Authenticity

I am interested in the concept of authentic activities.

Wolf brush and Saye (p1) ,in the case study of the Big 6 model, talk of the need to infuse IL skills into the curriculum " in an effort to create authentic experiences for students in schools".

I would argue that their examples are not truly authentic activities as they do not fulfill the role of purpose, inherent in the nature of something authentic.

What is the aim of writing an article, designing a pamphlet, writing a letter etc? By ignoring the authentic purpose of the activity eg that a book review is to be read by other potential readers, a vacation schedule is to be followed, a newspaper article is to be published to inform, and replacing it with the unauthentic purpose of providing the teacher a product to assess, the authenticity of the activity or task is compromised. It doesn't mean it isn't worthwhile, but i would argue it isn't authentic.

It is the TL and teachers job to fulfill the purpose of the activity. This is an exciting opportunity for teachers to enhance collaboration within the school ie across classes/grades and to increase the use of ICT's in an authentic way ie between schools/countries, to use blogs to post book reviews/ research findings other students can access and use. Imagine if one class was researching info/ doing science experiment etc that another class was using as a source of info on a particular topic.

By truly authenticating activities by fulfilling their purpose, learner motivation, engagement and sense of purpose should be enhanced, which in turn should aid the cognitive processes in the processing of information.