Learner's Perspectives on Authenticity

DiSlaw, 2021

Authenticity and especially the predicate authentic serve in many areas of everyday life as selling points and as positively connoted attributes for the individual’s self-presentation. Authenticity as a concept has also gained increasing importance in foreign language education in recent decades. In this context, authenticity is often associated with the texts integrated into textbooks since authentic materials are generally considered attractive and motivating. The current article critically examines this assumption by reviewing research on the relationship between motivation and authenticity of the past 30 years. Special attention is given to the motivational potential of authentic texts. As the literature review shows, authenticity and motivation have a very close relationship and are intertwined with learner autonomy. While previous research largely affirms the positive effects of authentic materials on learner motivation, it becomes evident in the current article that there are few empirical studies on the relationship between authenticity and motivation and that they mostly focus on English as a second or foreign language. Consequently, there is a significant gap in research on authenticity and motivation in languages other than English, including Slavic languages.

This article reviews some of the wide-ranging issues and research surrounding authentic materials and authenticity in foreign language learning. After a brief historical overview and a discussion of some of the definitional ambiguities associated with authenticity, the paper goes on to discuss four important areas of concern: i) the gap between authentic and textbook discourse; ii) the English-as-a-world-language debate; iii) authenticity and motivation; iv) text difficulty and task design and their effects on language acquisition. The article concludes by examining some of the reasons behind resistance to change in curriculum and materials design and possible future directions.

NUS CELC 5th Symposium Proceedings, 2016

This paper aims to gain a better understanding of the concept of authenticity by asking language teachers and students to what extent they agree with eight inter-related definitions (Gilmore, 2007). The eight definitions were converted into a questionnaire survey with both Likert scale items and open-ended questions, further triangulated by teacher/researcher journals and observation data. The questionnaire was administered to Japanese university students (both English and non-English majors) and Japanese high school English teachers. This study aims to find out what authenticity means to two of the main stakeholders in English as a foreign language context, namely, students and teachers for whom English is a foreign language. The results show that none of the definitions is satisfactory on its own, and there was little or no overall consensus about the definitions. This finding serves to prove that authenticity is in need of an updated understanding which is more inclusive to speakers of English as a second or foreign language.

2015

In philosophy, authenticity has been used with two meanings: one entails the notion of correspondence; the other entails the notion of genesis (Cooper, 1983: 15). As in certain branches of philosophy, language teaching has perhaps clung too long to the first of these notions of authenticity at the expense of the other. This paper reviews four key conceptualisations of authenticity which have emerged in the field of applied linguistics: text authenticity, authenticity of language competence, learner authenticity and classroom authenticity. If any of these types of authenticity is couched exclusively in terms of one usage or the other, it can lead to an impoverishment and objectification of the experience of language learning. Text authenticity can lead to a poverty of language; authenticity of competence can lead to a poverty of performance; learner authenticity can lead to a poverty of interpretation; classroom authenticity can lead to a poverty of communication. This paper proposes...

2016

Task-based learning and the communicative approach prevalent in teaching languages in higher education reach their apex when incorporating authentic activities, material, and experiences in their teaching repertoire. Yet authenticity in the classroom is hard to design, and often simply reduced to the use of so-called authentic material, without engaging students as a whole person with their own feelings, interests, and cultures. In 2015 in French Studies at the University of Western Australia together with Lille III University, France, we implemented Teletandem, a series of language tasks where learners are paired. Based on the participants’ blogs and reflective reports, Teletandem appears to be relatively authentic and sit halfway between absolute authenticity and in authenticity. This paper will show that relative authenticity improves students’ communicative and cultural competence, as well as their intrinsic motivation. Students feel empowered as long as they don’ have to stray ...

