Teaching Unplugged - Voices

7/29/2019 Teaching Unplugged - Voices

1/16

7/23/13 Teaching Unplugged

www.thornburyscott.com/tu/voices.htm#nakedness 1/16

thornburyscott.com http://www.thornburyscott.com/tu/voices.htm#nakedness

Teaching Unplugged

TEACHING UNPLUGGED

HOME DESCRIPTION SOURCES VOICES RESOURCES COURSES

VOICES

Here is an edited A to Z of highlights from the Dogme ELTdiscussion group , organised according to topic:

Authenticity

Bare essentialsCon versationDog meEmergenceFreireGra mmar Huma nismInp utJammin gKeyLearn ersMaterials

Nakedness

Open SpacePlanningQuestion sRoutinesScaffoldingTasksUnpluggedVested InterestsWhole language learningeXamsYoung LearnersZone

authenticity

Lesson content is rarely based on the authentic life experience of thelea rners. Au thentic discourse , conversa tion is rarely allowed into theclassroom. Learners are asked to pretend to be someone they arenot or not to tell the truth during exercises. Learners and teacher arenot encouraged to use their own rich personal life experience,knowledge of language learning, experience of using a foreign

language in real communicative situations. We are looking at a wayof teaching which proposes that authentic communication betweenreal people, te acher along with students, should be th e basis for language learning.

(David F.) back to top

bare essentials

I totally agree with David about the feeling of self-confidence andanticipation that comes from knowing that one can walk into any
http://www.thornburyscott.com/tu/voices.htm#learnershttp://www.thornburyscott.com/tu/voices.htm#jamminghttp://www.thornburyscott.com/tu/voices.htm#grammarhttp://www.thornburyscott.com/tu/voices.htm#freirehttp://www.thornburyscott.com/tu/voices.htm#emergencehttp://www.thornburyscott.com/tu/voices.htm#dogmehttp://www.thornburyscott.com/tu/voices.htm#conversationhttp://www.thornburyscott.com/tu/voices.htm#barehttp://www.thornburyscott.com/tu/voices.htm#authenticityhttp://www.thornburyscott.com/tu/voices.htm#wholehttp://www.thornburyscott.com/tu/Sources.htmhttp://www.thornburyscott.com/tu/resources.htmhttp://www.thornburyscott.com/tu/courses.htmhttp://www.thornburyscott.com/tu/voices.htm#nakednesshttp://www.thornburyscott.com/tu/voices.htm#tophttp://www.thornburyscott.com/tu/voices.htm#examshttp://www.thornburyscott.com/tu/voices.htm#wholehttp://www.thornburyscott.com/tu/voices.htm#taskshttp://www.thornburyscott.com/tu/voices.htm#routineshttp://www.thornburyscott.com/tu/voices.htm#questionshttp://www.thornburyscott.com/tu/voices.htm#planninghttp://www.thornburyscott.com/tu/voices.htm#openhttp://www.thornburyscott.com/tu/voices.htm#nakednesshttp://www.thornburyscott.com/tu/voices.htm#learnershttp://www.thornburyscott.com/tu/voices.htm#keyhttp://www.thornburyscott.com/tu/voices.htm#jamminghttp://www.thornburyscott.com/tu/voices.htm#grammarhttp://www.thornburyscott.com/tu/voices.htm#freirehttp://www.thornburyscott.com/tu/voices.htm#emergencehttp://www.thornburyscott.com/tu/voices.htm#dogmehttp://www.thornburyscott.com/tu/voices.htm#conversationhttp://www.thornburyscott.com/tu/voices.htm#barehttp://www.thornburyscott.com/tu/voices.htm#authenticityhttp://www.groups.yahoo.com/group/dogmehttp://www.thornburyscott.com/tu/courses.htmhttp://www.thornburyscott.com/tu/resources.htmhttp://www.thornburyscott.com/tu/Sources.htmhttp://www.thornburyscott.com/tu/description.htmhttp://www.thornburyscott.com/tu/portal.htmhttp://www.thornburyscott.com/tu/voices.htm#nakedness


2/16



classroom with the bare essentals (board pen or chalk) andgenerate relevant material in an enjoyable context that will feel freshto everyone involved. (Including the teacher - which is important -the worst teacher is a bored teacher and that was another reason Ifirst started to question the value of planning lessons in detail - ittook all the fun out of doing the lesson!)

