Authentic Activities

Your task is given in the video below.

The clip on the next page is from “Where to Invade Next” by Michael Moore (the director and producer of Fahrenheit 9/11). “Where to Invade Next” is a film where “Moore visits a number of countries and examines aspects of their social policies that he suggests the United States could adopt. He visits Italy, France, Finland, Slovenia, Germany, Portugal, Norway, Tunisia, and Iceland; respectively, the subjects covered are worker benefits, school lunches, early education, college education, worker inclusion, decriminalized drugs, low recidivism, women’s health care, and women’s inclusion and leadership role in society”. Regarding education, in Finland school type of exercises, such as multiple choice, fill in the gaps, matching, etc., are rare. How about your context? How often do you use these types of activities?

“Where to Invade Next”: A clip about Finnish education system.

Education in Singapore

“School Lunch France” from “Where to invade next”.

Use the principles below as a guide for you to design an authentic learning activity that you can use in your class. Then share your design with the other course participants.

Principles of authentic activities in EFL contexts:

1. Provide real world relevance

2. Design a complex and ill-defined task that will require students to define the tasks and subtasks needed to complete the activity over a sustained period of time

3. Provide the opportunity for students to examine the task from different perspectives, using a variety of resource

4. Provide the opportunity to collaborate

5. Provide the opportunity to reflect

6. Give activities that lead beyond domain–and skill–specific outcomes

7. Assessment should be seamlessly integrated with the activity

8. Target polished products valuable in their own right as the outcome of the activity

9. Provide open-ended activities allowing competing solutions and diversity of outcome

10. Aim at learning and communicating and not either of them

11. Provide motivational factors

• Provide authentic roles
• Provide a challenge that is tied to a goal
• Target an authentic problem
• Involve students in a problem solving process that is (socially) significant for them
• Provide ownership on the problem and the process to solve it
• Target an authentic audience
• Provide freedom and control
• Publish student work

Creating authentic learning experiences at Rangiora High School

Bringing Authentic Learning Experiences to Community College and Four-Year University Classrooms

Students have devices, now what? Authentic Learning Experiences in a Blended Environment

What about education in other countries or universities? Please share videos with us on MS Teams.