Cases of Thai as a Foreign Language

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วารสารมังรายสาร สถาบันภาษาและวัฒนธรรมนานาชาติ มหาวิทยาลัยราชภัฏเชียงราย ปีที่ 8 ฉบับที่ 1 (มกราคม - มิถุนายน 2563) 87

Teacher’s Perceptions towards Authenticity and the Development of Learner Autonomy: Cases of Thai as a Foreign Language

Received: May 23, 2020; Revised: June 2, 2020; Accepted: June 30, 2020 Adisorn Prathoomthin¹

Abstract

Authenticity in foreign language education has been widely advocated by scholars due to its pedagogical attributes to the learners’ language learning development. To the teachers’ perspectives, authenticity remains debatable if complexity and challenges would hinder the learners’ comprehension or increase learning motivation and learner autonomy.

This article focuses on a qualitative study that investigated the teachers’ perceptions towards the use of authentic teaching materials and the development of learner autonomy. Employing a case study research design, the participants were three teachers of Thai as a foreign language at a university in Singapore. Qualitative data collected through open-ended questionnaire and inspection of document were analysed. The strategies of grounded theory were modified and adopted to code for themes and patterns. The results of the analysis suggest that authentic materials play an important role in increasing the learners’ interest and motivation, whereby the development of learner autonomy is promoted. The key to the development lies in the support from the teachers and pedagogical tasks which help scaffold learners’ learning progress and outcomes. It is suggested that future research could explore perceptions of authenticity by learners, how they align with or differ from that of the teachers and to what extent that it helps them achieve the learning outcomes.

Keywords: Authenticity Foreign Language

I. Introduction and literature review

“Authenticity” is a contested term with different definitions and approaches taken by applied linguists and language educators. It can refer to instructional materials used in

1 Institute of International Language and Culture, CRRU, email: [email protected]

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class, reading texts, learning tasks which are assigned to students, as well as classroom interactions. Numerous researchers have debated whether authentic materials should or should not be used in classrooms in teaching learners a foreign language. Researchers such as Clavel-Arroitia & Fuster-Márquez (2014) have argued that authentic materials enhance learner autonomy whereas others have argued that its difficulty level renders it inappropriate (Kilickaya, 2004).

The present study is concerned with the authenticity of teaching materials and tasks. It aims to investigate the teachers’ perceptions towards the use of authentic materials and how authenticity helps develop learner autonomy. The findings have been drawn from cases of Thai as a foreign language at a university in Singapore.

A number of pedagogical research has explored the link of authenticity in foreign language teaching and teaching outcomes (e.g. Berardo, 2006; Tsou & Chen, 2014). In this paper, the debates surrounding the word “authenticity”, its contribution to learner autonomy, the impacts of authentic materials, tasks and assignments will be explored.

Debates have revolved around the word “authenticity”, with a variety of different but often interlinked definitions (Clavel-Arroitia & Fuster-Márquez, 2014). Gilmore (2007) considered interlinked definitions in the literature and concluded that the notion of authenticity can be based on the material itself, the participants, the social situation, the purpose of the communicative activity or a mixture of the aforementioned. According to Widdowson (1978), authenticity is defined as the reader’s interpretations of the materials, while other researchers such as Wallace (1992), Richards (2001) and Tamo (2009) defined authentic materials as real-life materials not produced specifically for the purpose of teaching. It is important to note that such a definition opens up what is authentic to a wide range of materials that includes comics and magazine articles read by native speakers (Tsou

& Chen, 2014; Dueck-Stefánsson, 2015). Thus, an authentic text can be seen as one that has not been specially simplified for language lessons. According to Tsou and Chen (2014), authenticity vis-à-vis foreign language learning can be evaluated based on three aspects, mainly through looking at the classroom materials, tasks and assessments. Additionally, authenticity, in terms of materials, tasks and assessments have been affected by the internet.