The Canadian Modern Language Review / La revue canadienne des langues vivantes, 2017

Penelope Eckert first introduced the concept of authenticity in sociolinguistics research in the 2003 issue of Journal of Sociolinguistics. Herein, she positions the 'Authentic Speaker' as 'the belief that some speakers have been more tainted by the social than otherstainted in the sense that they have wandered beyond their natural habitat to be subject to conscious, hence unnatural, social influences' (Eckert 2003, 392-393). Over a decade later, R emi van Compernolle and Janice McGregor, editors of Authenticity, Language and Interaction in Second Language Contexts, move from the ideology of an 'authentic speaker' to the social practice of how speakers, their languages, and their identities become authenticated through interaction. The objective of the book is twofold: the first is to present cases in which learners negotiate sociolinguistic authenticity; the second is to help speakers authenticate their agency, identity, and culture within their own contextualized ways of speaking. This book presents a growing body of scholarship within varied language learning situations. Contributions to this volume include an introduction into authenticity in second language contexts, followed by nine original chapters covering a variety of languages (Chinese, French, German, Japanese, and Spanish). Topics covered include authenticity in computer mediated contexts, textbook reviews, homestay environments, and study abroad programs. This volume, replete with pedagogical implications, is particularly relevant for educators of students living, studying, and working in multilingual spaces. The first chapter examines the clash between pragmatic appropriateness and authenticity within computer-mediated interactions among L2 French speakers in second person address terms. L2 speakers continually use rote forms without considering the pragmatics of reducing social distance between speakers. The authors R emi A. van Compernolle and Ashlie Henery contend that authenticity is reached when the speakers have incorporated meaning into their forms of address, from a genesis of origin (MacDonald, Badger, and Dasli 2006). The following chapter examines a pilot study developed by Lawrence Williams, also in L2 French, that counters grammar explanations in textbooks as misleading or not providing an accurate account of spoken speech. Grammar terms in textbooks may lead readers to use memorized, static forms, and as a result, Williams claims, their learning becomes systematic. Instead, Williams recommends a concept-based approach in motivating students' choice between auxiliary or transitive verb choice 'avoir' or 'être.' By moving past 'rules of thumb', educators should explain the concepts behind the rules and 'push learners to consider the qualities of the concepts in greater depth' (van Compernolle 2014, 109). In the third chapter, R emi van Compernolle evaluates sociolinguistic competence of L2 French speakers by drawing on Silverstein (2001)'s use of 'metapragmatic discourse,' in which authenticity depends on a speaker's performance abilities, knowledge of linguistic context, and language attitudes. Not only do participants authenticate to their own language community and groups, but also in relation to their sense of self. Compernolle pivots speaker agency as central to authenticating a sociolinguistic identity. The fourth chapter deviates from the prior chapters' focus on language in the classroom. Author Naoko Taguchi looks at L2 learners of Japanese participants in a language program

British Journal of Education, 2023

Authentic materials is one of the best materials that can be used in teaching and learning process in classroom in order to enhance the learners' language skills and proficiency. The aim of this study is to identify the use of authentic materials in the language classroom and its effects on EFL learners' language skills and proficiency. Two types of questionnaires were designed for the students and the teachers in the English language department as a research tools to collect data, besides classroom observation was implemented. This study was conducted during the first semester of the academic year (2022-2023). The total sample of this study was (50) respondents, (10) English language lecturers and (40) female students from the Faculty of Arts at the University of Hail-Shimli Branch. An analytical descriptive approach was used. The findings of the study indicate that authentic materials are more appropriate for enhancing English language proficiency, also they can engage and motivate students and associating them to real world of using language.

The shift from traditional towards more learner-centered approaches to teaching has resulted in the concept of authenticity becoming central to Communicative Language Teaching (CLT). As a relational notion, authenticity has to do with the interaction between learners and input materials in terms of appropriate responses, as opposed to its notion of genuineness as an absolute quality. It paves the way for language to be authenticated through context, as it encourages a use-to-learn rather than a learn-to-use approach. Using authentic materials requires a great deal of attention to be paid to not only the contextualization and authenticity of tasks, but also to the incorporation of genuine texts into task design, which itself has been revolutionized through modern technology. Using the Web as a technological tool has resulted in another version of authenticity, which might be in line with finder authenticity. The main aim of this paper is to argue that the notion of authenticity has come a long way from genuineness to finder authenticity.

Approaching authentic texts in the second language classroom -Some factors to consider

The following bibliography is annotated with each article or books' abstract. In some cases I have indicated the work as Essential Reading. This list is quite extensive but by no means exhaustive, and I would warmly welcome any suggestions for additions or subtractions, as well as discussion on the issue of authenticity in Applied Linguistics and Language Teaching.