ABSTRACT
“Quality assurance” is a term very familiar to the business world or manufacturing industry but rarely applied to the field of TESOL. This chapter will discuss QA from the perspective of authenticity in language learning, considering the extent to which standards of quality are being met within our profession. The chapter will outline seven common definitions of authenticity—(1) language produced by native speakers (NSs) for native speakers; (2) language produced by a real speaker/writer for a real audience, conveying a real message; (3) the ability to think or behave like a target language group in order to be recognized or validated by them; (4) the types of task chosen; (5) language assessment; (6) the qualities bestowed on a text by a reader/listener in a process of “authentication”; and (7) a personal process of engagement between teachers and students in the classroom—and discuss the opportunities and challenges that this context-bound, multidimensional concept creates for the language teaching profession.
