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Authentic Texts – Oui ou Non?
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27 thoughts on “Authentic Texts – Oui ou Non?”
Alisa sent me the following in response to the above:
What to make of this?
I say it’s absolutely untrue. Authentic text for young beginner learners is WAY. TOO. HARD.
I guess I just disagree with the research and that’s that! I also have to read that 7th source that he cited….
The very hungry caterpillar in Spanish has a pretty complex phrase in Spanish for “but he was still hungry”. I taught it for years and NEVER saw my students able to break it apart and use anything. If I were to wait until they were developmentally ready for that complex language, they’d age out of the appropriateness – after all it’s a book for pre-schoolers!
Should I bother even asking Paul if the study includes YOUNG beginner learners? Like the kind who aren’t even solid on decoding in L1? Ugh, I don’t care. I’ve got bigger fish to fry…
The thing is that this group of people, those researchers up there, are imposters. They are trying to take what cannot be measured and measure it. They have no place in our position, and yet they are perpetuating a kind of criminal smoke and mirrors game that PhDs have put on us regular people for decades and decades.
When Alisa dug deeper, she found this by Dolly Young, one of the imposters:
Abstract
Linguistic simplification of authentic texts is a common practice in second language (SL) reading material but research results on whether it actually increases comprehension are inconsistent. This study examined the types of simplifications made to 4 authentic texts and investigated whether there were differences in recall scores based on whether students read simplified or authentic versions. Four different recall scoring methods were used to assess reading comprehension. Findings indicated that a high percentage of the modifications made were lexical in nature and that recall scores for the simplified texts were not superior to the authentic ones. Moreover, 1 scoring method in particular, scoring based on the number and weight of misunderstandings, led to significant insights into the relationship between text processing and reading comprehension.
I think Paul’s point is valid. BUT it depends on your goals. I think that if your goal is to decode a text to find out when a bus is leaving or is arriving, or if your goal is to look at something like a menu with a ton of extralingual support and ask students to figure out what ‘pollo’ means then using a text like that is totally valid. If your goal is to familiarize students with realia from a country that they are about to visit, then authentic texts are valid, but only if it matches the goals you have for your students and your classes. These are not my goals. My goals for my classes, my kids, and for me is AUTHENTIC language interaction. I believe that by pushing authentic texts especially on beginners does not honor the AUTHENTIC CONTEXT of the classroom. It sends the message that we are not real. I am proud of you for finding the right answer, but remember that you don’t speak the language yet. THIS IS ALL FAKE. Also, if we support SLA research in general then we know that Second language Acquisition is fundamentally similar to First Language Acquisition, and therefore must at least try to mirror the language instruction we give small children. I believe we must be language parents.
See:
http://www.ijflt.org/images/ijflt/articles-june-2012/krashen.pdf
I believe that it would be INAUTHENTIC to have a small child try to decode a text. I don’t read Shakespeare to my three year old son. We read LEVEL APPROPRIATE texts that are interesting to him and comprehensible. I think we need to honor our students and meet them where they are on their language journey.
Again for advanced learners and for people about to visit a country, using authentic texts can be most beneficial, but again it depends on your goals.
I nominate Russ Albright to replace Sandrock at ACTFL. Of course, being a classroom teacher who gets it, he would probably turn the job down. Love the term “language parent”. That says it all.
We create an “authentic context in the classroom.” Well put, Russ.
Thanks guys! I appreciate that, but I just don’t get why people hold on to these ideas. I do feel like there may some ulterior motive ($$$ perhaps). I understand why we have become entrenched with Grammar instruction but I can’t for the life of me figure out why people think authentic texts are so wonderful. I really think that authentic texts are amazing if treated the way Beniko Mason treats them. She tells comprehensible authentic stories and then she helps students scaffold their reading so that they can self-select one day authentic books in the TL. I think we need to move beyond the bus schedules and get kids to be reading authentic texts when they have worked up to them. Authentic texts are the goal, not a means to language learning. This is like having the OUTPUT debate. Can we not just see that reading an authentic text is the byproduct of language acquisition?
