘non authentic material’ refers to anything that has been designed specifically to aid the teaching process such as worksheets, text books and instructional CD’s or DVD’S.