There are differing views and evaluation surrounding the usage of authentic materials in classrooms. Researchers that are against the use of authentic materials have

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วารสารมังรายสาร สถาบันภาษาและวัฒนธรรมนานาชาติ มหาวิทยาลัยราชภัฏเชียงราย ปีที่ 8 ฉบับที่ 1 (มกราคม - มิถุนายน 2563) 89 argued that authentic materials could possibly be too complicated and difficult, demotivating students who have lost interest in furthering their abilities in a particular language (Kilickaya, 2004). This would then negatively affect learner autonomy, which is defined as the “learners’ sense of responsibility for their learning and their ability to be responsible for what they learn” (Tsou & Chen, 2014:42; Dickinson, 1987; Holec, 1981).

Furthermore, the classroom environment restricts the ability of authentic materials to remain authentic as it lacks “the cultural conditions for it to be authenticated by the learners” (Widdowson, 1998:711). In a similar vein, as the classroom setting itself is an authentic environment for the purpose of teaching and learning, directed by the pedagogical goals and learning outcomes, thus authentic materials simply cannot exist (Breen, 1985). Nonetheless, the specific authenticity of the materials might not be as important as the ability of the materials to enhance or decrease learner autonomy (Tsou

& Chen, 2014).

Peacock (1997) assessed the effect of authentic and artificial materials on beginner- level EFL learners from a South Korean university. Authentic and artificial materials were used alternately and percentage of on-task behaviour and overall class motivation were observed and measured. Learners’ self-reported motivation for each day was obtained from questionnaires and interviews were conducted. While percentage of on-task behaviour and overall class motivation were significantly higher for authentic materials, the author emphasized the time effect, whereby differences observed by types of materials only became obvious from the eighth day of the study. From learner self-reported questionnaires, no significant difference in overall motivation by using authentic vis-a-vis artificial materials was observed. Furthermore, data from interviews reveal that learners found authentic materials to be significantly less interesting as compared to artificial ones.

Hence, it is worth to caution the treatment of learners’ interest and motivation as separate components.

A study examining the effect of authentic vis-a-vis artificial learning materials on self-reported motivation of mixed-levels EFL students in a Japanese university found that first year students’ scored authentic materials significantly higher than artificial materials, while no significant difference was observed for second and fourth year students’ ratings for different materials (Akira, 2013). Notably, artificial material was rated significantly higher

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for the questionnaire item on meaningfulness among second and fourth-year students.

The study’s analysis of journal suggests that students who preferred artificial materials were motivated by academic achievement. Therefore, depending on individual learner goals, learner autonomy can be enhanced by artificial materials as well.

On the other side of the debate, researchers have insisted that authentic materials are realistic and serve as better classroom materials as they are materials used by native speakers in real life situations (Tsou & Chen, 2014). These researchers argue that simplified materials shield learners from the reality of how a language is used, leaving them unprepared to real world applications (Tomlinson, 2001). Specifically, leaving them without

“sufficient exposure to the kind of English (or any other foreign languages) they need to face in the real world after years of study” (Clavel-Arroitia & Fuster-Márquez, 2014:126), as such, leaving them disadvantaged in the world outside schools and classrooms. The claim that learners perceive authentic materials as motivational has been raised, and commonly justified by the notion that authentic materials tend to be more interesting inherently and convey a message (Gilmore 2007). In fact, for advanced learners, authentic materials are even thought to be motivating, which serves to enhance learner autonomy (Clavel-Arroitia

& Fuster-Márquez, 2014) as students feel that they are learning what is “real” and reflects the language of native speakers (Khaniya, 2006). Furthermore, several scholars have argued that instead of simplifying the text, one could instead simplify the task expected of the students to keep them motivated (Latifi, Youhanaee & Mohammadi, 2013). Moreover, learners’ ability to cope with authentic materials is also intrinsically motivational (Cross, 1984).

