Is Green Eggs and Ham by Dr Seuss an authentic text?
It certainly is by a native speaker for native speakers. It has become part of the American cultural landscape. It became the fourth-best selling children’s book of all time in 2001 (“All-Time Best Selling Children’s Books”. Publishers Weekly. 17 December 2001). It consistently scores in the top 10 on lists of popular children’s books by both children and adults (cf. two National Education Association Polls, Scholastic Parent and Child magazine, School Library Journal).
In Wolff v NH Department of Corrections et al., Judge James R. Muirhead rendered his judgment in the style of Green Eggs and Ham, which judgment ordered the destruction of an egg sent by the plaintiff to protest the diet in the correctional facilities. Senator Ted Cruz read the book during an extended speech that was part of an attempt to defund the Affordable Care Act in 2013.
And yet …
Few people would contend that the book contains normal, everyday speech as typically used by educated native speakers. It was, after all, written for children. In addition, it contains a mere 50 unique words and came about as the result of a bet between Dr Seuss and his publisher, Bennett Cerf. The 50 words are: a, am, and, anywhere, are, be, boat, box, car, could, dark, do, eat, eggs, fox, goat, good, green, ham, here, house, I, if, in, let, like, may, me, mouse, not, on, or, rain, Sam, say, see, so, thank, that, the, them, there, they, train, tree, try, will, with, would, you.
This classic of children’s literature, which many adults can still recite from memory, is an example of constrained writing.
What is constrained writing? “Constrained” means “severely restricted in scope, extent, or activity”. Thus, constrained writing is a book, poem, story, or other text that is severely restricted in scope, extent, or activity.”
That constraint may come in many different forms:
- The vocabulary may be restricted or mandated, as in Green Eggs and Ham.
- A lipogram omits an element, such as the letter “e” in the 50,000-word novel Gadsby by Ernest Vincent Wright.
- In rhopalism, each word is one letter longer than the previous word. A short example is “I am Sam. That means really nothing, although …”
- An acrostic poem represents a constraint, and an abecedarius is even more constrained, requiring that successive lines or verses begin with successive letters of the alphabet in order. Geoffrey Chaucer’s poem “A.B.C.” is an early English example. Several passages in the Old Testament are also acrostics or abecedarius passages in the original Hebrew. These include Psalms 9, 10, 25, 34, 37, 111, 112, 119, and 145.
- A palindrome can be a phrase, sentence, or even story. Some well-known palindromes include “Able was I ere I saw Elba” and “A man, a plan, a canal – Panama”. This is a Book is a 500-word palindrome poem by Demetri Martin.
- A tautogram, a severely constrained form of alliteration, requires that all of the words in a phrase or sentence begin with the same letter. Alphabetical Africa, Austrian-born American author Abish’s ample article [see what I did there?] is an example.
- The sentence that I practiced when learning to type, “The quick red fox jumps over the lazy brown dog” is an example of a pangram, a sentence that contains every letter of the alphabet.
- Pilish requires that the number of letters in each succeeding word follow the sequence of digits in pi.
- Poems, such as haiku and sonnets, are widely known examples of constrained writing.
- Various literary genres have constraints imposed by the genre.
There are many more kinds of constraint that can be applied to writing. Authors have varying amounts of success in producing successful and interesting constrained writing. The difficulty is affected by many factors, including the severity of the constraint. For anyone wanting to know more about constrained writing, click here, here, here, and here. You can also do an internet search for the term “constrained writing”.
Second-language texts are often a form of constrained writing in that they restrict vocabulary.
In Chapter 3 of their book Enacting the Work of Second Language Instruction, Eileen W. Alisan and Richard Donato note that the term authentic “implies that the text has not been simplified or edited for the purpose of foreign language instruction”. Furthermore, these texts “have a psychosocial purpose (e.g., to inform, entertain, argue, teach a life lesson) that goes beyond simply providing contrived, artificial, and unmotivated examples of the target language to learners, as is the case in most textbook material.” (P. 65)
With these statements, Glisan and Donato take us to the core of the issue.
The concern in oral/aural interaction is not to provide only “authentic texts” (“by native speakers for native speakers” with the learner just “listening in”, as it were). The concern is for the teacher, who may not be a native speaker, to provide the learner, who definitely is not a member of the linguistic and cultural community, with accurate language in a communicative context and thereby achieve “authentic communication” in the context of the classroom.
In the same way, the criterion for “authentic texts” in writing ought not to be the rather arbitrary “by native speakers for native speakers” but rather its aptness and appropriateness to the communicative context. (cf. Bill VanPatten’s discussion of authenticity in While We’re on the Topic (2017, pp. 72-74.) The important question is, “To what extent is this incorporation [of a text] authentic to the classroom context itself? … The issue here is to what extent we let authentic text and language drive what we do or we let what we know about language, communication, language acquisition, and the appropriateness of input drive how we use ‘authentic’ materials.” (VanPatten 2017, 72)
The real concern is not whether a text is “authentic” or not but whether it is genuine communication and how good its quality is. The contrast for Glisan and Donato is “authentic texts” versus “contrived, artificial, and unmotivated examples of the target language .. as is the case in most textbook material”. (2017, 65)
As long as a text has a sociocultural (cognitive-informational, psychosocial, entertainment) purpose other than simply “to teach a foreign language”, it meets the first criterion for authentic use in the classroom context.
Conversely, let’s recognize that using a text “created by native speakers for native speakers” (e.g. a song, poem, essay) to “teach the subjunctive” or any other point of grammar, syntax, morphology, phonology, etc. renders that text inauthentic in the classroom context.
Let’s place greater emphasis on the use and quality of the texts we use rather than their provenance or origin.
“Use” means that we bring these texts into the classroom context for a communicative purpose other than simply “for the purpose of foreign language instruction”. While Glisan and Donato leave this phrase ambiguous and undefined, their contrast with the “contrived, artificial, and unmotivated examples of the target language … in most textbook material” leads me to believe that they agree with VanPatten in his conclusion that teachers must expect something new from textbook publishers: materials in which input is central and the scope and sequence is built upon something other than vocabulary and grammar. Is these latter texts, the ones built on vocabulary and grammar, that are inappropriate. As Dr Seuss proved, a text can be quite constrained and still fulfill a psychosocial purpose.
Quality means that the text meets certain other criteria. These include:
- Context appropriateness
- Age appropriateness
- Linguistic level appropriateness
- Accuracy and “Authenticity” (in the sense of “made or done in a way that faithfully resembles an original”, i.e. in a way that faithfully resembles the way the target language is really used)
- Ability to engender interest
These ought to be the questions we ask of a text:
– Is it appropriate to my classroom communicative context?
– Is it appropriate to the age (and interests) of my students?
– Is it at the appropriate linguistic level for my students?
– Is it sufficiently accurate?
– Does it faithfully resemble language that native speakers use?
– Is it interesting, even compelling, for my students?
Once we provide texts that meet these criteria, then we can guide “Learners to Interpret and Discuss (Authentic) Texts”.
I promise, I’ll get to that next week.