There are further problems related to how abstract and analytic teaching
about language and linguistics should be. It is plausible that a functional
view of language in use will be of more direct relevance to teaching practice
than a purely abstract view of language as system and structure. A view of
language in use also starts from everyone's everyday experience of language.
However, it is difficult to introduce samples of real language in use, without
immediatley decontextualizing and trivializing them. It has often been
pointed out that the search for authenticity in language teaching materials is
an illusory one. If an authentic text (that is, a text originally written for some
real purpose, without the linguist's intervention and not specially prepared
as teaching material) is taken out of its context, and used for something else
(teaching), it is thereby made inauthentic. However, this is simply to note
that all teaching implies some contrivance, which may be more or less
extreme.