I did an advanced degree at the University of Rochester. Lots of reading of authentic texts – that’s all we did since it was a program in French Literature. We discussed the texts in English. That is because most of the students were American, and so I wasn’t the only graduate student in there who didn’t speak French very well, certainly not well enough to discuss French Literature in French. We were all four percenters in there, trying to hide how little French we knew, and it was so nice of the university to conduct the classes in English. Guess what? I couldn’t read the subject matter either. I wanted to, but I couldn’t, not really. Not really at all! My seven years of high school and undergraduate study of French were not enough to teach me how to read authentic texts. Or bus schedules, for that matter. Maybe that’s why I failed my PhD orals the first time. Hmmm. I always thought it was because I wasn’t as smart as all the white Paul Sandrock type dudes in that department, with all that inaccessible (to me) language that they wore like a nice warm coat to go with their pipes in those three hour seminars on Diderot and d’Aubigné, seminars in which I sat, mystified but fascinated.
How much we learn from reflecting on our paths to our current level of proficiency. The following is not relevant to authentic resources. But at the core it is the same predicament because the traditional first step to the authentic (literary) texts is the grammar-based syllabus.
In a recent department meeting it was reiterated that we should be following the grammar-based curriculum. It was an opportune time to point out something to my colleagues.
We are trying to teach our students in a way that never worked for us. Not a one of us learned our languages by the grammar syllabus. It did not work for each of you and it did not work for me. We each went to Spain, Mexico, Middlebury, came to America. We all got into some type of language experience. If grammar-based did not work for us why are we imposing it on our students?
Alisa and I had this conversation about the above text:
Alisa: I tried to read the last reference in Paul Sandrock’s citation list, just to feel prepared. All I can get for free is this utterly unconvincing abstract. The claim seems to be that once you get below 98% comprehensibility, you really compromise comprehension.
Ben: Yeah, but they define comprehension in terms of what they can measure, of what has been pulled into the realm of what can be measured. That is off the mark. What has been actually acquired in the deeper/unconscious mind and even in the body cannot be measured. Measuring language acquisition is just not something that we can do scientifically. The process does not occur in an area of the brain that can be measured. If Paul and his colleagues there at ACTFL had to really grasp the depth and complexity of the acquisition process, their minds would explode.
Alisa: The samples were interesting – showing passages with 1, then 2 then 3 key nonsense words, rendering the meaning unintelligible.
Ben: This is such a sad attempt to bring the deeper mind’s vastness into the measurable. It’s like herding wild horses into a corral. They can do it, but it’s stupid. What can we conclude about wild horses when they are in a corral? What can we learn about their habits, how they run, how the feel when they are free, etc.?
Alisa: These folks in the articles cited are testing it with a math model – sorry to be a bumpkin but if the words are too hard, you’re not ready to read it.
Ben: You know better than they. What can they know about our work in classrooms with real kids. They couldn’t do one day in our classrooms and that is why they are publishing obtuse stuff using words that are only intelligible to robots. They have done this for over a century now, in the now fading Age of Robots.
Alisa: So let’s have the teacher explain it [to the kids] in easier words. How’s that for MY scientific method?
Ben: Paul and his buddies are soon to be outed. They can only hide behind obtuse language for so long. It’s over for them. Paul Sandrock struck out badly a few years ago when some of us here like Jim Tripp and Eric Herman got in his face and he and his ACTFL folks took a thrashing.
In fact, research has revealed that learners demonstrate a higher level of comprehension of texts read in their unedited, authentic forms as opposed to more simplified versions created by the teacher to ostensibly simplify the task (Vigil, 1987; Young, 1993, 1999)
This kind throws out the idea that easy reading (i.e., familiarity with 98-100% of language structures) best optimizes acquisition.
