View Content #24394

By Stephanie Knight, CASLS Assistant Director

The creation of authentic learning experiences for students is widely touted in different contexts. For example, Wiggins (1989, 2011) writes about the importance of offering learners assessment opportunities that are authentic to real-world use, and Barba (2016) evaluates the efficacy of project-based language learning (PBLL). However, as Sykes and Reinhardt (2013) assert, the provision of authentic activities to learners is complicated by the learners themselves; a sensitivity to each learner’s goal orientation (which may not align with the practitioner’s) is necessary for otherwise meaningful tasks to be personally authentic. This goal of orientation is not always easily observable.

A solution for the development of authentic learning experiences in language courses is to create concept-based and function-based curricula. The functional approach is critical for proficiency-oriented classrooms, and the concept-based approach promotes intellectual development and the transfer of learning “through time, across cultures, and across situations” (Erikson 2012, p. 4).  In concert, these approaches heighten the likelihood that authentic learning experiences are created. Three steps to follow in the development such curricula are listed below.

1. Ask Learners What They Want to Learn: It is alarmingly rare that language curricula are created with significant learner input. This trend is perhaps most surprising given the flexibility of the national language learning standards and the NCSSFL-ACTFL Can-Do Statements; they can be realized through a variety of contexts and themes. For example, requesting information can be taught in the context of getting lost at an airport or in the context of being caught in a natural disaster. While how to solicit information must be taught, learners can absolutely shape the lens through which that information is imparted.

2. Articulate the ‘So What?’ of Each Unit: After determining the topics that will be explored, educators should time engaging in thinking beyond language-specific content. This thinking should include the articulation of a driving question for each unit and transdisciplinary concepts for the learners to explore. For example, in a unit about immigration, learners might study the concepts of community and change. These concepts are both relevant to a diverse population of learners (e.g., the learner who loves the study of biological ecosystems may find increased relevance in studying immigration if she is able to connect the idea of a community changing overtime to ecosystems impacted by outside forces).

3. Identify Learning Targets: Planning specific to language content begins at this step. Summative unit projects are articulated (if applicable), and specific, day-to-day learning targets are identified within the contexts selected in Step 1. These learning targets should be functional and proficiency-oriented, requiring learners to use language instead of gathering information about language. After the articulation of these targets, practitioners should determine the strategic and pragmatic skills, grammar, and vocabulary that will be taught.

Following the progression identified here (articulating themes, then concepts, then the selection of language functions before determining language-specific content) is critical; the more common approach of using grammar and vocabulary to determine learning targets oftentimes yields curricula with contrived contexts for the acquisition of knowledge and skills and may not accurately reflect how expert speakers use the target language. This potential detriment is compounded upon consideration that learner actualization in contrived contexts is complicated if not impossible.

References:

Barba, J. (2016). EXPRESSART: A Project-Based Language Learning Experience. Bellaterra Journal of Teaching & Learning Language & Literature, 9(4). 59-81.

Erikson, H.L. (2012). Concept-based teaching and learning. IB position paper. Retrieved    from  http://www.ibmidatlantic.org/Concept_Based_Teaching_Learning.

Sykes, J. M. and Reinhardt, J. (2013). Language at Play: Digital Games in Second and Foreign Language Teaching and Learning. New Jersey: Pearson Education Inc.

Wiggins, G. (1989). A true test: Toward more authentic and equitable assessment. The Phi Delta Kappan, 70 (9). 703-713.

Wiggins, G. (2011). Moving to modern assessments. The Phi Delta Kappan, 92 (7). 63.