An Adventurous Multiple-Persona Experience in Foreign Language Learning through Authentic Materials

Caroline C. Hwang

Caroline C. Hwang Dr. Hwang received her Ph.D. in Foreign Language Education from the University of Texas at Austin. She is currently an associate professor at Dept. of English and Applied Linguistics, National Taipei University of Technology. She also teaches translators in China. She is keen to share with EFL learners how the language is used in English-speaking countries, where she lived for over twenty years. E-mail: caroline_hwang@hotmail.com

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Introduction -Are they Possessed?
Traditional Classroom and Learners' Aspiration
Humanizing English Learning with Authentic Materials
My Experience with Using Authentic Materials in the Classroom
Deductive and Inductive Approaches Juxtaposed
Learners as Virtual Participants
Learners as Virtual Participants
References

Once an American professor of mine, a fluent German speaker, told a story: When he spoke German, his wife commented that he looked different-his chin jutted out; his voice, his gestures, and his expressions all changed. Was he possessed by a German spirit? Well, most of the L2 learners who have achieved near-native proficiency can testify that they take on an L2 persona while producing the language. Wilson (1993) described this phenomenon in a more vivid manner:

When I speak Spanish…I find my facial muscles set in a different pattern, and new, yet familiar gestures taking over my hands. I find myself shrugging and tossing my head back, pulling down the corners of my mouth and lifting my eyebrows…. I speak more rapidly and fluidly…. It's the moment when you…allow the other language to possess you, to pass through you, to transform you… To speak another language is to lead a parallel life, the better you speak any language, the more fully you live in another culture. (pp. 159-160)

In my own experience, this shift of self-consciousness occurs when my mind clicks into the L2 mode-I gradually lose the sense of myself as Chinese or Asian when I am surrounded by an L2 (in my case, English) milieu, either native speakers or authentic materials. It is not only the language but also the culture that I have come to be engrossed in. Although I cannot claim to be free from interference of my L1, the longer I "stay" in my self-created English language environment the more the "American/English me" emerges. Then, it also takes a while for me to get back into my Chinese identity. My Occidental persona tends to be more assertive and exuberant, while my Oriental persona is more reserved and hesitant. I am not only a cultural being but almost "cultural beings," thanks to the exposure to and passion for languages and cultures other than my mother tongue.

For the most part, education in Asia is traditional, bordering on being authoritarian in East Asian countries. The teacher is regarded as the source of knowledge and students are required to write down everything on the blackboard. They regurgitate all those told by the teacher as standard answers onto numerous tests for seeking high grades. Tolerance of ambiguity, beneficial in foreign language learning, is not allowed in this type of education. Lack of the teacher's "yes" or "no" to a question confounds and even disgusts students. As a result, foreign language instruction in the context of traditional education largely constitutes of detailed explanation of formulated structures, which are to appear on tests. The desired process of language acquisition is hardly in place.

On other hand, the majority of EFL (English as Foreign Language) students have the aspiration to perform well in English. Baker (2003) indicated: 77 out of the 80 Thai university students he surveyed expressed a desire to use their English with NS [native speakers] or within English speaking environments… [and] 51 out of 75 respondents cited interest in English culture as an important reason for studying English. The result of a survey I conducted on my classes last semester is: Out of a total number of the 287 students, all of the 90 English majors aspire to have all-around near-native competence and 143 out of the 197 engineering majors hope to have a good working knowledge of English. Approximately 77% of my students are interested in learning more about English-speaking cultures. Earlier, a large survey done in over 45 countries by Timmis (2002) also indicated that two thirds of the students surveyed wished to speak English according to native speaker norms.

I am aware that quite a few scholars (for example, Alptekin & Alptekin 1984; House 2002) promote the idea of using English as a lingua franca or "international English," and suggest English should be taught in a way that is independent from its cultural content and pragmatic norms. For EFL students with the sole purpose of passing examinations, this idea may come as a relief. But for aspiring learners, it sounds rather patronizing and dismissive. The learning of foreign languages, including English, would become drab and tasteless without the cultural component.

