Discusses the educational relevance of using authentic texts in second language instruction, explores their limitations as a means to cultural competence, and describes their relation to the quest for cultural understanding and communicative competence. An explanation is provided for why such materials should be used to achieve these goals. (CB)

The goals of an intensive summer pilot project at Stanford University included (1) enabling beginning learners of Spanish to achieve one-year equivalent Spanish proficiency; (2) allowing teacher trainees to observe, critique, and practice foreign language lessons before embarking on their practicum; and (3) helping language-minority students to…