The term authentic materials can be an elusive one, because it may refer to authentic English language items that are used as realia and as texts. Authentic Texts for Input.
Authentic texts serve as texts in their own right and as models for output tasks.
For example, authentic menus are first analyzed as texts and then used to model a menu-writing exercise as output. One authentic text models another text produced in a similar communicative act. A menu serves only as realia for such a dialogue, because the input text and the output text are produced in dissimilar communicative acts. Tasks for Text Analysis. It is the classroom tasks, not the authentic texts, that must be designed for classroom use.