I was talking to one of my high-level students today, she's an Englishlanguage teacher from Romania and agrees that the mania for

planning and timing that characterises orthodox teacher training isconstipated beyond belief and militates against the development of real teaching skills like flexibility and adaptability to the class as ithappens. Isn't that the point - the class does just happen, and it's thelive analysis and where appropriate subsequent reflection on thelanguage that emerges that uses teacher expertise, not cutting upbits of paper beforehand or anticipating problems etc. There are twothings I'm keen to share with other teachers - one is that this can bea fascinating job even after - in fact increasingly after - many years;the other is that so many of the stresses that I hear teachersexpressing (''the photocopiers broken again' / 'so and so just camein late again' / 'I don't know who's going to be there from one day tothe next' / 'I can't find the listening tape' / 'my discussion on capitalpunishment bombed' / 'they never use the grammar they'resupposed to use in free conversation' (!!) / 'they're not all the samelevel' / 'I've used this material with some of these students before') -need ... never ... matter ...again.

(Luke) back to top

conversation

These days I spend a lot of time in whole-class discussion mode -and when I say discussion I really mean chat. It takes a bit of

determination some days, but generally speaking you can get morethan enough structural and lexical material to work on from thestudents' own lives and concerns without hauling out a unit on thepast perfect or herding them into a debate about the environment,etc - where invariably only one or two students will have opinions atall, let alone much to say.

In general chat mode I emphasise that what they have to say doesn'thave to be clever or even 'interesting' - as it's sharing experienceswhich make them interesting. I suppose it's like hosting a party? Youhelp everyone feel wanted, at home, not pressurised to do or sayanything except what they're comfortable with. Contrary to often-

expressed views about eg Japanese students, no one ispredisposed to say nothing and in the right environment everyonewill contribute equally. There's one caveat here - you do have to beinterested in people to teach like this!

(Luke) back to top

dogme

How do you feel about the name 'dogme'? My thinking is that wecould close a chapter of this group at the point of the meeting in
http://www.thornburyscott.com/tu/voices.htm#tophttp://www.thornburyscott.com/tu/voices.htm#top


3/16



London and consign the name to history, re-emerging with 'teachingunplugged', grassroots teaching, organic English or whatever (butsomething descriptive). I don't want to sit in Brighton next year goingrefuting the fact that it's a dogma or explaining the name.

(David)

I can't help remarking that Lars von Trier has just won the Palmed'Or at Cannes with a film that violates just about every principal that

he encouraged his fellow directors to postulate as the Dogmemanifesto. In the light of all this, what metaphorical capital can bemade from Dogme then and now, critical response to it, and whatteachers are for?

(Jeremy)

In a very brief reply to Jeremys questions:

I don't think the fact he broke all the rules makes much difference.The non-use of materials is not another approach or methodologywe are trying to impose, but a state of mind, an attitude towards the

students as people and language as a process of socialisation. Thisis the end. The Dogme stance I then see as a means to an end, theend being the above.

(Neil

Re. the name:

People seem to really relate to names/labels, and I think Jeremy'spoint (a long time ago) about selecting the metaphor for the imageyou want to give is quite important. It seems that if the first 'Dogme'article in Iatefl Issues was in part intended to provoke, then thedogme metaphor was ideal. However, if we're trying to buildsomething coherent, then perhaps it is time to reassess in order touse a more illuminating title. At the meeting, it was evident that wewere concerned about connecting with a wide range of tachers in awide range of teaching situations - a pretty broad church. How toreflet this? The word 'teaching' appeared in a couple of David'ssuggestions. 'Learning' also seems important (learning by allparticipants in the classroom - about language, about the classroom,and about each other).

(Graham) back to top

emergence

My favourite metaphor at the moment seems to be encoded in theword "emergent" - the language "emerges" in the lesson, the system"emerges" in the student's consciousness, etc - sort of derived fromcomplexity theory. Teacher's job to create the conditions for emergence, and then to draw students' attention to whatever emerges? Like you, I find the "delivery" metaphor very suspect.

