ELGazette is a great little publication. It exposes dodgy goings-on in the ELT world, commissions interesting articles and most importantly pays a really decent rate to its writers. I know this because they asked me to write an article last year which appeared in print a few months ago. So it's a shame to see them featured in 'woo watch'. What have they done to end up here? Well, this month they printed a response to my piece on pseudoscience by a writer called Janet Denyer and it's really this article that has landed them here.
Denyer's article is called 'making the case for NLP' (here). In it she writes that she was 'intrigued' by my article's findings but 'dismayed' by its 'lack of depth'. This is an odd criticism since as Denyer, who is also writing for the Gazette must know, the publication commissions articles of around 700 words. It's pretty hard to get depth with 700 words. If depth is what you're after, you can perhaps wait for the publication of my 5,000 word piece on NLP. I wouldn't hold your breath though as it has been 'under review' with the TESOL journal for over two years (no joke).
Denyer goes on to encourage me to do some research on NLP. She notes 'as an expert in linguistics Russ may be in an excellent position to address the distinct lack of empirical research evidence...' Let me stop you there. Firstly, I'm not an expert in linguistics, -in fact I'd say I'm not an expert in anything at all (except, perhaps, procrastination). Just to be absolutely clear to anyone reading, I'm a teacher, with no title, no research grants and no PhD. I largely spend my days teaching.
And secondly, I couldn't possibly address the lack of empirical research on NLP even if I was an expert in linguistics. This is not only because NLP is unrelated to the field of linguistics but also because there isn't in any way a lack of empirical research evidence about NLP. There's tonsof it. NLP has been researchedto death. There are even meta-analyses about it. It could be though that Denyer means here is 'address the distinct lack of empirical research evidence' which supports NLP. In which case she would be correct. But why this lack needs addressing isn't clear to me. That would be like saying 'we hope you can address the distinct lack of empirical research evidence against man-made climate change'. It can't be address because it isn't true.
Denyer goes on to explain that she is a 35 year veteran of lecturing though it wasn't clear to me what that had to do with her following point that although some 'facts' about these practices may have been misrepresented she has personallyseen the benefits of some of the things I disparage. For example, she has seen great benefits for students 'who actively use both sides of their brain'. I tried to think of something witty to say here about students only using one half of their brains but I just don't have the energy anymore. Denyer defends NLP noting that 'NLP is not something that you do to people' which is odd because I got the distinct impression it was explicitly promoted as a tool for doing things to people; things like persuading and influencing, closing sales, making someone love you, curing allergies, curing asthma and anxiety and on and on.
Denyer then moves on to a defence of BrainGym which she claims has been abused by 'marketeers' in the UK and its current incarnation isn't true to 'Dr. Dennison's' original vision and his research. She may well be right. I have no idea. The problem however is that even if we're true to Paul Dennison's original vision, that wouldn't be saying much. Watch the cringe-inducing interview with Dennison below. There are some real gems in here like his stating that '[human beings] are electrical'. Is this the 'original vision' we're supposed to adhere to?
I tried to find Dr. Dennison's published output on google scholar. I found a manual for BrainGym and a couple of articles all published in the journal of 'edu-kinesthetics' I wanted to check out the journal but it's not available online...not a good sign. (ND: He does appear to have one article in a now defunct journal).
Denyer closes this section by suggesting that 'Russ must acknowledge the positive learning environment in many classrooms today, compared with half a century ago'. I find this sentence difficult to understand and in fairness it may be editorial rather than the author but is Denyer saying that BrainGym is responsible for the changes in educational practices in the last 50 years? That's quite a claim. (And speaking of editing there is an section where she claims eye accessing cues were first identified in 1890 (sic?) by someone called 'James' (first name or last name?))
Denyer's next strategy is to make NLP seem credible through the use of adjectives. Argument adjectivium? She writes that NLP is underpinned by the work of 'esteemed family therapist Virginia Satir' and 'acclaimed author' Robert Dilts. If she had managed to find an honourable and a holy I fear I would've had to concede. This seems to be some kind of reverse ad hom. Does it really matter if the author is esteemed or not? They can still be wrong.
