Reconceptualising Authenticity for English as a Global Language

Richard S. Pinner

• Publisher: Multilingual Matters
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781783095667
• eBook ISBN: 9781783095698
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Psycolinguistics
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

This book examines the concept of authentic English in today's world, where cultures are in constant interaction and the English language works as a binding agent for many cross-cultural exchanges. It offers a comprehensive review of decades of debate around authenticity in language teaching and learning and attempts to synthesise the complexities by presenting them as a continuum. This continuum builds on the work of eminent scholars and combines them within a flexible framework that celebrates the process of interaction whilst acknowledging the complexity and individual subjectivity of authenticity. Authenticity is approached as a complex dynamic construct that can only be understood by examining it from social, individual and contextual dimensions, in relation to actual people. Authenticity is a problem not just for language acquisition but one which affects us as individuals belonging to society.

1Introduction to the Book

Authenticity is vital in second language acquisition because it connects the individual learner to the content used for learning. It connects the students to the teacher, and also to other learners, and influences classroom dynamics of interaction, which in turn affects how learners engage with tasks and how much they invest themselves in the learning. It is also an integral part of how learners conceptualise themselves in relation to the wider social context in which the target language will be used. In other words, authenticity is a powerful affective component of perceived validity which bridges the individual and social worlds of both learning and teaching. It is a fluid component of identity and part of the dynamic system of motivation. As such, it is both essential to language learning and at the same time highly elusive and hard to define.

As many scholars have pointed out before, most notably Widdowson (1978), Breen (1985) and van Lier (1996), authenticity is not something absolute, but rather it is relative to the learner and their unique and individual beliefs. Therefore, any discussion of authenticity needs to take place within a flexible framework, one which can bend itself to meet the ever-changing identities of learners and teachers in a rapidly evolving social environment. In this book I have attempted to unpack these concepts and to examine them holistically. The title of this book, Reconceptualising Authenticity, might seem to suggest that I will present a new theory of authenticity. Perhaps a more descriptive title would have been ‘synthesising and unpacking the concept of authenticity as a dynamic, contextually dependent component of a complex system’. However, I opted for the shorter version in the spirit of the book itself, which is partly intended as a summary of the diverse and complex strands of thought on the topic of authenticity, and partly as an attempt to consolidate these discussions and move away from static definitions. This book presents the various strands of thought that so far seem to have made little impact in the domain of authenticity as a practical issue in the classroom, or as a puzzle that can be at the heart of an empirical inquiry. Many teachers and students of foreign languages around the world still cling to the view that authenticity is a linguistic trait, inherently the product of a target language culture, as evidenced by staff-room discourse, the widely disseminated methodology books carrying such definitions and learner preferences that greatly influence unfair employment practice, particularly in the English language teaching industry (Mahboob & Golden, 2013). I refer to this definition as the ‘classic’ definition, and will provide further justification and proof of its ubiquity in Chapter 4. This situation is further exacerbated by the fact that research into authenticity is rather scarce. I will try to explain why I think this is and also suggest ways that the issue can be addressed.

My aim in writing this book is to replace the ‘classic’ definition with a reconceptualised version, which is more inclusive to other varieties of English. The concept of authenticity is currently in a state of turmoil because the rather abstract concepts, which are inherent in the construct, are either not fully acknowledged or they are debated up until the point where authenticity becomes an ‘illusion’ (Widdowson, 1990: 44). In asserting this I realise that I am taking a rather dangerous and paradoxical approach, saying that we need to get away from an oversimplified version of authenticity, when the issue is already fraught with complications. This is part of the paradox of authenticity: at one end it is too complicated to have a single definition, and at the other end practitioners talk about ‘authentic’ materials when they generally mean newspapers or other items that have simply been extrapolated from a target language speaking community. As a result of this rather reductionist view of authenticity in language teaching (particularly where materials are involved), the inherent complexities have been largely ignored, or at least avoided, in the mainstream of English language teaching (ELT) materials and teacher training courses. I think authenticity is in need of unpacking again. There is a lot of old baggage within the concept of authenticity, even fairly modern publications such as Harmer (2008) and Richards and Schmidt (2013) still define authenticity along the lines of ‘newspapers’. I agree that newspapers can be authentic, but so can almost anything else. Similarly, some things that we may take for granted as being ‘authentic’, such as a newspaper, may actually not be very authentic at all in certain contexts. In this book I would like to invite the reader to reconsider authenticity from the perspective of English as a global language, and to examine authenticity as it relates to individuals and their positions within society. As the English language becomes ever more abstract as a result of its employment as a tool for international communication, the necessity to personalise it and to make it relevant to the Self becomes more pronounced.

