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Date
2017
Abstract
As language use today moves increasingly into digital fora - social media, social networking and so on, accompanied by an internationalisation of English, the language most associated with the Internet, the concept of 'authenticity' becomes ever more evasive. In this chapter, it will be suggested that one route for achieving authenticity in today’s language learning environment can be found, ironically perhaps, in the work of pre-digital theorists such as Van Lier (e.g. 1996). Van Lier maintained that authenticity was not intrinsic to learning materials themselves but was a factor of the learners' engagement with them and of the tasks enacted with them. In this chapter, I will demonstrate that this conception of authenticity is a perfect fit for the digital era, where more and more of the language use is in interaction on a plethora of different media and applications. I will argue therefore that it is to interaction – and its pedagogical realization ‘task’ - that we turn, for our 'authenticity 2.0'.
Supervisor
Description
peer-reviewed
Publisher
Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Citation
Authenticity in Materials Development for Language Learning, Alan Maley, Brian Tomlinson (eds);chapter 1