In the final section she appeals to me to not be so sure of my assumed facts reminding me that 'we once knew the earth was flat'. Sadly, while this fact is truthy it isn't true. She then sets up what is know as a 'false dilemma' quoting Howard Gardner (of MI fame) and saying 'Surely you would not wish to return to the days when intelligence was measured by the intelligence quotient'. In short, if I don't accept MI, then I'm promoting IQ testing for all. These are the only two choices. (on a side note, when did we stop measuring intelligence with IQ tests? -I'm pretty sure that's still what's used.)
For the coup de gras she 'recommend[s] Russ open his mind to our potential for learning'. It always tickles me when someone suggests you 'open your mind' because you can bet what they're actually saying is 'you should agree with me.' So I'll close with the esteemed words of (not) Carl Sagan "Keep an open mind, but not so open that your brains fall out".
I've been crazy busy the past few months and haven't been able to blog. I presented in Canada at TOSCON2015 and then presented a new talk at NATECLA. I've met some really nice people and had a great time but I'm hoping to get back to blogging now. And to start things off is a guest blog which I'm really excited about.
Around the time of TESOL 2015 I heard about a talk called 'Neuroscience, learning styles and teacher training.' The title worried me as I thought it might be some kind of hymn to woo. Once I saw the slides dear reader, my heart leapt! the authors, Carol Lethaby and Patricia Harries did something I'd been hoping to do. They repeat the Dekker 2012 study on neuromyths, but with EFL teachers!
The study basically asks teachers whether or not they believe statements, like "we only use 10% of our brain" are true or false and the results are shocking! Around 93% of UK teachers believe that employing learning styles will lead to better results, despite evidence to contrary. (more info about their findings here)
I wrote to Carol almost as soon as I heard about the research to congratulate her and we've been corresponding for months now. I asked her if she would consider writing a guest blog and she graciously agreed (of course, not before Mike Griffin got to her first *shakes fist*). So here it is! I'm exceedingly pleased to present Carol Lethaby writing about two topics which are of interest to me, gender and skepticism.
Over to Carol...
===========
A big thank you to Russ Mayne, for inviting
me to guest blog - in this post I plan to uphold the tradition of debunking
popular myths that has become Russ’s trademark. I've chosen to focus on the
idea of women’s and men’s brains and particularly the idea that the sexes
supposedly process language differently.
This is an area of considerable significance to language teachers and
one that I have been tackling in both talks and articles
in recent years.
This video from the
entertainer, Mark Gungor, illustrates beautifully the popular idea. There is, however, one problem with this
account of things … that it’s not true. Now, you may argue that this is all harmless,
and just a bit of fun, – ‘laugh your way to a better marriage’ is the name of Gungor’s website and books - even a great
topic for discussion in the language teaching classroom; but is it really
harmless if the notion that there are pre-determined differences between the
way the sexes think and use language is reinforcing self-fulfilling gender
stereotypes? This has been termed neurosexism by Cordelia Fine and others, and in Fine’s
awesomely readable book ‘Delusions of
Gender’, she really takes researchers to task for shoddy research and
rubbish conclusions based on spurious findings:
“It is appalling to me that one can,
apparently, say whatever drivel one likes about the male and female brain, and
enjoy the pleasure of seeing it published in an reputable newspaper, changing a
school’s educational policy, or becoming a bestseller.” (Fine, 2010: 174)
I mentioned some of the appalling,
blatantly sexist titles above, but there are of course also books that are
taken very seriously, based on the idea that female and male brains are very
different - Why Gender Matters, Boys
and Girls Learn Differently, The Female
Brain, to name but a few.Supposed
inherent brain differences between girls and boys have been used as a reason to
separate the sexes and to teach them differently.
So, where did the idea come from that men
and women process language differently and how does it fit in with supposed
brain differences? Like many a good neuromyth, there was originally some,
albeit dubious, research base for this claim.
It started in 1995 when Shaywitz, Shaywitz et al
published a study based on neuroimaging that showed eleven out of nineteen
women’s brains with activation in the left and
right hemisphere while the other eight women’s brains and nineteen men’s brains
activated in the left hemisphere only,
when doing one particular language task (concerned with rhyming words), out of
the various tasks that they were asked to carry out.