Here's another neat distinction: teachers always talk about"covering" the grammar (we haven't covered the 2nd conditional yet"
http://www.thornburyscott.com/tu/voices.htm#top


4/16



- but never about "UNcovering" it - i.e. uncovering the learner'sdeveloping language system. Or DIScovering. Or even REcovering!

(Scott)

Moving on a little -- Scott wrote:

"...the notion of a pedagogy that foregrounds the learners' meaningsand takes as its launching pad the learners' grammar (however

rudimentary this is), and the belief that talk can scaffold learning,especially talk that is mediated by a "better other"...".

On the theory side of things, this would seem to link in with ideas of interlanguage (yet another area where I have only dangerously littleknowledge). In this month's IATEFL Issues, Kevin Keys talks aboutmoving away from a deficiency model of grammar towards'intervention aimed at refining variant forms to keep the learner ontrack towards less L1-like and more L2-like linguistic behaviour', andtalks of 'variant' forms rather than 'incorrect' forms. To me, thisseems complementary to the ideas everbody's talked about i.e. safespace created in the classroom for learner's self-expression with any

grammar emerging from communication according to the learners'needs, interests, and level. Learners' language thus developsaccording to what they and others put in.


freire

I've started wondering if Freirean ideas can help approach theseissues.

Firstly, there is the move away from seeing learners as 'passivereceptacles' to whom knowledge is given towards learners who startto create knowledge for themselves. This starts a move fromexternal towards internal factors affecting learning. It might also dealwith making the classroom/lessons genuinely appropriate to thelearners.

However, the whole liberation issue with Freire is probably too muchfor the EFL/ELT industry. Perhaps, therefore, it is reasonable for usas teachers to limit our horizons to what actually goes on on theclassroom. Which brings me to Dogme... I suppose it all depends onhow you see the classroom. For me, maybe the best we can hopefor as teachers is to provide opportunities for interaction and(therefore) opportunities for learning. The nature, content, andvalues of the interaction are what might re-assert the 'socialownership' of the learners. This isn't just asking the learners whatthey want to do, but genuinely negotiating with them throughout thecourse of lessons - negotiation itself becomes content/learningopportunity, as the how and the what of the classroom become inter-related (there's a fair bit of Candlin's ideas somewhere in there).This would mean that teaching "cannot be transplanted, it must bere-created" ( another quote -Wallerstein), and leads me towadsnotions of 'small cultures' (Adrian Holliday), localism, empowermentetc. This would lead to a change in the whole social genre of the


5/16



lesson, teachers becoming facilitators helping learners to generatechoice, and enabling them to reach goals that they set for themselves. I'm not (I think) saying this would involve absolutely nomaterials, but what it would involve is preparation by teachers interms of thinking through the needs of the learners, the socialcontext within and outside the classroom, how to generateappropriate opportunities for learning etc.

It seems to me that this could/should all be far less

materials/technology driven than at present (... and there's the returnto the ideas of dogme). It would also involve preparation by learners(whereby they would take more responsibility for their learning)....That's a pretty brief summary of how I got to Freirean ideas andtowards the ideas we've been talking about - I hope it retains somedegree of coherence (and relevance). Maybe its a bit theoretical, butin my ideal world it would be possible. I've 'adapted' a Freirean quoteto summarise - 'pedagogy with the learner, not for the learner'.

Again, nice and glib.


grammar Just to continue on the topic of coursebook grammar: my mainproblem with coursebook grammar is less to do with whether theyteach will before going to , or the future passive as an entirely novel(i.,e. non-derived) entity, but that they teach grammar AT ALL - inthis kind of "structure of the day" approach - the delivery model of learning.

This does not mean I am anti-grammar - teachers need to knowtheir grammar fairly well so as to be able to respond to the linguisticchallenges thrown up by texts and students.

