Context, Community, and Authentic Language

Abstract

* The TESOL community, like any other, needs the stimulus of innovation to keep it going. Although we as TESOL professionals say that we should not make changes for their own sake, we do make them for the sake of demonstrating that we are still dynamic, and for this purpose even the appearance of change will do. And this is why old ideas keep coming back with the veneer of novelty. But we do not want changes to be too disruptive either. It is preferable for our sense of security that they should be easily assimilated, and one way of managing this is to reduce ideas to simple terms that sound good: comprehensible input, natural learning, authentic language, real English. These become a kind of catchphrase currency whose value is taken for granted without further enquiry. And thus we become slogan prone. There is one slogan in particular that I would like to question. It is often used as a handy shorthand for what communicative language teaching stands for. The slogan is focus on meaning rather than on form. A critical look at this slogan reveals a fundamental conceptual confusion, and a consideration of that confusion leads to issues about context, community, and authentic language that I believe lie at the heart of language pedagogy.