Authentic tasks are said to be beneficial to learners as they reflect real life situations and would thus be able to enable learners to anticipate and practice situations that would likely occur outside of their classrooms (Tsou & Chen, 2014). According to Davison (2009), authentic tasks have been able to act as a “hook” to pique the learners’ interest. The consideration of the authenticity of tasks should be based on its close reflection of encounters in real life situations and if the learners are able to effectively apply what they have learnt outside of the classrooms (Tsou & Chen, 2014).

Kienbaum et al. (1986) reported the effectiveness of using authentic materials for second year French, German and Spanish courses at an American University. Pre and post listening and oral tests, and attitude assessment surveys were conducted for the treatment

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วารสารมังรายสาร สถาบันภาษาและวัฒนธรรมนานาชาติ มหาวิทยาลัยราชภัฏเชียงราย ปีที่ 8 ฉบับที่ 1 (มกราคม - มิถุนายน 2563) 91 groups and the control groups which used traditional teaching materials. While the significant differences in listening and oral test scores, and attitude survey scores were not observed for all languages between treatment and control groups, the study concluded that participants in the experimental groups were “generally well-motivated” and preferred current materials. They proposed a minimized role of authority among instructors to encourage students’ direct contact with culture, whereby students draw their own inferences from materials. They observed increased confidence, active involvement and requests for independent use of materials which demonstrated greater motivation.

Another study reporting on the positive effect of authenticity on motivation level of learners was conducted by Zohoorian (2015). The student participants, enrolled in an Iranian university for English for Academic Purposes courses, were exposed to authentic texts and tasks while traditional texts and exercises were used for the control group. The results, analysed from pre and post self-reported motivation level questionnaires, diaries and interviews, suggested that the self-reported motivation level for the treatment group was significantly higher than the control group. The qualitative data revealed that learners perceived authentic materials as “interesting”, “up-to-date”, “active” and “purposeful”

while the traditional text was viewed as “outdated”, “boring” and “irrelevant”.

Kung (2017) examined advanced EFL students’ reading proficiency and attitude by using authentic texts. Freshmen students from a top-rated Taiwanese university were taught reading strategies and asked to choose one passage from each of the two magazines before class. Two authentic texts will be selected based on students’ mutual interest and taught for each meeting. In addition to pre and post tests assessing reading skills, pre and post questionnaires of students’ self-assessment, as well as interviews were administered.

Results suggest significant improvement in reading proficiency level through authentic reading materials. Furthermore, students were significantly more interested in learning English and more confident in reading through using authentic materials, on top of perceiving that they have become more effective readers. Data from interviews reveal consensus of increasing independence and interest in reading longer text among the majority of the participants. Such consensus was reached since participants are “used to doing so” and perceive authentic materials as “more relevant to their everyday lives”. The author also emphasized autonomy given to students in choosing the authentic materials

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they prefer as part of the curriculum, that not only increases engagement but is useful and relevant for enhancing reading proficiency.

Some studies have examined the use of authentic tasks to enhance learner autonomy. Mills (2009) examined project-based learning involving authentic tasks for students in accelerated elementary French courses at an American university. Assessment tasks including oral presentation, video presentation, written assignments were fully integrated into the overarching project of creating a travel guide. The authors found enhanced self-efficacy beliefs among participants from pre and post questionnaires. The curriculum provided opportunities of autonomous learning for participants as they conducted research online for authentic materials to complete the tasks. Similarly, Karnchanachari (2020) investigated the effects of a collaborative and authentic task on dental students taking English for Specific Purposes courses at a Thai university. Students were tasked to interview foreigners pertaining to dentistry, report the contents and reflect on their performance. The author also emphasized the context of Thailand in which scarce opportunities to use the language beyond the classroom is demotivating for students.

Results from questionnaires suggest significantly higher self-efficacy among students after the authentic task. While students found the task challenging, they perceived the task positively and regarded it as useful and interesting.

