One intriguing aspect of the new Subject Guide is that it contains a writing task that doesn't involve students pretending …

I'm referring to the Personal Response, the new Section B of HL Paper 2. For those who are still familiarising themselves with the new system, this requires students to look at a short text related to one of the Core topics, and then provide a personal reaction to issues raised by the stimulus text. This is unusual in that no text type is specified, nor is any form or approach required. The student is simply expected to respond with any ideas which seem 'coherent' and 'convincing', using any style or language which is 'effective' – I cite the key words used in the marking criteria (have a look at the page Personal Response Criteria ).

I find this very refreshing, because it would appear that the task will encourage personal, individual writing, in which language will be used exactly how the student chooses – without the pretence involved in conforming to some set text type or convention. The task means 'tell me what you think – say what you mean, and mean what you say'.

I anticipate that this may cause problems, initially, for examiners. Exactly which standards and values will apply? How do you mark a script which begins “I think this statement is a load of fucking crap...” and continues in that vein coherently, using violent language effectively, and giving a convincing series of reasons (I don't necessarily mean logical arguments) for such a hostile response? Personally, I think I would be predisposed to assess such frank passion quite favourably, because I would be pretty sure that I was reading an honest response, and not a pretended one … but there are tricky issues here.

The 'honest' nature of the Personal Response reminds me that language teaching, and language assessment, are both full of tasks which involve pretending things. This raises questions about how we can make language real for our students; and raises questions about the validity of language assessment.

The language classroom involves a great deal of pretending. In the direct method approach, the teacher, perfectly professionally, refuses to understand or accept any utterance not in the target language. This mimics the 'total immersion' situation, and it is certainly highly effective – but it does mean pretending that you have forgotten the common language that teacher and students share outside the classroom! We ask students to get into pairs and pretend that they want to discuss a topic that they hadn't thought about five minutes ago; we set up debates that involve students pretending that they believe passionately in something that they don't; we organise role plays in which students pretend to be someone different ...

Language assessment is officially supposed to be based on 'real language use' – texts for reading comprehension are supposed to be selected from real publications, and tasks in writing are supposed to involve realistic purposes. However, all of these techniques, deployed for perfectly valid practical reasons, are a little fake. Texts for English B Paper 1 are indeed always originally sourced from 'real life' – but they are also often 'doctored' in various ways (over-complex vocabulary is replaced, tangled sentence structure discreetly simplified, etc), so that the resulting text is appropriate for the students' presumed language level. And we pretend that answering MCQs is a natural form of reading ! Tasks in English B Paper 2 are 'realistic' in general terms, since there are indeed people who write letters to the Editor; but in fact most tasks involve requiring students to pretend that, for example, they care enough about rubbish collection in their home town to think of writing a letter to a newspaper.

Does all of this matter ? I know, I know ... pretending is a teaching technique, a kind of alchemy by which we transform the artifical grasp of unfamiliar grammar into the genuine command of a new language. I would argue, though, that the less pretending we employ, and the more genuinely honest communication we stimulate, the more real the language becomes ...