But (as I said in a piece in the EL Gazette in January that waswrongly attributed to Deborah Cameron):

"More important, it seems to me, is that teachers havea sound knowledge of their students' grammar - I don't mean their students' mother tongue grammar (although that wouldn't be a bad thing) - but aknowledge of their students' developing interlanguagegrammar - because this surely is what we should beteaching to, not to specifications laid down in some

coursebook or syllabus. Having a sound knowledge of your students' grammar means being sensitive totheir current level of development, what they can doand what they can't do, so as to be able to lead themthrough one zone of proximal development, and intothe next."

(Scott)


6/16



I just found this quote I'd copied down on ther back of an article agesago and forgotten about: "Die Grammatik kommt aus der Sprache,nicht die Sprache aus der Grammatik" (Langenscheidt) Looselytranslated as "Grammar emerges from speech, not the other wayround".

(Scott) back to top

humanism

input

jamming

What I have to share here is an extract from a conversation betweentwo musicians, the guitarist Derek Bailey and the (late)drummer/teacher John Stevens. They once worked together,practising, writing, teaching, and the extract below comes from abook written by Bailey in 1975 and first published in 1980, calledImprovisation - its Nature and Practice in Music (now Da CapoPress). It's Part Six: Classroom Improvisation, where Stevens

describes the free jazz music workshops that he was setting up inLondon. The date is 1960- something, but anyway:

When I go out to do a workshop, though I've beendoing it for a long time, as I approach the place thereis no real confidence in me about what is going tohappen. I always have the same sort of feeling. I cannever take it for granted. And walking into the roomI'm always apprehensive. And sometimes I wonder "What am I doing? I'm still doing this and worrying about it" And there was one period recently which,

because of other problems, was particularly hard. And as I travelled towards the place I would think: "I'll haveto give this up. I just don't have that sort of energy any more." Then I would get there, walk into the room,and there would be about 15 people in there all

playing their arses off - great! The impact was just beautiful. And they, the `pupils, got me there during that time. Then it was easy. The energy came fromthem.

What's interesting, one of the things that I see asimportant, is this: I've had to try and avoid a situation

where they relied on me to come in and set the wholething up. I made a rule: I said to them "You're coming here because you're supposed to want to play. This isa room in which you can play, so, as soon as you get in this room you are going to prove you want to play by getting on and playing. If you don't want to do that,none of what I'm doing here makes any sensewhatsoever. If there are four or two or even if you arethe first to arrive, as soon as you get here - start

playing. And if someone comes who's new to the


7/16



class then it's the responsibility of the people who areexperienced in the class to invite the newcomer to

play. In a sense, that is what it is about."

There are nice measures here of both generosity of spirit andtoughness. Toughness in that I imagine Stevens was actuallyworking very hard, which is in the nature of things, and generosity of spirit in that he understood the value of being uncertain, of frettingand getting going without a very clear map, and that he was alwaysbowled over by the effect of it afterwards. Either way, it makes mefeel better. If I look at the things that matter to me, if I consider myself growing older and being a teacher, what I would most like togo on doing is (a) fret and then (b) see things happily saved. That'sone way of putting it, anyway.

To close this, what I find attractive about the dogme idea is that thepeople involved decided to go out, away from a teaching discipline tosomewhere else, to then get back again and re-explain the teaching.I can see how the film making ideas were particularly apt for this, butI reckon that it could have come from many places. It makes somuch sense to look out, and there are so many fantastic thingsgoing on out there, why close the windows and be miserable?

(Barnaby) back to top

key

Another extract from Sylvia Ashton-Warner -- this is from her novel,Spinster, 1958, which incredibly, was made into a film with ShirleyMacLaine - has anybody EVER seen this? (Not a Dogme film, Isuspect)

"A rainy, rainy Thursday and I talk to them all day.They ask ten thousand questions in the morning and eleven thousand in the afternoon. And more and more as I talk with them I sense hidden in theconverse some kind of key. A kind of high-abovenebulous meaning that I cannot identify. And the moreI withdraw as a teacher and sit and talk as a person,the more I join in with the stream of their energy, thedirection of their inclinations, the rhythms of their emotions, and the forces of their communications, themore I feel my thinking travelling towards this; thissomething that is the answer to it all; this . . . key."