With the development of new technologies in recent years, education has been transformed. For example, online education is becoming more widespread and according to Lee (2016:81), “digital technologies and multimodal communication make it possible for L2 teachers to create optimal task-based instruction, which is interactive, contextualized, and authentic”. As with authentic tasks, learners will be engaged in online tasks that are realistic (Leaver & Willis, 2005). Similar to non-online authentic tasks, evaluation of the online task-based instruction shows that the task motivates constant participation, engagement and cooperativeness among the learners, which will lead to learner autonomy (Lee, 2016). On the other hand, the online tasks may deter learner autonomy in the sense that some learners may not be as technologically savvy and may face difficulties in using the required technology to complete their tasks. This would then

“create learner anxiety and further affect task performance” (Lee, 2016:81; Hampel, 2010;

Lee, 2010). Thus, technology can be a double-edged sword in aiding learner autonomy.

Therefore, course curriculum evaluation should consider how online tasks can be

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วารสารมังรายสาร สถาบันภาษาและวัฒนธรรมนานาชาติ มหาวิทยาลัยราชภัฏเชียงราย ปีที่ 8 ฉบับที่ 1 (มกราคม - มิถุนายน 2563) 93 established so as to effectively give learners an as close as possible experience with what they would encounter when speaking to others face to face (Lee, 2016). Nevertheless, the richness of the internet of authentic materials should not be ignored. The internet contains rich authentic materials such as newspaper articles. It is constantly updated with new information and can even be visually stimulating, which provides a rich source of authentic texts for lessons (Berardo, 2006). The internet provides numerous free texts in the original texts – sites such as Facebook or even BBC News have articles in a huge range of languages around the world from Thai to Kazakh and Persian (BBC, 2017).

Lastly, authentic assessments focus on abilities that can give the learner an advantage when he or she goes out into the real world to look for a job. These authentic assessments aim to narrow the gap between learning and working by establishing a relationship between the assessment of learners in school and what these learners are expected to perform outside the classroom in the workplace (Gulikers, Kester, Kirschner, &

Bastiaens, 2008). As a result, authentic assessment serves as an important tool to evaluate if the learners have attained the necessary language skills that are required of them. As such, authentic assessments may be said to have a positive effect on learners and result in learner autonomy. Researchers such as Gulikers et al. (2008) argue that authentic assessments are said to motivate students to be more serious in their learning since they will be assessed on topics that are directly relevant to them and their future jobs. However, learner autonomy would be achieved only if the learners perceive the assessment to be authentic to them. Thus, the teachers would have to present these assessments in such a way to ensure that the students perceive these assessments as authentic.

Research Questions

While the review above shows that there have been studies examining effects of authenticity on learners’ linguistic competence and attitudes towards learning, the currently available literature on teachers’ perceptions towards the use of authenticity and the development of learner autonomy, specifically that of teachers of less commonly taught languages, for instance, Thai, is relatively sparse. Hence, the current study aims to further contribute to the knowledge. It seeks to understand how teachers of Thai as a

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foreign language at a university in Singapore perceive authenticity in language instruction and to what extent the authentic teaching materials foster learner autonomy.

Specifically, the present study sets out to answer the following research questions:

1) What are the perceptions of teachers of Thai as a foreign language towards the use of authentic teaching materials in their instruction?

2) To the teachers, how can authentic teaching materials and tasks help develop learner autonomy?

III. The Study

I. Contextual background

The study took place at a language centre of a university in Singapore where 13 foreign languages are offered, namely, Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Hindi, Indonesia, Japanese, Korean, Malay, Spanish, Tamil, Thai and Vietnamese. Enrolled students are undergraduates from the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences and other faculties across the university.