Premises of this Book

The majority of books dealing with the concept of authenticity in language teaching tend to take a practical approach to the subject. Authenticity is a concept that is familiar throughout the language teaching world; students, teachers and researchers are aware of it and, generally, view it as a desirable component of teaching. Practical books on authenticity often present lesson plans and ideas that incorporate authentic materials, and these materials tend to be ‘cultural products’, as Mishan (2005) calls them. The long-standing practical definition of authenticity is basically materials that were not designed for language teaching originally, but some other use in the target language community (Harmer, 2008; Hedge, 2000), with the ‘classic’ example being a newspaper. Works that deal with the theoretical side of authenticity are much less common than such practical works. Henry Widdowson is perhaps one of the most well-known proponents of authenticity in language teaching; however, his many discussions on authenticity have tended to belong to larger works dealing with other topics. For example Teaching Language as Communication (1978) is about communicative language teaching, with Widdowson primarily arguing that traditional language teaching, which focuses on grammatical structures, fails to prepare learners to communicate effectively. Authenticity is a central tenet to his vision of communicative language teaching, but the book is not solely about authenticity. Rather, authenticity orbits the entire theme, sometimes manifesting itself as a basic assumption of the approach. Aspects of Language Teaching (1990) is even broader in scope, dealing with the issue of theory and practice, as well as approaches to language teaching and considerations for syllabus design. Authenticity is defined as ‘natural language behaviour’ (1990: 45) and Widdowson writes that it is hard to imagine another definition of authenticity. However, Widdowson himself has provided numerous definitions and positions in his writing, with Mishan suggesting that he actually ‘metaphorically throw[s] water on the flames he himself had helped to kindle’ (2005: 17) by suggesting that ‘Inauthentic language-using behaviour might well be effective language-learning behaviour’ (Widdowson, 1990: 46–47 following Breen, 1985; see also Widdowson, 1979). Here, Widdowson points out one of the widespread assumptions about authenticity as a ‘means to an end’ and in doing so he (either intentionally or unintentionally) introduces a sense of drudgery into the use of authentic materials, as the idiomatic use of ‘a means to an end’ can imply an undesirable way of achieving a necessary outcome. This is somewhat at odds with what Csikszentmihalyi (1990, 1997, 2013) calls ‘flow theory’, and also recent educational innovations such as game theory (Lazzaro, 2009) and language play (G. Cook, 2000), where enjoyment of the actual process of learning is viewed as crucial. All of these concepts deal with the idea of authenticity in learning, and this is one of the reasons why authenticity is commonly associated with motivation. Widdowson, also, seems to fundamentally agree that the learning process should be rewarding in itself, and his basic argument is that foreign language learning should serve some fundamental communicative function. These issues will also be addressed in later chapters.

The issue of authenticity is often referred to as the ‘authenticity debate’ (Mishan, 2005) and there are various definitions and positions available in the literature, some complementary and overlapping, many contradictory and confusing. Gilmore (2007a) summarises over a century of literature on authenticity in his state-of-the-art paper, providing an in-depth overview in which he identifies eight different and overlapping definitions. His paper for the journal Language Teaching cites 240 other works, but of these only 29 mention authenticity specifically in the title, two of these referring to authenticity in language testing. This shows two things: first that authenticity is implicit in a large number of these papers even though it is not directly mentioned in the title; and second that relatively few papers deal exclusively with the thorny issue, perhaps showing a general reticence in tackling authenticity directly in our field. This is not to say that authenticity is under-theorised. In fact, complaints about the complexity of authenticity and the unhelpfully diverse number of definitions have been a feature of any serious discussion of authenticity for some time.

