authenticity
Authenticity | John Bartrick | January 9th, 2001
Hello everyone, Happy New Year,
I remember that this time last year Steve Mann challenged us to make public our intended assignment output for the year 2000. No doubt due to the fear of promising something that couldn't be delivered the response was negligible. So in the spirit of the New Year and all that, I will try to get the ball rolling again and hereby declare that in the year 2001 I plan to complete MAP, CSD, another single module and the dissertation (probably in the area of Teacher Development / Co-operative development). There I've said it now! Hopefully this will encourage anybody who thinks our modular paths might cross to get in touch.
Which brings me round to MAP. I am working in the area of spoken interaction and am looking at the Task-Based Learning Framework outlined in Jane Willis' "A Framework for TBL" 1996 Longman.
Looking back over the postings of the last few months I can see that Jonathan has been looking at much the same area. It will be interesting to compare findings.
Jonathan, you mentioned "the concept of authenticity". On a very down-to-earth level this was the first hurdle I came up against. Having persuaded three Native Speaker colleagues to sit round the tape recorder with me I was struck by the artificiality of the tasks I had set for us. These were in the style of "look at these Christmas presents and decide to whom they should be given". The results were along the lines of:
"S1: How about this for grandfather?
S2: How do I know what your grandfather
likes?
Chairperson (me): You have to use your imagination a bit."
Although I have no difficulty telling the same things to learners in the classroom, I was struck by the fact that with my NS colleagues I was prepared to sacrifice the authenticity of the decision making for the sake of satisfactory completion of the task.
Perhaps I'm splitting hairs here, but it strikes me as very difficult to get hold of authentic task performance by NSs "on demand" and a healthy dose of compromise is inevitable. Perhaps I haven't looked hard enough for appropriate tasks. Any ideas anyone? I'm encouraged by the quote you mention from Breen 1985, "Inauthentic language-using behavior might be authentic language learning behavior".
Bye for now
John Bartrick
Ioannina, Greece
Reply to John | Jonathan | January 10th, 2001
Hi John,
Yeah, what you are doing is very much the same as my MAP assignment, though I looked more at the task itself as input rather than the interaction produced. The idea was also inspired by Jane's book; basically, I asked the students to do a task and then analyzed NSs doing the same task using CR activities. The easiest is if I email you (or anybody else interested) the complete assignment rather than trying to explain it in 50 words. So let me know if you want to see it, the only draw back is that it has not been marked yet but I hope that my arguments are good enough to "hold water" at least.
You mentioned that your NSs gave a very stilted text. I didn't have that problem. Perhaps it is a question of what tasks you set. Jane's book has a section of advice on how to go about doing the recordings.
Finally, you mentioned the Breen article. I highly recommend it if you are looking at authenticity. In fact in the Van Lier Interaction in the language Curriculum (which is on the basic reading list) there is an interesting couple of chapters on authenticity and interaction which is also worth (re) reading if you have a copy to hand. It also talks about Breen and Widdowson's concepts of what is and isn't authentic in terms of interaction.
New years resolutions - what am I working on: Following John's lead, I'd also like to mention my current interests. I am now about to begin working on the dissertation and will probably look at the effect of personalization on the authenticity of classroom interaction. I am really just getting together ideas at the moment but would be pleased to hear from anybody else looking at this area.
Finally, hi to Darren and welcome aboard.
Best wishes to all
Jonathan
Re: Authenticity | John Bartrick | January 11 th , 2001
Yes Jonathan I'd love to read the assignment. And having just opened Van Lier (Interaction...) at page 125 "What is authenticity?" it seems to be just what I'm looking for. Thanks for the tip.
Speak soon
John Bartrick
Re: Authenticity | John Bartrick | January 14th, 2001
Jonathan,
Thanks for sending the assignment. The only trouble is my computer runs on Windows 95 and I suspect yours is 98 cos half of the text is made up of little squares and assorted symbols. If you can think of another solution fair enough, if not, never mind, I think I've got the gist.
I'm going to look at the differences between NS output and teenage learners doing pair work tasks as required in the Cambridge First Certificate Speaking test. My initial findings are that my learners are locked into rigid patterns of lexis that they use to carry out interactional moves. For example, turn-taking. My learners showed a strong preference for patterns like,
S1: ........What do you think?
S2: I agree with you
whereas, NSs preferred something like:
NS1: So if she had that lovely pen she might
NS2: yeah you're right
NS1: she'd feel like
NS2: writing it down.
So, Jonathan I too want to use recordings and transcripts of NS interaction but with an emphasis on what interactional techniques NSs use to show, for example, agreement or disagreement.
Bye for now
John Bartrick
with 
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