In responding to the above research questions, an intermediate course of Thai as a foreign language, Thai 4, has been selected to be discussed as the course starts adopting and integrating authentic materials in the curriculum and course materials. In other words, authentic materials are used in Thai 4 to Thai 6 (intermediate to advanced levels). The course textbooks or simplified texts are only used in the beginners and pre-intermediate courses (Thai 1 to Thai 3). The contact hours in each Thai course consists of two two-hours sessions per week. The Thai 4 course aims at developing learners’ Linguistic competence, sociolinguistic and pragmatic knowledge of the target language as well as enhancing their intercultural competence and language learning strategies. Through authentic reading texts and communicative tasks, learners will be engaged in texts taken from a variety of sources including short stories, news articles, documentary articles, advertisements, movies, songs, etc. Learning tasks include class discussions, debates, class presentations, essays, group projects, etc. To further elaborate, the readings covered in Thai 4 entail, for instance, Minority in Thailand, Migration, Thai Beliefs, Marriage, Hero, Love, etc.

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วารสารมังรายสาร สถาบันภาษาและวัฒนธรรมนานาชาติ มหาวิทยาลัยราชภัฏเชียงราย ปีที่ 8 ฉบับที่ 1 (มกราคม - มิถุนายน 2563) 95 II. Participants

Three female teachers of Thai as a foreign language who have been teaching the Thai 4 course were invited to participate in the study. Over a 13-week semester, there are approximately 20 undergraduate students enrolling in Thai 4, with a teacher coordinating and teaching the course. The three lecturers are experienced and native speakers of Thai who have been teaching at the university longer than five years. The study was conducted over one semester.

III. Data Collection and Analysis

The study employed a qualitative case study approach of data collection and analysis through open-ended questionnaire and document inspection. The data gained from varied methods allowed for data validity and insights into the teachers’ perceptions towards authenticity and the development of learner autonomy.

III.I Open-ended questionnaire

Being a small-scale study and attempting to be obtrusive as much as possible, the main body of data for this study was obtained from the open-ended questionnaire. It was designed to capture the teachers’ perceptions towards authenticity, authentic teaching materials and the development of learner autonomy. The questionnaire was in a Microsoft Word file and sent to each individual teacher via email, with an attached file. To be the least imposing, the teachers were asked to respond to the questions and return the completed questionnaire to the researcher at their own convenience, within two weeks.

Though some questions were not formed by WH-Question words (What, Where, When and Why), the teachers were encouraged to elaborate their views and perspectives as deem fit.

III.II Document inspection

Documentation can play a prominent role in data collection in case study research.

An important advantage of documentation is to corroborate and augment evidence from other sources (Yin, 2018). In this study, the researcher sought to gain access to relevant documents including course curriculum outlines, instructional materials and assessment

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tasks. These documents provided rich and insightful data in supplementing the teachers’

perspectives, which were given in the questionnaire.

III.III Data Analysis

To make sense of data collected from the teacher questionnaire and document inspection, the modified techniques from grounded theory were employed to analyse the teachers’ perspectives. The approach of analysis adopted for this study allowed data to be coded for themes, common patterns and categories (Punch, 2005). During the coding process, the perspectives about authenticity and the development of learner autonomy were analysed and uncovered.

IV. Results and discussion

The study primarily seeks to explore the perceptions towards the use of authentic materials and tasks by the Thai language teachers at a university in Singapore.

Subsequently, it aims to find out the teachers’ perceptions on how the use of authentic materials can encourage learner autonomy. For ethical considerations, pseudonyms of A, B and C are given to the teachers respectively to protect their identities. These three teachers of Thai as a foreign language have had experiences teaching the intermediate course, Thai 4, and are familiar with the syllabus.

All teachers said that they believed that the teaching materials for Thai 4 were authentic in the sense that they were neither simplified nor realistic in the context of the course syllabus. However, Teacher B noted that certain texts were simplified to suit the learners’ linguistic abilities.

Excerpt 1

Yes, they are authentic (not simplified texts) and realistic (in the related theme/course syllabus)

(Teacher A)

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วารสารมังรายสาร สถาบันภาษาและวัฒนธรรมนานาชาติ มหาวิทยาลัยราชภัฏเชียงราย ปีที่ 8 ฉบับที่ 1 (มกราคม - มิถุนายน 2563) 97 Excerpt 2

… Some readings are slightly modified to suit the learners’ linguistic ability, which some are authentic materials, written for native speakers and for non-teaching purposes.

