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1.- THE
PLACE OF AUTHENTIC MATERIALS IN LANGUAGE TEACHING:
A HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE
We are proud to publish this article that a distinguished Colombian
colleage has sent us all:
The Place of Authentic Materials in Language Teaching:
A Historical Perspective
Edgar Alirio Insuasty
Universidad Surcolombiana
Neiva, Colombia
The use of authentic materials in language teaching has strongly been
associated with the advent of the so called Communicative Approach or
Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) in the 1970s. So it is shown in an
overview of approaches and methods made by Nunan (qtd. in Brown 71), adapted by
Brown (71) and reproduced by González (103). Larsen Freeman (132) says that
adherents to CLT advocate the use of language materials authentic to native
speakers of the target language. However, search for authenticity in
language learning can neither be seen as recent as one could imagine today,
nor can it be exclusively associated with CLT. In order to support these claims, this
brief literature-review paper is, therefore, intended to unearth the historical
background of authentic materials in language teaching.
Several precedents of authenticity in language learning can be traced
and dated back to long before the twentieth century. Mishan contends that much
of the early language learning and teaching in colonial contexts may be said to
have been authentic in spirit, in that the language was usually acquired in
non-classroom situations and without specially prepared language materials, via
direct contact with native speakers (18).The historical explanation for this is
the encounter of civilizations out of the different invasions like Persian
invasion of Greece, Macedonian conquest of the Persian Empire, Roman invasion
of Britain, among many others. It was precisely in the context of the Roman
conquest of Macedonia and Greece, that the Greek language was commonly adopted
by Roman society and education. Musumeci said that:
“By the beginning of the 3rd century B.C., Greek was the
language of prestige and culture among educated and upper-social class Romans,
existing alongside Latin in a bilingual society” (627)
Quintilian, a well-known
and influential educator in Rome, recommended that children learn Greek first
and Latin second, as the latter would be learned in the context of daily life.
He claimed that learning derives from instruction; therefore, children should
be exposed only to excellent and accurate models of language use through
their caregivers and the texts they read. (Howatt 628).
By the Medieval times, it was through Latin that Christianity was
spread. This language was taught by means of the “scholastic method” which
consisted of breaking down words into their constituent parts. The alphabet had
to be learnt prior to reading and memorizing sections of the so called
“primers”. The materials used at this time were authentic texts like basic
prayer books and scripture passages ( Mishan 19: Musumeci 629). Agustine, a
Church father, claimed that language developed out of a need to communicate and
that he learned his native language by associating sounds and gestures with
objects (Howatt 630).
In the 9th-century England, Latin was the international
(European ) language of communication. According to Pugh (qtd. in Mishan 163)
an authentic material approach is said to have been used to spread Latin by
means of the translation of books into the vernaculars Old English and
Anglo-Saxon. Some of those translations have been attributed to King Alfred
himself.
A more liberal implementation of authentic texts in language learning
was proposed by Roger Ascham in the mid-16th century (Mishan 19). He
developed a “double translation” method, i.e., the target language text was rendered into the mother
tongue and then it was re-translated into the target language. Ascham used
simple but authentic texts in this rendering process. For Latin teaching
purposes, he used texts by Cicero by means of an “inductive approach”, whereby
readers infer grammar rules out of the texts.
In reaction to the rote-learning which pervaded the learning of Latin
and Greek during the 16th century, Comenius (qtd. in Misham 21)
advocated an “intuitive approach”, based on sensory experience, to language
learning. He said that every language must be learned by practice rather than
by rules, especially by reading, repeating, copying, and by written and oral
attempt at imitation.
Henry Sweet also used an
“inductive approach” as a basis to put forward a theory of language pedagogy in
1899 (Mishan 19). In his theory, he favored language study by means of
connected texts, rather than detached sentences. Sweet advocated that those
connected texts made the best context in order for learners to establish and
strengthen the correct associations between words, their contexts and meanings.
According to Mishan (19), the arguments
that Sweet made for the use of authentic texts at that time have been
recaptured in modern teaching practices. This is what Sweet then claimed:
“If we try to make our texts embody certain definite grammatical
categories, the texts cease to be natural: they become either trivial, tedious
and long-winded, or else they become more or less monstrosities” (qtd. in
Mishan 19).
The 20th century was dominated by materials-focused
approaches albeit embodying many different theories of language acquisition
(Mishan: 20). Teaching methods like the Oral Method, the Situational Approach,
the Direct Method and the Audiolingual Method relied on carefully structured
materials. According to Howatt, these methods developed a “cult of materials”
(26), that is, the authority of the teaching approach resided in the material
themselves. Since then, most of the language teachers have been subservient to
textbooks as the only source of teaching ideas. Even though the materials used
in these teaching methods were not claimed to be authentic, they served the
purpose of developing a continuum from form-based approaches to meaning-based
approaches in language teaching.