Also, Mr. Sandrock cites some old references. One from 2016 and the rest 20 years old.
“Alisa: The samples were interesting – showing passages with 1, then 2 then 3 key nonsense words, rendering the meaning unintelligible.”
In the interest of clarity: Ben and I did have a slight miscommunication amid my frenzied emails. Sometimes this stuff really gets my goat, other times I can skim it and just scratch my head…
I was referring above to that wonderful illustration/write-up (forgot who it was by – I think Lance knows) where they offer a passage, and then in subsequent paragraphs, introduce 1 then 2 then 3 key but unintelligible words, to illustrate the importance of near 100% comprehensibility. You can’t figure out the meaning without those key words….
It befuddles me to think that important people in high places would defend reading above comprehension level in a foreign language. What is up with that?
Alisa said:
…it befuddles me to think that important people in high places would defend reading above comprehension level in a foreign language….
It’s what they do. It’s what they’ve been doing. I did it as an AP teacher for decades. But no more. We have learned, it took me almost forty years, to learn to like, to embrace, reading “down”, so much so that now I advocate no novels (they only read their own stories) in level 1 and the level 1 novels being introduced along with the level 2 novels in level 2. This has the effect of actually making it possible, as Susan Gross has said, to have the reading become “like a movie” in their minds.
But Paul S. and his people think that since it’s a course of study in schools it has to be harder, challenging, etc. We’ve been down this road so many times….
Go to community.actfl.org for the full discussion to date (click on Improving ACTFL). Eric Herman got the discussion started.
The value of authentic resources for language acquisition was questioned at ACTFL here and there, and followed up with applause from the audience.
As Terry Waltz pointed out, the very definition (for native speakers) ought to give us a clue as to the appropriateness of authres for language acquistion.
Thank you for noting where to find this — I just ate my lunch and enjoyed reading through the conversation. I think it’s really fun to see people who aren’t (apparently) part of TPRS circles saying the same principles: comprehensible, interesting materials, no isolated pieces of language, no conversation rehearsing.
Thanks for the link, Nathaniel. I, too, enjoyed reading it.
Just a couple of notes on two of the people who posted:
Eckhard Kuhn-Osius is in the GermanTPRS Yahoo group – which is currently not very active, unfortunately – and has, over the years made numerous reasoned and beneficial contributions to discussions. I respect and appreciate his thoughtful responses.
I have communicated with Pamela Kaatz from time to time since before she retired 15 years ago. While I do not believe she fully embraces TPRS, she is definitely not a textbook person. One set of her materials that I have up in my classroom is her “Verb Wall”. It is an easy visual reference for when students are editing something and want to check a verb ending. Usually I will give a short explanation of it in year 2 or 3 and then point to it from time to time as a Monitor resource. Pam’s justification for it is that it’s sort of like a road map: when you’re new to a city, you consult the road map a lot, but eventually you get to know your way around and don’t need the map as much, if at all. The problem, of course, is that it’s conscious learning, which is why I use it as an editing resource (thus making it peripheral and not central to what we do in class). Some students like it, some students ignore it, and some students eventually say, “Oh, so that’s what that’s all about!”
Other than “the usual suspects”, these are the only two in the conversation that I can provide more information on.
BTW, here are a couple of interesting quotes for Ben:
« Si l’on veut que l’élève commence à apprendre, il faut que le maître s’arrête d’enseigner »
R. Cousinet
« Seul le maître qui parce qu’il ignore, oblige l’autre à trouver par lui-même, est un maître émancipateur »
J. Jacotot
https://sites.google.com/site/institutjacotot/joseph-jacotot/trois-3-principes-fondateurs-pensee-pedagogie-jacotot
I’m going to order the book The Ignorant Schoolmaster by Jacques Rancière. The “ignorant schoolmaster” was Joseph Jacotot, who at one point in his life taught French to students in Belgium. He spoke no Flemish or Dutch, and they spoke no French. That experience and others gave rise to his three foundational principles of pedagogy:
1. The ignorant schoolmaster
2. The unique work
3. The equality of intelligences
It goes along with what I have been reading by Itay Talgam in The Ignorant Maestro: How Great Leaders Inspire Unpredictable Brilliance”.
