While listening to the TEFLology Podcast I happened to hear a discussion on authenticity with guest Richard Pinner. I don't know Richard but I liked what he had to say. I asked him if he'd consider doing a guest post and he agreed! The result is the rather excellent post below. :)
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Introduction
At the end of 2014, I was lucky enough to be invited on tothe TEFLology Podcast to discuss authenticity. The reason I was asked is that I am doing a PhD in which I am (attempting) to
look at the connection between authenticity and motivation. I am also currently
working on a book about authenticity which will be available next year (all
being well).
Authenticity in language teaching is a thorny issue, and
especially in English language teaching because of the nature of English’s use
worldwide as an international language, with many diverse varieties. What do
you understand by the term authenticity? For most language teachers, the word authentic is part of our daily
vocabulary. It is stamped onto the backs of textbooks, it is mentioned when
describing a particularly motivating task, and it is often used alongside other
words like motivation and interest. So, just what do we talk about when we talk
about authenticity?
Shadow-boxing with the definition
In his now famous article, Michael Breen (1985)
identified that language teachers are ‘continually concerned with four types of
authenticity’, which he summarise as:
- 1. Authenticity of the texts which we may use as input data for our learners.
- 2. Authenticity of the learners' own interpretations of such texts.
- 3. Authenticity of tasks conducive to language learning.
- 4. Authenticity of the actual social situation of the language classroom.
Following Breen, I created a visualisation of the domains of
authenticity, mainly just because I like diagrams.
Figure 1: The
domains of authenticity
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This is basically what Breen was talking about, and as one can see there is a lot of overlap and yet authenticity can relate to four very different aspects of the work we do in the language classroom. What is fundamentally important here, is that a teacher could bring in an example of a so-called ‘authentic’ text and use it in a way which is not authentic. For example, a teacher could bring an English language newspaper to class and tell her students read the text and underline every instance of the present perfect aspect or passive tense, then get them to copy each sentence out into their notebooks. Is this authentic? Although for many people the newspaper is a classic example of an authentic text, what is happening in this class is anything but authentic language learning.
Authentic materials are often defined as something not
specifically designed for language learning, or “language where no concessions
are made to foreign speakers” (Harmer, 2008, p. 273). In the Longman Dictionary of
Applied Linguistics, the definition of authenticity is covered in a short
entry, and boils down to materials “not originally developed for pedagogical
purposes” (Richards & Schmidt, 2013, p. 43). Are there any problems with
this definition? When I speak with other teachers, this is generally the
definition they come up with, unless we are in the midst of a particularly
philosophical discussion, which, don’t worry, I will come to shortly.
Henry Widdowson is one of the biggest names associated with
the authenticity debate, and I had the honour of meeting him in Tokyo last year
in November 2014. Widdowson made the famous distinction between materials which
are authentic and materials which are
genuine (1978).
Basically, genuineness relates to an absolute property of the text, in other
words realia or some product of the target language community like a train timetable
or the aforementioned ‘classic’ newspaper. Authenticity, however, is relative
to the way the learners engage with the material and their relationship to it. Hung and Victor Chen (2007, p. 149) have also discussed this,
problematizing the act of taking something out of one context and bringing it
into another (the classroom) expecting its function and authenticity to remain
the same. They call this extrapolation
techniques, which they criticise heavily for missing the wood for the
trees. In other words, simply taking a newspaper out of an English speaking
context quite often means you leave the real reason for interacting with it
behind, which seriously impairs its authenticity. Another very big problem with
this definition is that it seems to advocate the dreaded ‘native speaker’ idea,
which as we all know is an emotive argument that has been discussed widely in
recent years, particularly with the rise of English as a Lingua Franca and
Global English. When Widdowson made his
arguments it was during the rise of Communicative Language Teaching (CLT), and
as part of this methodology there was an explosion in the debate around
authenticity. In particular, people writing about authenticity wanted to
distance the concept from the evil ‘native speaker’ definition. But what about
learning aims? What about the student’s needs? How was the debate made relevant
to the actual practice of teaching?
In his famous and fascinating paper, Suresh Canagarajah (1993) discusses the way students in Sri Lanka were not
only ambiguous towards, but at times detached from the content of their
prescribed textbooks, based on American
Kernel Lessons. The students had trouble connecting the reality presented
in the textbooks with their own reality, which was markedly different to say
the least. Canagarajah notes that some students’ textbooks contained vulgar
doodles, which he thought could perhaps have been “aimed at insulting the
English instructors, or the publishers of the textbook, or the U.S. characters
represented” (1993, p. 614).
This connects strongly with What Leo van Lier (1996) calls authentication;
the idea that learners have to make the materials authentic by engaging with it
in some way on an individual level. Van Lier’s reasoning is that something
can’t be authentic for everyone at the same time, but the important thing is to
try and get that balance.
As I think this article has already shown, the concept of
authenticity is not easy to define. Alex Gilmore, in his State-of-the-Art paper identified as many as eight inter-related
definitions, which were:
Adapted from Gilmore (2007, p. 98)
I.
the language produced by native speakers for
native speakers in a particular language community
II.
the language produced by a real speaker/writer
for a real audience, conveying a real message (as in, not contrived but having
a genuine purpose, following Morrow, 1977)
III.
the qualities bestowed on a text by the
receiver, in that it is not seen as something already in a text itself, but is
how the reader/listener perceives it)
IV.
the interaction between students and teachers
and is a “personal process of engagement” (van Lier, 1996, p. 128)
V.
the types of task chosen
VI.
the social situation of the classroom
VII.
authenticity as it relates to assessment and the
Target Language Use Domain (Bachman & Palmer, 1996)
VIII.
culture, and the ability to behave or think like
a target language group in order to be validated by them
Adapted from Gilmore (2007, p. 98)
In order to simplify these definitions I have developed a diagram
to show how they overlap and contradict each other. I will use this diagram
later as the basis for a continuum of authenticity in language learning.