In the second half of the 20th-century, a group of humanistic
approaches to language teaching emerged in reaction to the conventional
mechanistic teaching methods (Mishan 21). Suggestopedia, Total Physical
Response, The Silent Way and Neuro-Linguistic Programming all exploited the
whole sensory repertoire of the brain during the language learning experience,
instead of getting stuck to the cognitive learning operations. They used the
learner’s “whole brain” (left and right hemispheres) as a realistic and authentic interaction with
input (Mishan 21).
Voice of language teaching tradition still echoes in contemporary
practice (Musumeci 634). Whereas Latin learning was encouraged for
evangelization purposes (globalization of Christianity) in the Medieval Age and
authentic materials like prayers and scripture passages were then used to the
effect, English is being likewise spread in the 21st century as the
language of another sense of globalization, one having to do with international
economic and cultural cooperation or competition. However, today’s language
learning authenticity is shaped by what is currently at stake in the field,
namely, the growing influence of information and communication technologies
(ICTs) (Mishan 25), Whole Language, content-based instruction (Richards &
Rodgers 215), task-based language teaching (Richards & Rodgers 237).
The Whole Language Approach has as one of its major principles the use
of authentic literature rather than artificial, specially prepared texts and
exercises designed to practice individual reading skills (Richards &
Rodgers 110). Whole Language Proposals are seen as anti-direct teaching,
anti-skills, and anti-materials, assuming that authentic texts are sufficient
to support second language learning (Aaron: 127).
Richards & Rodgers contend that Content-Based Instruction (CBI) uses
authentic texts as way to address students’ needs (210). It is through written
and/or spoken texts students can encounter in the real world that a relevant
syllabus can be developed. Real world in this case embraces not only social
life but also academic life. In the latter case, CBI favors cross-curricular
connections between English and other subject matter like social studies,
science, math, or so. Authenticity in this type of instruction arises from the
subject matter texts which are like the ones used in native language
instruction and the way of accordingly approaching them.
Task-Based Language Teaching (TBLT) proponents also favor the use of
authentic tasks supported by authentic materials (Richards & Rodgers 237).
These materials come from different sources like newspapers, television and
internet. The new ICTs are contributing a good stock of authentic materials for
language teaching. But the authentic input on its own cannot generate authentic
interaction and authentic language learning, unless authentic tasks are
strategically designed to exploit the authentic text. By authentic task is
meant the sort of things people usually do with the authentic material. For
example, newspapers in everyday life are read with different purposes:
information, entertainment, etc. Therefore, it would be quite inauthentic to
come with English newspapers to the class just to practice some lexical or
structural issues.
Underlying the latest approaches to language learning there is a new
linguistic assumption, the interactional view of language, which adds weight to
authenticity in contemporary language learning. Unlike the structural and
functional views of language, “the interactional view” sees language as a
vehicle for the realization of interpersonal relations and for the performance
of social transactions between individuals” (Richards & Rodgers: 21). In
this respect, Wilga Rivers suggested that students achieve facility in using
a language when their attention is focused on conveying and receiving
authentic messages (4); that is, relevant and appealing information for both
the speaker and the listener.
To sum up, what the different episodes mentioned throughout this paper
reveal is that both authenticity and communicativeness have always been
underway in language teaching
history. Therefore, these two tenets of human language learning cannot
be claimed as the exclusivity of any particular teaching method, regardless of
how contemporary or communicational it claims to be. However, the crucial difference between the
conventional authenticity and today’s authenticity in language teaching seems
to lie not in the authentic text itself, but in the authentic task that is
carried out with that type of text.
Works cited
Aaron, P. “Is there a hole in Whole language?” Contemporary Education
62 (1991): 167.
Brown, Douglas. Teaching by Principles. New Jersey: Prentice Hall
Regents, 1994.
Gilmore, Alex. “The Times They are a-Changin’ : Strategies for
exploiting authentic
materials in the language classroom.” E mail to the author. 28 May 2008
Gilmore, Alex. “Authentic Materials and Authenticity in Language
Learning”. E-mail to the
author. 29 May 2008.
González, Adriana. “On Material Use Training in EFL Teacher Education:
Some
Reflections.” Profile 7 (2006): 101-115.
Howatt, A. P. R. Language Teaching: History. Edinburg: Elsevier,
2006.
Larsen-Freeman Diane. Techniques and principles in language teaching.
Oxford University
Press, 2000.
Mishan, Freda. Designing Authenticity into Language Learning
Materials. Great Britain:
Intellect Books, 2004.
Musumeci, D. Language Teaching Traditions: Second Language.
Champaign: University of
Illinois at Urbana Champaign, 2006
Richards, Jack & Theodore, Rodgers. Approaches and Methods in
Language Teaching. New
York: Cambridge University Press, 2004.
Rivers, W. M. (ed.). 1987. Interactive Language Teaching. Cambridge
University Press.
(c) 2008 by Edgar Alirio Insuasty