Granted, carefully written EFL/ELT textbooks may be instrumental in laying a foundation but by no means should they be overvalued as the destination of English learning if the student has a desire to achieve near-native proficiency. To the contrary, authentic materials are created for the native market and bound to teem with stimulating, enthralling, and informative contents that are conducive to responsive learning. This captivating quality is essential in any type of language acquisition, as depicted by Krashen (1989):

Reading for genuine interest and pleasure may be the single greatest educational tool available. When the second-grade teacher reads E. B. White's Charlotte's Web to the class, the book often disappears from the school library, from the local public library, and local bookstores. Some children read Charlotte's Webteen to twenty times and memorize it! After Charlotte's Web, they want more-they go on to Stuart Little and Trumpet of the Swan. (p. 109)

When learners enjoy the exposure to authentic materials that are pegged to their levels and interests, they can be gradually "hypnotized into" the rhythm and pattern of the target language, which parallels what happens in their native language. This is described by Medgyes (1994):

Whether it be a soap opera or an MTV video clip, our eyes are hooked on the screen and for long minutes we forget that what we are watching is, in fact, not in our mother tongue. (p. 92)

In today's technological world, where the loss of senses of fantasy and imagination is increasing prevalent, the need to humanize education is particularly important. Baulu-MacWillie and Le Blanc (1993) found that students' understanding and appreciation of culture was an important variable in first language learning. Also, many researchers (for example, Valdes 1986; Bryam and Fleming 1998; Kramsch 1993) have highlighted the impossibility of teaching English without teaching culture. But, what can be used for culture teaching? Besides realia and factoids about the target culture, contemporary authentic materials with different degrees of literariness should be introduced to the classroom. Researchers in this area have found:
- An overall increased motivation to learn in students when students use authentic materials for the study of culture in the language classroom. (Melvin and Stout 1987)
- Authentic materials provide an effective means for presenting real language, integrating culture, and heightening comprehension… Another convincing reason to use authentic samples is for their richness in cultural content. Because these texts are prepared for native speakers, they reflect the details of everyday life in a culture, as well as its societal values. (Shrum & Glisan 1994)
- Authentic materials [provide] a way to contextualized language learning, when lessons are centered on comprehending. (Gebhard 1996)
In sum, authentic materials present examples of real language that help bring the real world into the classroom. The vivid imagery of life in the target culture magnetizes learners and the unpredictable nature of their contents tantalizes learners-in a language-rich and enjoyable manner. Moreover, there may be multi-layered/dimensional words and structures in authentic texts. Their non-literal meanings even mystify learners of over ten years of textbook English learning, which has been a big problem area in Taiwan's EFL situation. Serious miscomprehension during interaction with English-speaking countries happens frequently. In reality, the naturalness of metaphorical uses of language is an ability to create new values in discourse (Widdowson 1986:35) and to produce and interpret the language correctly (Blamires1991:14). The non-literal meanings/messages, with deviations from basic grammar and dictionary definitions as well as with reference to the context in which they appear, require extra decoding effort. However, they belong to an essential part of a language. The adoption of authentic materials can serve as a bridge to the development of literary competence for learners. But, a reminder for using authentic materials: They should correspond to the learners' interest(s) as well as linguistic and conceptual level(s). Particularly in the initial phase, they had better contain relatively straightforward yet delightfully engaging language and styles, free from abstruse vocabulary and convoluted syntax. (As a matter of fact, the language in the majority of popular authentic materials targets a native level of American fifth grade or slightly above.)

For fifteen years of EFL Teaching, I have used U.S. college application essays, short essays by professional writers (e.g. Andrew Rooney), Chicken Soup for the Soul stories, magazine articles, TV shows, internet websites, etc. in my classes for English majors as well as Engineering students with a fairly good command of English. When I started this practice, it was not based on any theory or research; it was merely based on my own intuitive preference as well as a sore disappointment with my own college English education in Taiwan decades ago. For example, I received the kind of English writing instruction with only techniques/principles but no exemplary models, and it proved to be useless. When I began my life in the U.S. and the U.K., I found I almost had to learn English from square one.

