The Need for Level-Appropriate Authentic Resources

(The following is my own opinion and does not necessarily reflect the views of the CI/ADI community at large)

Lately one of the major buzzwords in World Language has been authentic resources, i.e., resources which have been written "by native speakers for native speakers," and their importance to the world language classroom. I wholeheartedly agree with this, since I think that it is key for our students to interact with resources which can give them any cultural insights, views, and perspectives which cannot be properly delivered except from a native speaker in that target culture. Authentic resources can demonstrate real-world usage of the target language, as well as infusing a culturally-responsive framework into one's curriculum. HOWEVER, I will add my own qualifier: level-appropriate. These authentic resources need to be level appropriate.

Before I continue, I need to explain the lens through which I view second language teaching: as a CI/ADI facilitator, my first and foremost priority is the delivery of understandable messages to learners and for those messages to be properly comprehended. We acquire that language which we understand. When language is understandable for learners, this lowers their affective filters (stress levels) which allows for the acquisition process to operate. To me, all of these are non-negotiables.

Therefore, when it comes to authentic resources, I need for these resources to be level-appropriate and to be 100% understandable to my students. Our novice-level L2 students are roughly equivalent to native L1 toddlers in their reading proficiency considering how little interaction our own students actually have had with the target language, hence what we truly need are authentic resources which were created by native speakers for those native learners who possess that same proficiency in that target culture as our own students - those native students who are learning to read and speak in their L1! 

However, instead we get caught up in having novice students read authentic menus and bus schedules (much of this has been influenced by a misusage of the ACTFL Can-Do statements) or the authentic resource WAY EXCEEDS students' current L2 reading/listening level, which ends up then (as an experienced CI/ADI teacher said to me) students just scanning for recognizable text/vocabulary and inferring from pictures. In other words, not a true interaction with the authentic resource.

By no means am I saying that we should exclude authentic resources - di immortales! However, it does mean that as a teacher if I wish to use an authentic resource which is above my students' proficiency level, then the burden is on me to scaffold a lesson building up to it via previewing vocabulary and structures (even if it means through a silly story or a reading based on a Movie Talk) so that it is 100% comprehensible to them. But bigger picture - I want level-appropriate authentic resources so that I do not have to jump through the previous mentioned hoops! Personally I am not a fan of me adapting complex authentic resources and texts, because while I may be making the resource more understandable for students, am I unknowingly changing cultural meaning and authors' original intent in my simplifying of it with my own choice of words to use, thereby inserting a bias of which I am unaware?

While I was at CI Iowa, I attended Eric Herman's presentation "A Critical Review of ACTFL´s Pedagogy," where he addressed authentic resources and academic SLA research related to the subject. I leave you with this quote:

This [reading authentic resources] confuses the goal with the way to get there. When one starts to play the piano we do not start with Rachmaninoff’s Third, nor do native children start reading with Shakespeare, nor do we learn to drive in a Formula 1 car. (Nation & Waring, 2020, p. 25)

What are some level-appropriate authentic resources which you have found, i.e., authentic resources created by native speaker for those native speakers who are at the same development of language proficiency as our own students?