From this study it was concluded that men and women deal with language differently, with men being more specialised in the left hemisphere and women being less lateralised, further generalised to suggest that men’s brains are more lateralised than women’s, inferring further that this accounts for female and male cognition differences (nicely coinciding with already accepted gender stereotypes (see Gungor above)).
Now, there are several problems with making
this conclusion from the study.
Firstly, this is an example of what scientists call ‘reverse inference’ –
that is drawing conclusions about what and how people think based on the
physical brain. Fine has no patience for
this and she warns of the dangers of drawing conclusions about how we think
based on neuroscientific data. “Inferring a psychological state from brain
activity … is fraught with peril.” (2010: 151)
Brain scientists
warn against making conclusions about cognition based on brain activation
seen during imaging and this is precisely what the Shaywitz et al study does.
Secondly, this is a very small study (38 people) and does not address the
fact that, in the other language tasks participants were asked to perform,
there were no significant differences between male and female
participants, nor the fact that not all women displayed the bilateral
activation that was so interesting to scientists.
Note too, that all participants were
adults, so how can we conclude from this that this is a hard-wired female-male difference?
As neurobiologist, Lise Eliot,
points out, nearly all the evidence is based on the adult brain – “Who’s to say
that such differences [in the brain] are caused by nature and not by learning?”
(Eliot, 2009: 9). Brain scientists point
to gender differences in brain structure being related to the complex
interrelationship between genetic factors, our experiences and our biology, in
other words, what we do and what happens to us affects what our brain looks
like. “Experience can alter sex
differences in brain structure” (2004:
211) says Melissa
Hines, a neuroscientific researcher who has been looking at the question of
gender and the brain for over 35 years.
As educators, doesn't it seem more helpful to look at how gendering in
the classroom may contribute to learning differences as well as how education
can remediate those differences?
Thirdly, and most importantly, neuroscientific studies done since have not
shown the sex differences in language processing found in the Shaywitz
study. It has been found that most women
and most men process language in the
left hemisphere of the brain and that both sexes show a tremendous amount of
interconnectivity between the hemispheres.
After carrying out a meta-analysis of functional imaging of sex
differences, Sommer
et al (2004) conclude:
“In summary, this meta-analysis found no
significant sex difference in functional language lateralization in a large
sample of 377 men and 442 women. Thus, the hypothesis that language functions
are generally presented more bilaterally in women than in men is not supported.
This suggests that language lateralization is unlikely to underlie sex
differences in cognition, and their biological basis remains elusive.”
So why haven't we heard more about Sommer’s
study (and others like it) saying there is no support for innate differences
between how the sexes process language? Why does the popular media continue to
promote the idea that male and female brains are “completely different”? Unfortunately studies that don’t show
differences between the sexes are often underreported. Hines talks about this problem as well as the
converse “overreporting of positive results” (2004: 6). To address this issue, Janet Hyde 2005 proposed the ‘Gender
Similarities Hypothesis’ after conducting a meta-analysis of 46
meta-analyses of studies concerned with sex differences. She sums up like this:
“It is time to consider the costs of
overinflated claims of gender differences.
Arguably, they cause harm in numerous realms, including women’s
opportunities in the workplace, couple conflict and communication, and analyses
of self-esteem problems among adolescents.
Most important, these claims are not consistent with the scientific
data. [my emphasis]” (Hyde, 2005:
590)
Cordelia Fine responds by pointing out that 1) the conclusions don’t
take into consideration differences between larger and smaller brains (they
have different structures because of size - male brains tend to be larger
because men tend to be larger and larger brains are needed to control larger
bodies), 2) there’s no discussion of the plasticity of the brain and the effect
of our experiences on our neural structure (see above) and 3) the study is full of reverse inference
based on legitimising tired stereotypes (you can see Fine’s full response to
the study here). But the damage has already been done and the
study is quoted as ‘proving’
that female-male differences are hard-wired when in reality it shows no such
thing!
Sommer, I et al (2004) Do women really
have more bilateral language representation than men? A meta-analysis of
functional imaging studies Brain,
127, 1845–1852
You've probably heard a version of this story of before.