It has turned out that my students feel gratified at being treated as intellectual individuals, since the course materials were intended for native speakers. From U.S. college essays, my students learned how their American counterparts live, think, and behave. With Rooney's, they came to appreciate broad (not culturally loaded) humor in the English-speaking society. Through TV shows, they became connected to thought-provoking issues and "matters of interest" (Dulay, Burt, and Krashen 1982:15), which they applied to the local context for group discussion. All of the above materials have the potential to instigate natural communication. Students are also encouraged to utilize the vocabulary and expressions in these materials for their own production of English, as output-based tasks can activate the input stored in receptive memory and thus transform knowledge into skills. Usually following one year of exposure to and utilization of authentic texts, the students begin to step beyond phrase-book type of English and use the language to communicate on a greater variety of topics. They begin to "decode messages by applying the semantic strategy, which is based on…anticipation and guessing" and employ their "internalized knowledge…for the performance of productive tasks" (Marton 1994:64). The reading of 200+ contemporary authentic essays/stories plus the viewing of 70+ hours of video in a year have subverted the learners' inclination to produce English-word-in-Chinese-structure sentences. An even better result is: Quite a few of my students seek more materials from the English-speaking countries for pleasure reading/viewing on their own. Krashen (1989:100) claims that motivation of this type can lead to a holistic language development--a relationship existing between pleasure reading and reading comprehension, grammatical development, and writing style. In other words, the use of appropriate authentic materials can lead to realization of a total sense of the target language as well as the goal of learner autonomy. Many of the college students I taught years ago have become successful English teachers/professors, translators, as well as managers/presidents of prominent English book publishers in Taiwan and China. My use of authentic materials in EFL has turned out to be an unplanned "longitudinal study."

The traditional teacher-fronted classroom typically uses the deductive method : The teacher pre-digests a certain piece of knowledge and then spoon-feeds it to the students. This method is contradictory to what educational psychologists have found. For example, Piaget (1963, 2001) considers that intelligence develops as a result of interaction with environment. Bruner (1966) believes that it is better to guide students to their own discovery rather than give them the concepts, the principles or the formulas directly. The latter is the inductive method. It is a process of discovery-seeing the whole picture, saturating the mind with abundant phenomena, sorting them out, and then selecting the useful/relevant information to internalize.

Culture courses and books usually provide information "as an abstract system of meanings" (Roberts 1999:52), which deprives students of the enjoyment that could be obtained inductively from participating in the target culture. By juxtaposing deduction and induction, we can see more clearly the difference between these two approaches. For example, the book Working with Americans, which explains management-oriented intercultural differences by Wallach and Metcalf (1995), stated:

American see themselves as doers, people who can and will accomplish things. They talk about being "masters of their own destinies" meaning through their efforts and hard work, they can make things better…. You can do anything you want, if you want it bad enough. (p. 107)

Americans are encouraged from youth to look for creative solutions to problems, to take appropriate risks. (p. 114).

In Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul, Gumenick (1997) recounts her brother's initiative to "gatecrash" into the university of his first choice:

He applied to 14 colleges. He was accepted to all but one, the one he wanted, Brown University…[H]e informed us that he had come up with a plan. He was going to do whatever it took to get into Brown…His plan was to move to Rhode Island near Brown, find a job, and do whatever he could become known in the area. He'd work his heart out, he said, and do the very best at everything…This was a big deal for my parents because it meant agreeing to a year without college, a scary thing for them. But they trusted him and encouraged him to do whatever he thought it would take to achieve his dream…It wasn't long before he was hired to produce the plays at-yes, you guessed it-Brown. Now was his chance to shine, and shine he did…He met teachers and administrators, talked to everyone about his dream and never hesitated to tell them what he was after. And sure enough, at the end of the year, when he reapplied to Brown, he was accepted." (pp. 84-85).