In addition, the topics introduced in the readings, both modified and authentic reflect the learners’ real-life usage and learners’ needs.

(Teacher B)

Excerpt 3

… They are authentic materials. The topics introduced and taught in the course are realistic. The students can experience them in real life situations. The texts used in the course cover about the society and Thai people. They give insights into Thailand. Even they have some unfamiliar words, with help from the teacher, the students can understand the texts.

(Teacher C)

Simplifying authentic or original texts often do not hinder basic comprehension but serve to make it easier for learners to comprehend (Clavel-Arroitia & Fuster-Márquez, 2014).

Some studies report that authentic texts meant for native speakers bring about problems of comprehension, especially as the students have limited vocabulary (Kilickaya, 2004). In the case of the Thai 4 course, glossary and explanations on grammatical structures were provided to the students before / after the authentic reading texts were introduced, depending on the tasks and learning objectives. All three teachers believe that their instruction and provided resources can help scaffold the students’ comprehension so that they can grasp these authentic texts, while Teacher A claimed that authentic materials used in Thai 4 make it difficult for learners’ independent learning, needing guidance from their teachers in comprehending the authentic reading texts.

Excerpt 4

Many students still struggle and need help from the teacher to provide them a vocab list or grammar explanations. I find it hard for the students to self-study because the texts have many unknown words and complex sentence structures. The weaker

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learners might find it too overwhelmed, esp. at the beginning. When we practice together in class, it helps.

(Teacher A)

Excerpt 5

I believe that some texts can be linguistically challenging. Nevertheless, I do believe that the students can cope with the texts, especially with help from the teacher and tasks prepared to help them understand the texts better.

(Teacher B)

Excerpt 6

In general, I think the students are coping well. Of course, some of them might need more Effort than others.

(Teacher C)

Karnchanachari (2020) presented the positive effects of a collaborative and authentic task on dental students taking English for Specific Purposes courses at a Thai university. The report further suggested that while the students found the task challenging, they perceived the task positively and regarded it as useful and interesting. This seems to be corresponding to the current study. The following excerpts reveal how the teacher perceived their learners’ motivations and self-directed learning:

Excerpt 7

I believe that the authentic materials help promote independent learning. The students are motivated to prepare themselves before coming to class. They need to equip themselves outside the classroom, so that they can participate in class discussions and debate. Project work is another mode to help enhance learner autonomy. The students need to plan their own study with the classmates. They need to develop their topic, learning plan, procedures, timeline and presentation.

(Teacher 2)

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วารสารมังรายสาร สถาบันภาษาและวัฒนธรรมนานาชาติ มหาวิทยาลัยราชภัฏเชียงราย ปีที่ 8 ฉบับที่ 1 (มกราคม - มิถุนายน 2563) 99 Excerpt 8

…The topics introduced in each reading, the assignments to work on tasks relevant to the topics and contexts… The reading texts are stimulus, and learning tasks provide avenues and platforms for the students to be engaged in the topics.

(Teacher 2)

Excerpt 9

… In role-play during the lessons, the students can use these materials to create realistic situations.

(Teacher 3)

The presence of group work or project-based learning, role-play and students’

presentations in the Thai 4 course were carried out in hope of enhancing learner autonomy, that students search for topics of their own interest and learn the necessary vocabulary to present their thoughts and topics in class. Additionally, the contents and topics presented in the authentic materials are pedagogically selected by the teacher so that they can stimulate the higher-order thinking skills and deep learning in the students.

All three teachers also see the tasks in Thai 4 authentic and reflective of real-life situations. These tasks include presentations (as discussed earlier), group discussions (of the students’ thoughts and ideas) and even homework essays that involve students writing a short-story or response to an article that they have read. Teacher B added that the relatedness of the task to the teaching materials used in the essay makes it easy for the students to follow, and even promote learner autonomy.