A long long time ago in a place called the 1950s there lived an evil wizard called 'Skinner' who lived in a castle with his many adherents. Skinner was a cruel man who practised a version of dark sorcery called 'behaviourism' which generally involve torturing animals and turning men into machines all in the name of science. His worst torture device was the Skinner box into which he put all manner of creatures including his own children.
Skinner believed that people were really just machines and so if you wanted some kind of response from them all you needed was stimulus. Something like an electric shock would probably do the trick.
Poor misguided TEFL teachers were caught in the hypnotic gaze of Skinner and developed a ridiculous style of teaching called the Audio-lingual method. This involved forcing students to sit in a classroom listening to recordings of conversations for hours on end all the while repeating mantras like so many zombies. Skinner enjoyed this depraved form of torture. In fact it helped him stay young.
One day, a brave young hero called Noam appeared and with a swish of his sword of logic he defeated the evil Skinner. Chomsky showed that language was innate and that people didn't have to be robots. On this day pair work was born and since language was innate no one needed to teach grammar anymore. Native speaker teachers everywhere rejoiced.
OK I'm exaggerating but this is the way the history of these events often seems to be presented. For example:
...Behavioralist accounts of language learning became popular in the 1920s and 1930s... (64) In Behaviorist theory, conditioning is the result of stimulus response and reinforcement (51)...In a book called verbal behavior, the psychologist Bernard [sic] Skinner suggested that much the same pattern happens in language learning (52)...Behaviorism was directly responsible for audiolingualism (52)" (Harmer 2007)
And Harmer is by no means alone. Wherever you look, from Richards and Rogers, Ellis or Lightbown and Spada, the story is made up of more or less the same building blocks. Behaviourism? check, lab animals? check, habit-formation? check, Skinner? check, Chomsky? check? The pattern of events is clear and well-known by most teachers, but is it true?
Something about the story niggles and my own personal dislike (not very evidence-based) of everything Chomskyan led me on a journey into the odd world of one of the most famous academic debates in history. Unfortunately this project continues to sprawl horribly out of control but I would like to share with you a few interesting things I've managed to find out. So here are the top 5 myths and misconceptions about the infamous Chomsky/Skinner debate and its aftermath:
1. Chomsky's review was a forensic deconstruction of Skinner's verbal behaviour
Well...it was an attempt deconstruction of 'something' - though it wasn't Skinner's book Verbal Behaviour. In fact all the evidence suggests Chomsky either didn't read Verbal Behaviour or didn't understand it. The reason we can make this assumption is that Chomsky makes several mistakes in his review, attributing, for example, classical behaviourist beliefs to Skinner, whereas Skinner wrote about 'operant condition' which was a different beast altogether.
MacCorquodale, in a comprehensive review,notes, that Chomsky's review didn't receive a reply from Skinner or any other psychologist, not because they were 'defeated' but rather because "...Chomsky’s actual target is only about one-half Skinner, with the rest a mixture of odds and ends of other behaviourism and some other fancies of vague origin." Chomsky's review has also been criticised for misquoting Skinner and taking quotes out of context. Skinner himself said of the review:
let me tell you about Chomsky...I published Verbal Behaviour in 1957, in 1958 I received a 55 page type-written review by someone whom I had never heard of named Noam Chomsky. I read half a dozen pages, and saw that he had missed the point of my book and read no further. (see the second video 5:50)
Also interesting is that most of the other reviews of verbal behaviour at the timewere positive. This by itself doesn't mean Chomsky was wrong, but it might make us pause for thought.
And rather than 'forensic', Chomsky's review was just really really mean. MacCorquodale, described the review as "ungenerous to a fault; condescending, unforgiving, obtuse, and ill-humoured". I urge you to read a few pages and see what you think. I'm not one to be overly concerned with comments about the 'tone' of someone's argument, but Chomsky actually seems to be personally offended by Skinner's book. Skinner often commented that he couldn't understand why Chomsky seemed so angry. A sample of the language can be seen in Virues-Ortega 2006's review:
“perfectly useless,” “tautology,” “vacuous,” “looseness of the term,” “entirely pointless,” “empty,” “no explanatory force,” “paraphrase,” “serious delusion,” “full vagueness,” “no conceivable interest,” “quite empty,” “notion,” “no clear content,” “cover term,” “pointless,” “quite false,” “said nothing of any significance,” “play-acting at science” (from Chomsky, 1959, pp. 36–39)
The tone isn't so much the problem as the chilling effect this kind of academic writing can have on others. When a writer's work is discussed in such a dismissive tone it can give the impression to the uninitiated that the matter is settled, -which in this case, was very far from the truth.