I am now reading a book called The Way of the Peaceful Warrior and these quotes could have been lifted from that book. Thank you for sharing.
Thank you Robert. Those two quotes made me happier to read than if someone had pulled up in front of my house this morning with a delivery of a thousand flowers.
This is such a frustrating issue to me and it’s because of Chinese and the very different writing system. At the very best, only the very most determined & interested students of Chinese would only be able to pick a word or two out of a huge paragraph if they only saw authentic resources. Then what happens?
1 – The message “Chinese is impossible” is reinforced.
2 – Reading is not at all tied to their acquired, aural language. There is no flow when all you can do is pick out a word or two, like a search-a-word puzzle.
3 – Reading Chinese is entirely a memorization game. Little pieces (characters, one at a time, or words that are 2 or 3 characters, occasionally) are memorized in isolation and then found consciously, then decoded.
It is sooooo much better for beginners to read text that contains 100% familiar language with lots of interesting context. Then it’s about the message, it’s no longer about memorizing characters & analyzing text. It’s about getting into a story that makes sense that happens to be in Chinese. That should be common sense, and there will, I hope be research to support that it’s true. For Chinese I think there already is some tangential support from “regular” research but it’s a very new topic.
Occasionally my students see a webpage or we listen to a song, for fun, not caring much how much they understand. Then a few will notice some words they recognize, and they think it’s cool. But that isn’t reading. And, if that’s all they did for “reading”, that would be pretty awful.
…It is sooooo much better for beginners to read text that contains 100% familiar language …
Diane is this not the message to all Chinese teachers doing CI? Please elaborate.
I’ll try to elaborate without getting too far into my really big interest in making sure that Westerners who want to, can acquire Chinese enjoyably.
Some reading comprehension assessments I recently gave classes confirm for me that I must limit the amount of new language introduced at once in my classes, especially in reading, or they will not retain much (even if they understand a lot in the moment). I want them to have joyful reading experiences, and that takes some care.
I think in an alphabetic and/or phonetically written language, one can be looser with how much unknown language is put into reading. There are cognates and you can fudge with those. Chinese cannot be sounded out from its written form, but actually, even reading pinyin wouldn’t help people understand more, either — there are no cognates, and only a few loanwords. The pinyin wouldn’t help except that the person could then pronounce the word, but not understand it. (Actually with characters it’s more likely that one would understand the rough meaning of the word, but not be able to pronounce it. But all of that is an intermediate-level reading skill, not what beginners can do yet.)
Here’s where that 100% familiar language in reading looks for me right now:
If I want my students really to read confidently, the first semester or so of level one really needs 100% familiar language in what they read. There’s inevitably something that they’ve forgotten when they read, so they are still getting i+1 out of what’s intended to be an i-1 text. When that happens, though, they can look for the pinyin (if they’re reading a book designed to allow them to find pinyin when they need it) or they can ask a classmate or me to read the word out loud, and 95% of the time, that solves the comprehension problem.
Also: since I wrote the comment on Dec. 1 above, I have seen a paper including a number of big names within ACTFL and Chinese circles saying that beginning Chinese students need reading material adapted to their comprehension. It’s allowing reading other than “authentic resources.” I really need to read the whole thing, but Helena Curtain is the first name in the list of authors of the paper. There are a few research-i-er papers that are related to that topic. One is by a Chinese professor who came up with the same % to make text really comprehended by a reader: as in English, in Chinese 98% works well. That inevitably means she’s saying that learners of Chinese need to have modified texts (or very, very carefully found “authentic texts”) or they’ll sink. It gives support to Chinese for all that great info about free, voluntary reading that’s already out there.
