Prior Thoughts
When I thought of authenticity in the past, I thought about meaningful, real-world tasks. Specifically, I thought of projects and units that span across subjects and long lengths of time. I thought about students in real-life situations communicating for authentic purposes like trying to ask for directions or go shopping.
As stated in the Johnston article, "a common complaint of ESL and especially EFL learners is that it is hard for them to find native speakers to interact with." I have often thought about how few "authentic" experiences I was able to have as student trying to learn a foreign language. Now that we can increase the range of interlocutors, as stated in the article, learners can interact with more people in the target language. My question when I read this is how. How do we as teachers find for example a partner class in Mexico or Germany? I think many teachers stop there because they don't have the time to research these things.
Changes/New Ideas
When thinking about authenticity, I had not considered the audience in the equation. I did not realize how much the varying audiences could affect the outcome of the task.
Also, I had not thought of CALL as being authentic for various reasons. It seemed like teachers who tried to use technology in the past just did it for the sake of using technology itself and not for learning or communicating. I've done something like a webquest but didn't feel like I got anything out of it. I've also completed one in a technology class but did not feel like it was an authentic experience because I did not have an audience to complete it.
New Thoughts
My definition of authenticity is most closely aligned with Egbert's: An authentic task is one that learners perceive they will use outside of the class in their real world or that parallels or replicates real functions beyond the classroom". What I realize now is that authenticity varies by audience. The teacher may perceive something as authentic, where the student may not.
As you concluded that authenticity varies by audience and the teacher may perceive something as authentic, whereas the student may not, the term ‘authentic’ is very subjective. BTW, didn’t you publish the WebQuest you designed? You might feel the project as unauthentic because you couldn’t use it in your actual teaching. BUT if you had a specific target audience in your mind when you created yours, it will be authentic learning material.
ReplyDeleteAlso, as you mentioned, finding partner classes in target countries is not always easy and takes time, but I was amazed to see that many teachers have been looking for partner classes for language exchange such as keypal.
Hi Megan,
ReplyDeleteI also had similar prior thoughts about authenticity and never thought about the audience. So the reading was good for me to rethink about authenticity.
It's interesting that you had thought CALL was not authentic. Now after I read your post, I guess I've never thought about whether CALL was authentic or not while I was using it as a learner. And now I think about it, I agree that some exercises were made for the sake of technology. Interesting. So I guess the exercises that I was using was not perceived authentic by me, which means it was not authentic...
Misato