Wallach and Metcalf (1995:101-102) also pointed out another important American attribute-humor: "Americans…make a lot of jokes about themselves and others. Americans are famous for their teasing…." And now let us look at a tongue-in-cheek passage by Rooney (1984) in his "Fear of Doctors":

People don't like to go see the doctor because they know they're going to have to take their clothes off. In spite of all the appeal nudity has for us in certain forms…Most people think they look worse than most other people naked. They must have courses in medical schools about how a doctor should tell the patient to take his or her clothes off…Some doctors try to be discreet. They say, "All right now. Let's take our clothes off, shall we, and see what we have here"…I don't know whether men doctors treat women patients any differently than they treat men or not, and I certainly have no information about how woman doctors treat men patients. I doubt very much if you'd catch one of them saying, "All right now, let's take our clothes off." (p. 19)

So which approach, deductive lecturing or inductive storytelling, is more engaging, and why? It is because storytelling is among the most time-honored compelling human activities, working as a way of indirect learning and as a source of stimulation. In an authentic context, people, situations and experiences, etc., have the audience come face-to-face with the target culture. There is suspension and exploration to rouse curiosity, wonder, and inquisitiveness. Learners are encouraged to analyze and interpret information themselves to gain further insights into the target culture. This rich experience of internalization makes empathy and true understanding possible.

Ethnologists regard culture as everyday life based on value systems, including ways of knowing, thinking, communicating, and behaving. A culture in its context is diverse and dynamic, so genuine L2 culture learning should be close to ethnography, which is only possible through authentic materials. We all have the experience of being touched while reading a captivating story or watching a poignant film. Does that ever happen with EFL textbooks? Why not? Because they serve "merely as an opportunity to practice a particular sentence pattern" (Wallace 1998:154) and "no one can feel, or therefore think deeply, in an artificial language" (Valdes 1986:1). Emotions only exist in authentic materials, which can generate a "virtual reality" for learners. As such, my students have experienced a bond with the authors of the college essays. They place themselves in the position of the hero in a story and become a part of it. And Stevick (1998:154) says: "Strong feelings of various kinds can cause the resources within one's long-term memory to become more fully, more sharply and more readily available." Learners participating in this type of semi-ethnographic process that satisfies their interests and imaginations can acquire a new experience of reflection and conceptualization. McRae (1991) has corroborated this point:

[A] growth in…intuitive, inductive…learning which involves the student as actively and as personally as possible…requires materials which appeal to the learner. This appeal can take many forms: topical relevance…visual impact, humor, emotional impact, etc." (pp. 8-9)

When learners experientially step into the shoes of members of the target culture, their sensitivity and objectivity towards languages and cultures increase, and their intellectual horizons widen. Roberts (1999:64) has eloquently summed up this process in a statement: "[C]ulture is something to be 'caught' not 'taught'."

Deduction is principle-driven so it tends to form sweeping generalizations and stereotypes, while induction is example-driven, observational, and therefore schema-building. The motivating potential of inductive language learning through authentic materials reaches far. It can help:
- bring excitement in offering new perspectives in other cultures and peoples
- encourage active, reflective and independent thinking
- develop cognitive as well as affective sensitivity
- establish broader/subtler visions and in-depth interpretations

Schumann (1978) suggests that L2 learners would not go far unless they internalized its culture; Curran (1976) says that the evolution of the new self in the new language is crucial. Valdes (1986) notes:

The most successful language learners are able to take on the "mindset" of the speakers of the second language, assuming the culture along with the language." (p. 2)

And, Acton and Walker de Felix (1986) states:

…[T]here inevitably comes a time when learners become aware of their new persona in the new language, when instead of just "acting French," for example, they start to "be French" unconsciously…perhaps doing things they would never think of doing in their native auras." (p. 26)

In the case of a polyglot, he/she most likely has multiple personas-"to exit the borders of any culture, any ideology, any society" (Mamardashvili 2000: 463). At this point, let us backtrack to my American professor: he speaks German like Germans do-is that because he wants to become German and thus abandon his American identity? Of course not. It may just be likened to a good actor's deftness for getting into his/her characters. It is "a willingness to enter…into what can be the exciting adventure of another language and culture" (Valdes vii). In the same vein, I believe enthusiasm in learning the English language and its culture(s) does not have to be stigmatized as "trying to be pseudo-English native speakers." As a matter of fact, the whole issue of foreign language learning can be viewed in a positive light-it is a way to broaden perception and experience, to raise awareness of variations/similarities among societies, to enhance linguistic and literary competence, as well as to reach conceptual maturity in the long run.

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