Concepts that have long been central to second language acquisition (SLA) such as motivation and culture are evolving to reflect the ‘fluidity of today’s learning contexts’ (Ushioda, 2013a: 5), and I would argue that authenticity is also in need of an updated examination. The concept of authenticity needs to be discussed in light of emergent theories of language acquisition such as chaos/complexity theory and dynamic systems approaches as these seem to represent our best way of describing the complex phenomena of second language acquisition in an ever diversifying social context (Kramsch, 2011; Larsen-Freeman, 1997; Larsen-Freeman & Cameron, 2008a; Mercer, 2011; Tudor, 2003).

In this book I present the case for authenticity as a complex dynamic construct that can only be understood by examining it from social, individual and contextual dimensions, in relation to actual people. I will talk about existential philosophy to show that authenticity is a problem not just for language acquisition, but one which affects us as individuals belonging to society. I will examine authenticity from a chaos/complexity theory perspective and resist the urge to reduce it down into something that can be printed onto a textbook in order to sell more copies. I believe that in doing so I am actually making the issue more manageable by opening it up and unpacking it in all its complexity. I aim to examine what people mean when they talk about authentic language. In today’s world, in which technological developments have led to a situation where cultures are in constant interaction, with the English language working as a binding agent for cross-cultural exchanges, how does the concept of authenticity fit in?

One of the fundamental opinions I have about language teaching is that a good teacher naturally attempts to build a rapport with his or her learners. Good teachers or educators in any discipline try to get their students to engage with the content and to engage in a process of personal meaning-making. Ushioda explains that ‘the notion of engaging our students’ identities is something many experienced language teachers have intuitively recognised as important’ (2011b: 17) and she goes on to state that doing so is not new or surprising, but is in fact what many good teachers do instinctively. Intuition and ‘gut feelings’, far from being vague or unscientific, are actually a vital part of a teacher’s work (T. Atkinson & Claxton, 2000). This is because teachers draw on their own personal beliefs and experiences when constructing environments which they feel are most conducive to learning in real time. The application of intuition when responding to the students’ needs and navigating through the learning process is one of the ways in which the teacher creates a culture of authenticity in the ‘small culture’ (Holliday, 1999) of their own classroom and teaching context. This has much in common with ecological approaches to language learning (Tudor, 2003; van Lier, 1998), which I will discuss in further detail in Chapter 2.

Relevance of Authenticity to Language Learning

Although this book deals primarily with authenticity as it relates to second language acquisition, I pay particular focus to English as a foreign language instruction. This is because English is somewhat of a special case in the world today, and also the most widely taught as a foreign language. English is part of the reason we have what Fairclough termed the ‘globalisation of discourse’, which he illustrates with an example of World News coming from global television channels such as CNN in the USA, also the BBC in the UK would fit this example. He explains that although these channels claim to be global in their scope, and are broadcast and viewed globally, the locus of the content is still fixed on the country of origin, what Fairclough terms a ‘parochial’ view of the world. In other words, globalisation is responsible for the dissemination of an Anglo-global world view. Fairclough calls the globalisation of discourse a ‘constant external point of reference’ (2001: 206) from which many nations collectively view the world in order to make comparisons and to market ideas. This reference point could potentially invoke the concept that ‘the grass is always greener on the other side’, although Fairclough uses caution and explains that the globalisation of discourse does not necessarily mean the homogenisation of discourse, but rather that there is an awareness of ‘the other’ and its relation to ‘the Self’ on the scale of national identity. As the English language is pushed and pulled in ever more diverse directions, as we see an increase in what Vertovec (2007, 2010) has labelled super-diversity, in which it becomes not only impossible but also undesirable to state where one language or culture ends and another begins, as the English language especially starts to resemble a handful of grains of sand rather than a single solid rock, it is important to ask ourselves what authentic language is. Globalisation is often associated with the term ‘global village’; however, Blommaert (2010: 1) notes that this is actually not the case, and rather the world is a complex web of villages, neighbourhoods and communities that are all interconnected in various material and symbolic ways. For many learners and teachers around the world, the English language is an abstract yet terrifyingly real phenomenon. It is the world’s second language and as such there is tremendous social pressure and political momentum behind getting people to learn to speak it.

