Text and take authenticity in the EFL classroom

Guariento and Morley's paper entitled Text and task authenticity in the EFL classroom argues that in order to acheive authentic responses in students, there might be a need to sacrifice the authenticity of texts by using more simplified texts, especially at lower levels.

It is without doubt that authentic texts are good tools at bringing the target language closer to the learner but it is not completely sure when and how they should be used. Authentic texts way over the students capabilities may not always have the learner respond in the best ways and this could frustrate and/or demotivate him or her. In order to have a positive effect on the learner, Guariento and Morley quoted Widdowson's 1978 argument where the text has to "engage the learner's interest and impress him as being in some way relevant to his concerns."

The article also discusses the importance of tasks and the authors indentify their four broad schools of thought regarding task authenticity. The first school of thought is the authenticity through a genuine purpose where more is placed on meaning and communication that resemble closer to real world activities than on activities such as grammar exercises. I recently wrote a test where students had to write an ad for a French dating website and another where they had to write an ad in order to find a roommate. The second school of thought is authenticity through real world targets where the use of language avoids language that one would never say. Authenticity through classroom interaction is the third school of thought and what the authors note as the most crucial type of authenticity, authenticity through engagement is the fourth school of thought. As the authors stated, "while all four may not form a coherent whole, teachers can, in appropriate cirumstances, devise learning situations in which the four can operate in conjunction."

Finally, the article discusses compromising task authenticity when dealing with lower level students or with younger learners where the authors state that "very simple pedagogic tasks used with low-level students can still be described as authentic." As for written materials in my classroom, the authors of the book that I use Chez nous have certainly simplified the authenticity of texts. For example, one can find an article taken from a French newspaper but parts of the article have been edited out or even translated. When I taught English to elementary school kids, almost everything I presented to the students had been simplified.

As I said in an earlier post, I hardly change the way that I speak when I am teaching a class (and I have beginning French learners). Although I am not a native speaker of French, I do my best to have my students interact with the culture and doing my best to imitate a French native is the best I can do. I do this a lot more than I did in previous courses because I know that most of my students are already seasoned language learners (most of them speak Spanish fluently). I have certainly noticed that they have a high tolerance for non-simplified authentic texts and really enjoy the contact with the culture, I would like for them to get the most out of their experiences in my class. I know that this might one day result in a student's frustration but if the student is taught what to look for in exercises and how to manage a word that he or she does not understand, I do not think that there will be any frustration. After all, as the authors Guariento and Morley stated in their article, "partial comprehension of text is no longer considered to be necessarily problematic, since this is something which occurs in real life."

I can see a correspondance between this article and Wallis' article How to Bring Our Schools Out of the 20th Century through their statement "bridge the gap between the classroom and the real world." To better survive in our global economy, it is helpful to use authentic texts. I am always searching for materials that were created by Francophones so that my students will be well prepared for when (if they ever) go to a French speaking country. I believe that using these authentic materials brings valuable culture aspects along with language to the learner.