2. Skinner's Behaviourism led to Audiolingualism
This is a tricky fish to fry. In order to answer this you need to be able to authoritatively identify Skinner's behaviourism, Audiolingualism and then the link between them. First we should examine the timeline. Skinner was born in 1905 and published Verbal Behaviour in 1957. Chomsky's review came out in 1959. The first mentions of the audiolingual approach were in the mid 1950s. But it starts to really get mentioned in the early 1960s. This would mean that ALM became popular AFTER Chomsky's review.
Another problem is that there seems to be a lot of confusion about what the audiolingual method actually was. When reading Lado's 1964 book entitled 'language teaching: a scientific approach', ALM is describe simply as the approach where (in contrast to grammar translation) speaking and listening are taught first. Yet others, like Cummins and Davidson conflate the audiolingual approach and the 'scientific approach'.
things get more confusing as many others like Hall (here) and Lacortesuggest that ALM was synonymous with or grew from 'the army method' in 1945 (certainly before both Verbal Behaviour and Chomsky's review). While Coady and Huckin suggest that ALM is also known as 'the structural approach' by those who created it. They pin this honour on Fries in 1945. And Harmer, suggests it came from the Direct Method (p.64) There are also mentions of contrastive analysis being an important component by someauthors while not being mentioned at all by others.
As Peter Castagnaro* notes neither Brookes, Fries or Lado (three names often associated with ALM) make much mention of Skinner at all in any of their books. True they use language associated with stimulus and response, -but why could this not be inspired by Pavlov, rather than Skinner? (Harmer does link to earlier behaviourists Watson and Raynor). The only person who actually draws a direct link between Skinner and ALM was a critic of ALM, Wilga Rivers in "the psychologist and the foreign language teacher" and Castagnaro believes that Rivers' book is the cause of much misunderstanding, noting that it was Rivers who "saddled Skinner with being
ALM’s theoretical parent"(523).
So, if we believe the literature on ALM the approach came from the Army Method, the Structural Approach, Contrastive Analysis or the Direct Method and was big in the 40s-50s (lightbown and Spada), or the 50s-60s (Richards & Rogers, Thornbury). It may or may not have been based on a book written in 1957 and then undone by a review written in 1959...even though, according to Richards and Rogers, the term Audiolingualism wasn't invented until 1964 -that's five years after Chomsky's review. Am I the only one feeling confused?
*More than anyone else Peter Castagnaro (thanks to Harmer for this link) has attempted to unweave the knotted misunderstandings surrounding ALM. I would direct anyone to read his article for a much more concise examination of this topic.
3. Chomsky's review lead to the death of Audiolingualism
In his ELTJ review of reviews, Alan Maley describes Chomsky's review as 'destructive' and one that 'changed the course of events'. Now while it is undeniable that Chomsky's review was influential and made his name, did Chomsky kill off Audiolingualism?
After reading the previous section it becomes clear that this is unlikely. Not only does the timeline not work, but simply put methods and approaches are fashions and as such aren't killed off by logic of any kind. If methods are killed off, who killed off the silent way and suggestopedia?
Almost certainly ALM just withered on the vine. In education, as Swan among others has noted, fashions rule and these fashions are often polar opposites. With Grammar translation reading and writing was paramount. Next came methods that banned reading and writing and translation of any kind. That an approach where people mechanically practiced artificial sentences while worrying greatly about making mistakes should be replaced by an approach which allowed free 'authentic' conversation with little care for errors, should surprise no one at all. It's also difficult to properly perform an autopsy on the undead. As authors, like Scrivener note, many of the the techniques of 'ALM' "continue to have a strong influence over many classrooms"(38).