Furthermore, English can affect where learners go to school or university, which has a knock-on effect for other aspects of their career. A person who wishes to do well in the field of biochemistry will eventually have to learn to read complicated academic journal articles, requiring a very high level of English proficiency, because most of the research in the scientific fields is published in English first, even though it may not be written by those who speak it as their first language (Ammon, 2001). The English language is therefore something which can be seen and heard all over, but understanding how it relates to one’s own needs and requirements is not always so apparent. For some learners, English is easy to connect with and to use in authentic ways for purposes beyond learning or studying for a test. For example, Henry (2013) points out that in Sweden, learners are so proficient in English because they use it all the time to watch television, go online or even participate in online gaming (a highly enjoyable social and collaborative form of communication) that they tend to just ‘coast’ through English classes as an easy option. In other contexts, like mine in Japan, for many students the English language is just a subject that is taught at schools and spoken about in political and higher education circles well beyond the learner’s locus of control. For many of them, English quite often just boils down to the USA or American culture. Yet for others, English is a second language because they lived abroad for months or years, usually because one of their parents was sent there for work. Others yet may have parents who come from abroad, and so their home-life might be conducted in English, as is the case with my own son. All these contexts and differences mean that to talk about the authenticity of a certain piece of language is like describing the colour of glass; each individual’s perspective and stance will influence their perception. But authenticity is an essential component of the language classroom and it does connect in a very real sense with other important factors crucial to learning, such as motivation and autonomy, as I will attempt to show in the following pages.

Structure of the Book

In this book I will explore the theoretical issues surrounding authenticity in depth. I will propose that authenticity be considered as a continuum, which attempts to reframe it in a way that is more inclusive to L2 varieties of English. Using the continuum, I will explain how authenticity is partly a socially constructed shared experience and partly a sense of validity, which comes from the individual self about the teaching/learning situation. This is an idea that is grounded in sociocultural approaches to learning, but also marks a return to what existentialist philosophers such as Kierkegaard and Heidegger were referring to in their discussions of the authentic self. The continuum is an attempt to incorporate the majority of speakers of English into the concept of authenticity while also allowing for such important factors as identity, affect and agency. Another purpose of the continuum is to allow for the importance of Self and the process of engagement with the language and learning materials. In this way the continuum incorporates autonomy and identity, which Ushioda (2011b) notes are vital in motivating learners. Authenticity is often referred to as a motivational force in language teaching, and the continuum attempts to better establish the conceptual links between authenticity and motivation. Ushioda advocates a person in-context relational view of motivation (2009), and in many ways the continuum tries to encompass both the individual identity of the learner and bridge that with the often distant reality of the target language culture, whatever it may be. This is especially important in EFL contexts, where learners may not know much about the culture and they may be learning in compulsory language classes. I hope to demonstrate how authenticity and motivation are closely related and I belie...

Table of contents

• Cover-Page
• Half-Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction to the Book
• 2 Existential, Philosophical and Theoretical Underpinnings
• 3 English as a Global Language
• 4 Authenticity in Language Teaching
• 5 The Authenticity Continuum
• 6 Authenticity in Bilingual Educational Contexts
• 7 New Media as a Catalyst for Authenticity
• 8 Conclusion
• References
• Author Index
• Subject Index