The importance of "authentic audience" in language learning

First of all, some of the comments made in an article that I read for my L544 class (Johnston, 2007) at Indiana University made me reflect on my teaching regarding the importance of establishing an authentic audience in language learning.

 According to Johnston’s definition, an authentic audience is “an audience that is concerned exclusively with the meaning of the speaker’s message” (67).

In my understanding he implies that teachers sometimes get too focused on form and do not provide an authentic audience (where students can give meaningful and personal answers), which is more beneficial for students for improving their communicative proficiency (67). For instance, he provides the example of one language expert who experienced frustration when his Portuguese instructor focused too much on correct form instead of real answers; “his teacher insisted that he answer the question, "Are you married?" with the factually incorrect "yes" because "we are practicing affirmative answers (64).”

I think his point here is worth some thoughtful reflection for language teachers. Encouraging students to give real answers from their own opinions/preferences/beliefs (rather than giving any answer for the sake of practicing a structure) would probably be much more meaningful to them and helpful for their retention in the long term. As Johnston states, "audience is a crucial factor in the acquisition of the second language, and the availability of an authentic audience affects the rate and extent of language learning (63).”

After reading these comments, I realized that in the past I’ve done something similar to the example above, sometimes telling students that they “don’t need to give their true opinion or preference here. Just give any answer to practice the form.” 

This is something that I want to reflect more on towards improving my teaching and student learning; are there ways I could adjust my lessons in order to promote giving real answers and preferences? Is there anything more I could be doing to encourage students to want to give these true answers and thoughts? 

I also want to add that while I do agree that establishing this authentic audience is something worth striving for, I also think that there should also be some allowance for students giving a stock answer, especially when they have no experience, preference or thoughts about the topic or question (which would be much better than saying nothing at all).