Another way of thinking about authenticity is from a wider
perspective, something that encompasses not only the materials being used and
the tasks set to engage with them, but also the people in the classroom and the
social context of the target language. To better illustrate this, I proposed
that authenticity be seen as something like a continuum, with both social and
contextual axes (Pinner, 2014b).
The vertical axis represents relevance to the user of the
language or the individual, which in most cases will be the learner although it
could also be the teacher when selecting materials. The horizontal lines
represent the context in which the language is used. Using this continuum,
materials, tasks and language in use can be evaluated according to relevance
and context without the danger of relying on a pre-defined notion of culture or
falling back into “extrapolation approaches”.
As you can see, although the word Authenticity is used all the time in staff rooms and to sell
textbooks, if we actually drill down into it we get into very boggy ground.
Dogme ELT and Authenticity (and motivation)
In essence, the Dogme approach places a premium on conversational interaction among teacher and learners where communication is authentic and learner-driven rather than pedagogically contrived and controlled by the teacher. Choice of learning content and materials is thus shaped by students’ own preferred interests and agendas, and language development emerges through the scaffolded dialogic interactions among learners and the teacher. Relevant to our concerns here is the value Dogme places on students’ own voices and identities in these conversational interactions. (Ushioda 2011, p. 205)
If we take a moment to see where we are with the issue of
authenticity, we will realise that the definition of authenticity, although a
tangle of concepts and resistant to a single definition, what it seems to be
pushing at is essentially something very practical. If something is going to be
authentic, it needs to be relevant to
the learners and it needs to be able to help them speak in real (as in not contrived) situations. In other words, when they
step out of the classroom, what they did in the classroom should have prepared
them to speak and understand the target language. In order to achieve this,
what they do in the classroom has to be as authentic
as possible, and by implication it needs to be engaging. Essentially, authentic
materials should be motivating materials.
Why should we care about any of this though, can’t we just get on with it?
I would like to bring this long discussion back to the
practical realm by sharing an example from my own teaching. One very successful
example of an authentic task comes from a class I taught in a Japanese
University in 2011. The class was entitled Discussions
on Contemporary Topics which meant I could teach more or less anything. The
students expected “just another course about news and current affairs” but what
we ended up doing was trying to make the world a slightly better place. The
final assessment was a group video project and this is what one group produced
for their final piece.
It is obvious from watching this video that what the
students did here was highly authentic, in that it was personal and achieved
something real. This was all their own idea as well, I just told them to make a
video and offered suggestions here and there.
Authenticity is a good thing. It
sounds like a good thing and by association, anything labelled as inauthentic
must be bad. However, I think that the word authenticity is complicit with many
of the problems in English language teaching. Authenticity is still too often
defined in a way which, either directly or indirectly, infers the privilege of
the native speaker (Pinner, 2014a, 2014b). However, if we can get away
from that, authenticity can be a powerful concept to empower both learners and
teachers, because authenticity connects the individual learner to the content
used for learning.
So, in summary ‘keep it real’.
References
Bachman, L.
F., & Palmer, A. S. (1996). Language
testing in practice: Designing and developing useful language tests (Vol.
1): oxford university press.
Breen, M. P.
(1985). Authenticity in the Language Classroom. Applied Linguistics, 6(1), 60-70.
Canagarajah,
A. S. (1993). Critical Ethnography of a Sri Lankan Classroom: Ambiguities in
Student Opposition to Reproduction Through ESOL. TESOL quarterly, 27(4), 601-626. doi: 10.2307/3587398
Gilmore, A.
(2007). Authentic materials and authenticity in foreign language learning. Language Teaching, 40(02), 97-118. doi:
10.1017/S0261444807004144
Harmer, J.
(2008). The practice of English language
teaching (Fourth Edition ed.). London: Pearson/Longman.
Hung, D.,
& Victor Chen, D.-T. (2007). Context–process authenticity in learning:
implications for identity enculturation and boundary crossing. Educational Technology Research and
Development, 55(2), 147-167. doi: 10.1007/s11423-006-9008-3
Meddings, L.,
& Thornbury, S. (2003, Thursday 17 April 2003). Dogme still able to divide
ELT. Retrieved 4th February, 2015, from
http://www.theguardian.com/education/2003/apr/17/tefl.lukemeddings
Pinner, R. S.
(2014a). The Authenticity Continuum: Empowering international voices. English Language Teacher Education and
Development, 16(1), 9 - 17.
Pinner, R. S.
(2014b). The authenticity continuum: Towards a definition incorporating
international voices. English Today, 30(04),
22-27. doi: 10.1017/S0266078414000364
Richards, J.
C., & Schmidt, R. W. (2013). Longman
dictionary of language teaching and applied linguistics. Harlow: Routledge.
Ushioda, E.
(2011). Language learning motivation, self and identity: current theoretical
perspectives. Computer Assisted Language
Learning, 24(3), 199-210. doi: 10.1080/09588221.2010.538701
van Lier, L.
(1996). Interaction in the language
curriculum: Awareness, autonomy and authenticity. London: Longman.
Widdowson,
H. G. (1978). Teaching language as
communication. Oxford: Oxford University Press.