4. Chomsky's review led to the death of Behaviorism
Again, not true, Behaviorism carried on and continues to this day( see here, here and here). Skinners' book still sells well (better actually than Chomsky's response) and Skinner is considered one of the most important figures in psychology.
Behaviorism is successful, despite the image problem, precisely because it works. It works in treating autistic children and if you've ever had any kind of therapy, it's likely it was CBT (cognitive behavioral therapy) which is another.
5. Chomsky's new linguistic paradigm is accepted by most linguists today
Absolutely not. Chomsky ideas are accepted by few. The idea of Universal Grammar has been shown to be a myth, the Poverty of Stimulus argument has been rejected, and could only apply to syntax anyway. Vocabulary development in children has clearly been shown to be entirely affected by 'stimulus'. the generative grammar paradigm he created has been rewritten several times by the Chomsky himself in a failed attempt to salvage it. A recent scathing review by Behme describes Chomsky as not seriously engaging with criticism, misrepresenting the work of others and providing little or no evidence for his claims. She highlights, as many others have, his tendency to "[ridicule] the works of others". These claims are not surprising since they are pretty much the same claims made about his attack on Skinner 50 years earlier. Behme also lists Chomsky's other tactics, such as claiming his opponents are 'irrational' or have mental issues. This may seem shocking until we read papers by his former studentPaul Postals who writes “After many years, I came to the conclusion that everything he says is false. He will lie just for the fun of it...It was like playing chess with extra pieces. It was all fake.” Postal also suggests Chomsky has written "the most irresponsible passage ever written by a linguist in the entire history of linguistics". An interesting note for all your corpus fans out there is that Chomsky has been a consistent critic of Corpus Linguistics considering them pointless and the data worthless. Rather, he suggests, Native Speakers should just sit around and think up examples:
“Chomsky: the verb 'perform' cannot be used with mass word objects: one can perform a task, but one cannot perform a labour.
Hatcher: How do you know, if you don’t use a corpus and have not studied the verb perform?
Chomsky: How do I know? Because I am a native speaker of the English language. (source)
One can 'perform magic', of course. This extract I think sums up Chomsky perfectly; unassailable arrogance.
Reality is not the neat history presented in so many EFL histories. In truth, almost every chain in the link is broken. Skinner wasn't the behaviorist he's painted as, he didn't inspire audiolingualism -whatever that is, and he wasn't overthrown by Chomsky, who isn't quite the 'hero' we might imagine. We should not be surprised that the facts about Skinner are often wrong in ELT as he is often misunderstood by psychologists too. As Hunter and Smith note ELT tend to package complex history into convenient bundles. This packaging may make digestion easier but it often involves cutting the corners off to make things fit. Sometimes the facts are fudged to give us a pleasing narrative where 'traditional' (read: dull and wrong) methods are superseded by all the great stuff we're doing these days. It's a nice story to tell ourselves but reality is more messy.
While listening to the TEFLology Podcast I happened to hear a discussion on authenticity with guest Richard Pinner. I don't know Richard but I liked what he had to say. I asked him if he'd consider doing a guest post and he agreed! The result is the rather excellent post below. :)
Introduction
At the end of 2014, I was lucky enough to be invited on tothe TEFLology Podcast to discuss authenticity. The reason I was asked is that I am doing a PhD in which I am (attempting) to
look at the connection between authenticity and motivation. I am also currently
working on a book about authenticity which will be available next year (all
being well).
Authenticity in language teaching is a thorny issue, and
especially in English language teaching because of the nature of English’s use
worldwide as an international language, with many diverse varieties. What do
you understand by the term authenticity? For most language teachers, the word authentic is part of our daily
vocabulary. It is stamped onto the backs of textbooks, it is mentioned when
describing a particularly motivating task, and it is often used alongside other
words like motivation and interest. So, just what do we talk about when we talk
about authenticity?
Shadow-boxing with the definition
In his now famous article, Michael Breen (1985)
identified that language teachers are ‘continually concerned with four types of
authenticity’, which he summarise as:
1.Authenticity of the texts which we may use as
input data for our learners.
