On two ways of looking at ‘authenticity’. I imagine most teachers go with the first. - ThreadSky

spsmith45.bsky.social • 3 days ago

On two ways of looking at ‘authenticity’. I imagine most teachers go with the first.

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I find the for native/by native definition of authentic problematic for a few reasons. Instead, I think Florencia Henshaw and @marishawkins.bsky.social (2022, p. 72) provided the most succinct approach re: authenticity: “Any types of materials … that
have not been created for a
language learner.”

spsmith45.bsky.social•3 days ago

Which could also said to be problematic! Tricky one. I’ll try to find something from Henry Widdowson who wrote about this.

spsmith45.bsky.social•3 days ago

Widdowson gets a mention in this paper where different definitions if authenticity are given https://www.tesl-ej.org/ej02/a.1.html

spsmith45.bsky.social•3 days ago

A tutor of mine thought the idea of plausibility was more useful than authenticity. I also like teachability and prefer it to authenticity. What can you DO with a text?

spsmith45.bsky.social•3 days ago

Authenticity in the sense ‘by native speakers for native speakers’ was a big thing in the UK in the 1980s. Not talked about much these days.

theniceman.bsky.social•3 days ago

And yet, the high frequency vocab approach should be well suited to it!

theniceman.bsky.social•3 days ago

It depends if it's L/R or Sp/Er.

For L/R it's understood to mean material not made for learners but for native speakers.

For Sp/Wr ("You are writing to a penfriend") it means imaginary/fake.

Which is an odd twist to the word "authentic".

madamednmichael.bsky.social•3 days ago

I had a significant disagreement with a known figure in current US proficiency assessment about the "native for natives only" as it relates to the Integrated Performance Assessment model here in the US. I like the second definition and find it more workable for my classroom & students.

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