Excerpt 10

… The skills of participating in tasks in this level can be transferred to other disciplines and real-life situations. For example, teamwork, plan timeline and study for group work and project, discussions and presentations based on topics of interests, making wise guesses out of context clues when encountering unfamiliar words.

(Teacher B)

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Excerpt 11

…The students can transfer the authentic materials and tasks directly to real life situations. Essays and role play are some samples.

(Teacher C)

It is evident that the teachers perceive that these tasks are reflected in real-life situations, where students can use the learned vocabulary and phrases outside the classroom. For example, topics covered include Migration and the History of Thailand.

One lesson also involved a text on a traditional Thai folklore. This would help students better understand not just the language but the culture, society and people of the target language. Subsequently, the tasks involved students sharing their opinions on the texts read and even acting out the story.

Several researchers have explored the links between authenticity and learner autonomy, specifically, how authenticity can help increase learner autonomy (i.e. Gajšt, 2014; Gulikers et al., 2008). Students in Thai 4 are given opportunities to develop learner autonomy through tasks, allowing them to be able to propose their own topics to present, set the objectives of their presentations, choose their own group members, plan their group work or projects and monitor their own learning. To illustrate, topics that were proposed and presented by the students included stray dogs, mental health in Singapore, the poor in cities, reflections from Zootopia (the students’ recommended Hollywood movie). These specialised topics require students to search for and learn new vocabulary and even search out further authentic texts on how these topics are talked about in Thailand.

V. Conclusions

In conclusion, this study has looked specifically at how the teachers perceived authenticity of teaching materials and tasks as well as the teachers’ perspectives on authenticity and the development of learner autonomy. It serves to be further explored whether authentic materials themselves increase learners’ interest and motivation, which help develop learner autonomy or if it is the content of the materials, regardless of their authenticity that increases learners’ interest and motivation.

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วารสารมังรายสาร สถาบันภาษาและวัฒนธรรมนานาชาติ มหาวิทยาลัยราชภัฏเชียงราย ปีที่ 8 ฉบับที่ 1 (มกราคม - มิถุนายน 2563) 101 It should be noted that there is never a definite answer with regards to language learning in that different students have different learning approaches and preferences. As such, for some students, the teaching materials may be more important in enhancing their autonomy, while for others, the tasks are more important. Hence, as mentioned above, future research can look at how students perceive authenticity in enhancing learner autonomy. Nevertheless, something that can be concluded from the study is that the teachers’ instruction and guidance can have impact on learner autonomy to a large extent, and that the teachers’ support are of importance in promoting language learning. Perhaps future research can look into contributions of authenticity to learners’ learning outcomes.

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Appendix A

Teacher Questionnaire on Teachers’ Perceptions of Authentic Materials and the Development of Learner Autonomy

1. Do you think that the teaching materials for Thai 4 are authentic? Are these teaching materials realistic?

2. Do you think that the students, at the stage of Thai 4, are able to comfortably comprehend authentic materials without feeling too overwhelmed?

3. Based on your teaching experiences in Thai 4, do the authentic materials

challenge and motivate the students to learn the language independently and in a self-directed manner?

4. Do you think that the tasks that are conducted in Thai 4 classes are authentic and reflect real-life situations?

5. Are the tasks assigned in Thai 4 classes closely related to the teaching materials?

In other words, are the students able to clearly see the relation between the teaching materials and the assigned tasks?

6. Based on your teaching experiences in Thai 4, do you think that the assigned tasks are useful for the students to apply outside of the classroom?

7. Do you think that the assigned tasks in Thai 4 classes are able to motivate students to take responsibility of their own learning, and why?

8. Do you think that the language skills that the students pick up from the teaching materials and tasks assigned to them in Thai 4 are satisfactory enough for them to communicate with others outside of the classroom?

9. Based on your teaching experiences in Thai 4, which aspect of the curriculum (materials, tasks, assessments) helps to develop learner autonomy the most, and why do you say so?

10. Do you think that giving students authentic materials and tasks would allow them to be more engaged in lessons, and thus develop learner autonomy?