A Study Of Authenticity In Communicative Classrooms

The role of authenticity in language classrooms was widely acknowledged from the emergence of the Communicative Language Teaching Approach, and related research expands with further insight into communicative classrooms where the application of authenticity is largely based on needs analysis and revolves around four dimensions, namely, the authenticity of texts, the authenticity of tasks, the authenticity of learners and the authenticity of teachers. Meanwhile, the appropriateness of texts and tasks forms a guarantee for the realization of authenticity in communicative classrooms;in the second chapter, a conversation analysis based on an authentic recording is conducted with an attempt to apply it to the classroom teaching.Under the guidance of the previous studies on authenticity, this thesis endeavors to examine the application of authenticity in communicative classrooms with an empirical study, and aims to find some key factors in the practice of authenticity in communicative classrooms. In September,2008,55 sophomores from both a Sino-US English major class and a Marking major class in Ningbo Institute of Technology, Zhejiang University participated in the project called Authentic Activities in and out of the Classroom. During the one-year practice, students were provided with opportunities to be exposed to authentic materials, and were required to finish a series of authentic tasks either individually or in groups. By the end of this experiment, students were asked to complete a questionnaire, dealing with their experiences in the project, which concerned such factors as relevance, difficulties of authentic texts and authentic tasks, group work, social factors and so on. Data taken from the survey has been analyzed and graphs have been presented.It is found that topics related to life, culture and affective factors rather than topics about society will be more likely to arouse students'interest and result in a better language output. Meanwhile, students prefer moderate authentic materials to difficult or easy ones. Materials and tasks with improper difficulty are likely to influence students'confidence and the language performance negatively. Therefore it is very important to choose authentic materials and design authentic tasks based on students'lives, interest, experiences and the language level.Another finding is that both group work and out-of-class authentic tasks are greatly preferred by students. It shows that group work can create learners'active participation and students are more likely to exchange ideas with group members. As for the form of authentic tasks, the top on the list is the out-of-class authentic practice, which can be seen as a signal for language teachers to design more out-of-class authentic tasks.It is also found that authentic texts and authentic tasks contribute to the development of both learners'language skills and personality, which can be seen as the social functions of authenticity. As the survey shows over half of them think that authentic tasks help to improve their team spirit, language skills, leadership, motivation, persistence, enthusiasm, responsibility and independence. Therefore, the language classroom is not only to improve students'language skills, but also to create an environment for the cultivation of students'comprehensive capability.In addition to the above findings, some further explorations about authenticity in communicative classrooms have been discussed. The first is working on the social functions of authenticity in communicative classrooms. The second is making the outside world an extension of authenticity. The third is applying the on-line authentic learning.It is believed that the practice of authenticity in communicative classrooms will promote language professionals to fix their attention on the realistic meaning of the language teaching, make language learners the core of the language learning, and get them fully ready for the real communication in the real world.