Polished Products
8. Authentic activities yield polished products valuable in their own right rather than as preparation for something else
Authentic activities fundamentally encourage students to orient towards creating their own message and meaning in their own way suitable to the objectives of the activity. The learning event becomes an opportunity for the learners to use their repository of L2 knowledge in context and learn new structures and vocabulary as they complete the activity. The activity is completed with a product that is polished and professional that can be shared with an authentic audience (rather than the teacher) with a communicative purpose.
"There is a clearly defined outcome other than the use of language (i.e. the language serves as the means for achieving the outcome, not as an end in its own right)" (Ellis, 2009, p. 223)
The output of an authentic activity should represent what the learner will need to do with the target language in real world.