Sorry if its been said before, i’ll add my two cents here. Authentic texts that are adapted down to the smallest form… a mini story can work with novices via story listening. I believe Dr. Mason said that students can start with 10 minutes then can start listening upwards to an hour as time goes on. So its not Authentic texts with a capital A but adapted text that are appropriate for the level.
…so its not Authentic texts with a capital A but adapted text that are appropriate for the level….
Yes this is what Alisa Shapiro has made clear in a number of comments here over the past year as we keep taking stabs at this authentic text discussion in order to try to properly understand our position on it. (We do need a position so that we can, by comparison, grok Paul Sandrock’s stance for what it is.)
(I would ask if Sandrock is even qualified in terms of the research to be ACTFL’s Director of Education. It’s kind of like how Stephen Krashen or Diane Ravitch should be the new Secretary of Education instead of the true bozo that was picked. I vote for Robert Harrell for ACTFL Director of Education.)
Sorry about the politics but that last confusing thing by PS is just sitting in my craw and Alisa’s position is the obvious and super simple way to frame the authentic text argument: “If they can’t read it why present it to them?”
The only thing, Steven, is that term adapted text, which is great, needs to carry inside it the implication that it is so easy for them to read that it is like English. Alisa’s idea is how I see the whole thing: KISS – Keep it simple, stupid.
I would love someone to define the term “authentic text” for me. And then talk about it in terms of what is best for kids, and forget all the rot like PS wrote the other day.
I would love someone to define the term “authentic text” for me.
So would I. Part of the problem is that so many people in influential positions accepted the original definition of “by native speakers for native speakers” without reflection. Now they are trying to “walk it back”. When I was at SWCOLT earlier this year, some were trying to change it to “members of a language community”. That’s harder to define (perhaps deliberately so) and therefore much more subjective. What makive es someone a “member of a language community”? Is a six month-old child a member of his native language community? When does a second-language learner become a member of a language community?
At ACTFL I heard some people trying to add “not intended for language teaching” to the definition. So, all of the simplified texts designed for native speakers are not authentic? Actually, I’m delighted for you to tell me that they are not, because now you have removed any argument against adapted texts in my instruction. And if you insist that they are authentic, then why are adapted texts intended to be read by second-language learners not also authentic? At least in my class, we read them for enjoyment, instruction, and greater exposure to the language. Isn’t that what adapted texts in the native language are for?
Furthermore, the word “authentic” means different things when addressing oral and written texts. At SWCOLT, I was told that the “by members of a language community for members of a language community” definition applies only to written texts. This was in response to my pointing out that, according to the accepted definition, I can never have an authentic L2 conversation with a student in my language classes because they are not native speakers / members of the language community (as generally defined). Yet, many writers encourage us to engage in “authentic communication with our students” orally.
If we have to have two different definitions of “authentic” – one for written texts and one for oral interpersonal communication – then something is wrong with at least one of the definitions, and possibly both.
Only when we know what it is that we are talking about can we talk intelligently about it and understand it in terms of what is best for learners, particularly what is best for the individuals who come to my classroom each day.
Just my thoughts on the matter.
“Authentic resources”: I have seen two recent definitions. I like the second!
More common in ACTFL and language teaching generally: “materials created by native speakers, for native speaker audiences.”
Bill VanPatten during ACTFL in 2016 (maybe during the Tea with BVP live broadcast, maybe also during the packed-house plenary with Stephen Krashen): (and my paraphrase…) authentic materials are those created for real communication by real people. (Ex, textbook drills don’t count.) A classroom is a real context, so that is authentic material.
And the BVP definition is applicable to all text types: written, oral, audio-visual.
I think the appeal of the first definition is elitist.
I like your definition too Diane. I mean why are we even discussing it if it is the first one?