2.Authenticity of the learners' own
interpretations of such texts.
3.Authenticity of tasks conducive to language
learning.
4.Authenticity of the actual social situation of
the language classroom.
Following Breen, I created a visualisation of the domains of
authenticity, mainly just because I like diagrams.
Figure 1: The
domains of authenticity
This is basically what Breen was talking about, and as one
can see there is a lot of overlap and yet authenticity can relate to four very
different aspects of the work we do in the language classroom. What is
fundamentally important here, is that a teacher could bring in an example of a
so-called ‘authentic’ text and use it in a way which is not authentic. For
example, a teacher could bring an English language newspaper to class and tell
her students read the text and underline every instance of the present perfect
aspect or passive tense, then get them to copy each sentence out into their
notebooks. Is this authentic? Although for many people the newspaper is a
classic example of an authentic text, what is happening in this class is
anything but authentic language learning.
Authentic materials are often defined as something not
specifically designed for language learning, or “language where no concessions
are made to foreign speakers” (Harmer, 2008, p. 273). In the Longman Dictionary of
Applied Linguistics, the definition of authenticity is covered in a short
entry, and boils down to materials “not originally developed for pedagogical
purposes” (Richards & Schmidt, 2013, p. 43). Are there any problems with
this definition? When I speak with other teachers, this is generally the
definition they come up with, unless we are in the midst of a particularly
philosophical discussion, which, don’t worry, I will come to shortly.
Henry Widdowson is one of the biggest names associated with
the authenticity debate, and I had the honour of meeting him in Tokyo last year
in November 2014. Widdowson made the famous distinction between materials which
are authentic and materials which are
genuine(1978).
Basically, genuineness relates to an absolute property of the text, in other
words realia or some product of the target language community like a train timetable
or the aforementioned ‘classic’ newspaper. Authenticity, however, is relative
to the way the learners engage with the material and their relationship to it. Hung and Victor Chen (2007, p. 149) have also discussed this,
problematizing the act of taking something out of one context and bringing it
into another (the classroom) expecting its function and authenticity to remain
the same. They call this extrapolation
techniques, which they criticise heavily for missing the wood for the
trees. In other words, simply taking a newspaper out of an English speaking
context quite often means you leave the real reason for interacting with it
behind, which seriously impairs its authenticity. Another very big problem with
this definition is that it seems to advocate the dreaded ‘native speaker’ idea,
which as we all know is an emotive argument that has been discussed widely in
recent years, particularly with the rise of English as a Lingua Franca and
Global English. When Widdowson made his
arguments it was during the rise of Communicative Language Teaching (CLT), and
as part of this methodology there was an explosion in the debate around
authenticity. In particular, people writing about authenticity wanted to
distance the concept from the evil ‘native speaker’ definition. But what about
learning aims? What about the student’s needs? How was the debate made relevant
to the actual practice of teaching?
In his famous and fascinating paper, Suresh Canagarajah (1993) discusses the way students in Sri Lanka were not
only ambiguous towards, but at times detached from the content of their
prescribed textbooks, based on American
Kernel Lessons. The students had trouble connecting the reality presented
in the textbooks with their own reality, which was markedly different to say
the least. Canagarajah notes that some students’ textbooks contained vulgar
doodles, which he thought could perhaps have been “aimed at insulting the
English instructors, or the publishers of the textbook, or the U.S. characters
represented” (1993, p. 614).
This connects strongly with WhatLeo van Lier (1996) calls authentication;
the idea that learners have to make the materials authentic by engaging with it
in some way on an individual level. Van Lier’s reasoning is that something
can’t be authentic for everyone at the same time, but the important thing is to
try and get that balance.
