Putting theory into practice

Abstract

materials as feasible. Genuine materials are, as Widdowson pointed out in 1979, language samples not constructed for the purpose of language learning. (cf. Widdowson, 1979:80) Authentic tasks would then be tasks and learning projects as well as activities of knowledge construction which truly enable learners to explore the target language in it structure and functionality when working with such genuine “texts”. David Little describes this approach to authenticity in language learning as creating opportunities for the learner to “psychologically interact” with the target language, “by which we mean the psychological processing of target language input in such a way that it interlocks with and modifies the learner’s existing knowledge.” (Little, 1989: 5) He continues by pointing out that such a process is only possible if the learner regards the learning material as having “personal significance”; it can, therefore, be reasonably assumed that authentic texts, preferably taken from sources which relate to the learners’ real world and everyday life, have such a quality.