Real-world Relevance

1. Authentic activities have real-world relevance

One can criticise many of the todays educational sources (even those which are not produced for classroom and considered as authentic materials, such as newspaper articles, TV news, scripts from web pages, etc.) for not having authenticity or any relationship to the world outside the classroom once they are removed from their original context and the purpose they have been produced for and brought to the classroom with school culture.

Think and ask yourself: When was the last time that I had to

* solve a multiple choice test after reading a newspaper article?

* find words that have the same meaning in the text?

Taylor (1994), for example, suggests that the texts commonly produced for language learning for use in classrooms are not authentic due to the fact that the teacher and students would usually know the answer (or easily be able to deduce it) because the material is presented to the learner with a “photographically produced ‘realia’” (Clarke, 1989, p. 79). Taylor (1994) exemplifies his argument by giving this example: “‘What is John doing?’ is not a genuine question, since, assuming the learners have eyes, they can see what John is doing without having to say ‘He is washing the car’” (paragraph 12).

Even though some of the activities in course books (such as Headway, Pathfinder, Language Leader and alike) are produced from authentic materials are not authentic because they do not have any relationship with the communicative purpose of the text (Clarke, 1989). Mishan and Strunz (2003) further explain this and argue that extracts from newspapers, magazines and books, and photographs, leaflets and advertisements bring cosmetic authenticity because these authentic materials are followed by comprehension questions or vocabulary activities that make the original purpose of the text secondary and does not create authenticity in the task.

The following is an example from New Language Leader (Intermediate coursebook, pp. 10-11). While the original text is about the charisma of politicians and other important people in society and how charisma misleads citizens (more importantly voters) not to consider whether these people have the knowledge, wisdom and experience to do a good job, the follow-up exercises have no relationship to the original purpose of the text.

As it is illustrated in the above example, with school type exercises teachers give learners low-level work consisting of recognition and reproduction of memorized information or practice of isolated skills and do not supply contexts for functional uses (Lebow and Wager, 1994); however, this leads to lower order thinking skill development where learners can identify, recall, reproduce or list the knowledge but are not able to use knowledge outside of school in genuine settings. Thus knowledge remains inert (a term used by Whitehead, 1932).

This essential element gives learners a purpose for learning and facilitates internalisation (i.e., language acquisition in EFL context). Therefore, unlike school type exercises, such as listening to an audio file and drawing a map, for an activity to be authentic, it should be something that people do in real life that have an authentic purpose and communication. Van den Branden's (2006) words below express the importance of bringing real-world relevance to the classroom:

Tasks should be the core units that describe the selection of goals (that one needs language in order to be able to function in society) rather than linguistic structures when designing a curriculum (Council of Europe, 2001; Lave & Wenger, 1991; Van Avermaet & Gysen, 2006). Accordingly, the objectives of the lessons should not be describing what specific language features students gain, for example “the students will learn how to use the past continuous and past simple tenses to express an interrupted action” (Ritchie, 2003, p. 114). Instead, the objectives should focus on using the language for an authentic purpose to be able to function in society, as is described in The Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) (Council of Europe, 2001): “can describe plans and arrangements, habits and routines, past activities and personal experiences”. In respect to this, the content of authentic activities is biology, history, house decoration, organising a trip to another country or writing a letter to a book author or journalist and the main target is task completion. It directs learners’ attention to linguistic elements as they arise incidentally in lessons (Ellis, Skehan, Li, Shintani, & Lambert, 2020).

Suggested resources:

• Ellis, R., Skehan, P., Li, S., Shintani, N., & Lambert, C. (2020). Task-based language teaching: Theory and practice: Cambridge University Press.

• Herrington, J., & Oliver, R. (2000). An instructional design framework for authentic learning environments. Educational Technology Research and Development, 48(3), 23-48.

• Herrington, J., Oliver, R., & Reeves, T. R. (2002). Patterns of Engagement in Authentic Online Learning Environments. Paper presented at the ASCILITE.

• Ozverir, I., Herrington, J., & Osam, U. V. (2016). Design principles for authentic learning of English as a foreign language. British Journal of Educational Technology, 47(3), 484-493.

• Ozverir, I., Osam, U. V., & Herrington, J. (2017). Investigating the effects of authentic activities on foreign language learning: A design-based research approach. Journal of Educational Technology & Society, 20(4), 261-274.

• Van den Branden, K. (2006). Introduction: task-based language teaching in a nutshell. In K. V. d. Branden (Ed.), Task-based language education from theory to practice (pp. 1-16). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.