As I think this article has already shown, the concept of
authenticity is not easy to define. Alex Gilmore, in his State-of-the-Art paper identified as many as eight inter-related
definitions, which were:
I.the language produced by native speakers for
native speakers in a particular language community
II.the language produced by a real speaker/writer
for a real audience, conveying a real message (as in, not contrived but having
a genuine purpose, following Morrow, 1977)
III.the qualities bestowed on a text by the
receiver, in that it is not seen as something already in a text itself, but is
how the reader/listener perceives it)
IV.the interaction between students and teachers
and is a “personal process of engagement” (van Lier, 1996, p. 128)
V.the types of task chosen
VI.the social situation of the classroom
VII.authenticity as it relates to assessment and the
Target Language Use Domain (Bachman & Palmer, 1996)
VIII.culture, and the ability to behave or think like
a target language group in order to be validated by them
In order to simplify these definitions I have developed a diagram
to show how they overlap and contradict each other. I will use this diagram
later as the basis for a continuum of authenticity in language learning.
Figure 2: Summary of
Gilmore's Eight inter-related definitions of authenticity
Another way of thinking about authenticity is from a wider
perspective, something that encompasses not only the materials being used and
the tasks set to engage with them, but also the people in the classroom and the
social context of the target language. To better illustrate this, I proposed
that authenticity be seen as something like a continuum, with both social and
contextual axes (Pinner, 2014b).
The vertical axis represents relevance to the user of the
language or the individual, which in most cases will be the learner although it
could also be the teacher when selecting materials. The horizontal lines
represent the context in which the language is used. Using this continuum,
materials, tasks and language in use can be evaluated according to relevance
and context without the danger of relying on a pre-defined notion of culture or
falling back into “extrapolation approaches”.
As you can see, although the word Authenticity is used all the time in staff rooms and to sell
textbooks, if we actually drill down into it we get into very boggy ground.
Dogme ELT and Authenticity (and motivation)
Most readers will probably be familiar with the idea of
Dogme ELT, which basically tries to get away from “the prevailing culture of
mass-produced, shrink-wrapped lessons, delivered in an anodyne in-flight
magazine style” (Meddings & Thornbury, 2003). This movement in ELT has
strong connotations for authentic language teaching and also provides a very
real connection between authenticity and motivation.
In essence, the Dogme approach places a premium on
conversational interaction among teacher and learners where communication is
authentic and learner-driven rather than pedagogically contrived and controlled
by the teacher. Choice of learning content and materials is thus shaped by
students’ own preferred interests and agendas, and language development emerges
through the scaffolded dialogic interactions among learners and the teacher.
Relevant to our concerns here is the value Dogme places on students’ own voices
and identities in these conversational interactions. (Ushioda 2011, p. 205)
In essence, Ushioda is noting that Dogme is both authentic
and potentially motivating because it places the emphasis on the learners as
people.
If we take a moment to see where we are with the issue of
authenticity, we will realise that the definition of authenticity, although a
tangle of concepts and resistant to a single definition, what it seems to be
pushing at is essentially something very practical. If something is going to be
authentic, it needs to be relevant to
the learners and it needs to be able to help them speak in real (as in not contrived) situations. In other words, when they
step out of the classroom, what they did in the classroom should have prepared
them to speak and understand the target language. In order to achieve this,
what they do in the classroom has to be as authentic
as possible, and by implication it needs to be engaging. Essentially, authentic
materials should be motivating materials.
Why should we care about any of this though, can’t we just get on with it?
I would like to bring this long discussion back to the
practical realm by sharing an example from my own teaching. One very successful
example of an authentic task comes from a class I taught in a Japanese
University in 2011. The class was entitled Discussions
on Contemporary Topics which meant I could teach more or less anything. The
students expected “just another course about news and current affairs” but what
we ended up doing was trying to make the world a slightly better place. The
final assessment was a group video project and this is what one group produced
for their final piece.
It is obvious from watching this video that what the
students did here was highly authentic, in that it was personal and achieved
something real. This was all their own idea as well, I just told them to make a
video and offered suggestions here and there.
Authenticity is a good thing. It
sounds like a good thing and by association, anything labelled as inauthentic
must be bad. However, I think that the word authenticity is complicit with many
of the problems in English language teaching. Authenticity is still too often
defined in a way which, either directly or indirectly, infers the privilege of
the native speaker (Pinner, 2014a, 2014b). However, if we can get away
from that, authenticity can be a powerful concept to empower both learners and
teachers, because authenticity connects the individual learner to the content
used for learning.
So, in summary ‘keep it real’.
References
Bachman, L.
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