(Scott) back to top

learners

...what I've been doing recently is to start my courses with a wideranging discussion of how they [the learners] see learning alanguage (learning to ride a bike/play chess/historical dates etc) and


8/16



justify their perspective.

This moves on to what parts of learning a language they like andwhy. How do they operate in those areas which they like? Ideasarise and are shared which others in the class have not heard of.Learners then consider what people in different roles can do to help- themselves, the teacher/each other/friends outside the class/hostfamilies etc.

It often takes all this just to focus learners on the fact that they canhave a role in determining what we are going to do and how we aregoing to do it, and for them to share their knowledge to develop aprocess for the classroom. Although the initial topic often doesn'tarise from the learners, the language problems/areas which ariseand can be examined later are theirs, the communication is 'genuine'in that their is an exchange of real life experiences which is relevantto their immediate needs. It also almost always provides the learners(and myself) with ample evidence that they are individuals sharingthe classroom, each with different learning preferences and styles.Not only is it interesting and motivating, it helps to create that 'safespace' and sense of mutual cooperation that I keep banging on

about.

If things have been very successful, subsequent lessons (some, notall), focus on learning experiences, knowledge about language, andknowledge about language learning. e.g. we have discussions alongthe lines of - what do you know about grammar/vocab etc, how doyou go about learning grammar/vocab etc., what do you want tofocus on in class, how do you want to go about it? It's often quitedifficult stuff, and takes some getting used to for the learners, but itdoes provide loads of opportunities for the negotiation of meaningwhen they use the language. I wouldn't call it learner training either -more 'thinking critically about learning and finding your own way'...

Basically, what I'm suggesting (I think) is a class-wide discussion,exploration and on-going evaluation of the classroom's pedagogywithin the pedagogical process itself by the teacher and the learners.It's therefore not a question of finding an 'appropriate methodology',but a process of 'becoming appropriate' (oops - getting glib!).


materials

nakedness

Overheard: "I wouldn't want to go into the classroom taking nothingwith me"

Well ... you can be 99% sure that you will know all the words andstructures which may emerge during the lesson. You will have xnumber of hours/weeks/months/years teaching experience behindyou which will help you choose what emergent language to analyse,how to pace the emergent stages of the lesson, how to involve asmany students as possible, and so on. You will also have back-up/failsafe routines in mind which can be used if all else fails. In
http://www.thornburyscott.com/tu/voices.htm#dogme


9/16



other words, you take a great deal with you as knowledge andexperience, readiness and enthusiasm. Unlike the Emperor in thetale, you aren't naked at all. The meeting of a teacher and studentswho want to teach and learn respectively* creates enough of adynamic without any extras (which is not to say that materials andmachines can't be used, but that they should be seen as secondary,as back-up). The setting is a reasonably predictable one - the ideathat 'anything could happen' is false; indeed while 'any' languagemay emerge, this will happen within fairly predictable boundaries.

*I'm referring to the (young) adult education model with which I'mfamiliar!

(Luke)

This question of planning came up in the teachers meeting I gaveyesterday on Dogme-type principles (but incorporating the use of thecoursebook). Some teachers seemed to think that reactive/organicteaching might require more preparation - especially if there is lessuse of the coursebook - but it seems to me the very opposite andthis is what I was attempting to prove. With a few basic lesson

"formats" or planning macro-strategies the teacher can in factgenerate enough language from the learners (or from him/herself) toprovide the "text" of the lesson.

Of course, it's then another matter as to what you do with that text -and this is where experience comes in. In that sense, you need a lifetime's preparation to be able to react constructively andappropriately to students' errors - I suppose. But then again, I like tothink that even inexperienced teachers can rely on their intuitionssufficiently to provide the kind of feedback that students need. Wetend to know when students have made an error, even if we can'talways explain it. But it's probably not explanations that the students

need - they simply need to know that X is not possible in thisinstance and that Y would be better. At the risk of repeating myself, Ihave to quote one of my favourite teaching descriptions - the novelistEdmund White's account of his private Italian teacher (from TheFarewell Symphony):

"Her teaching method was clever. She invited me togossip away in Italian as best I could, discussing what I would ordinarily discuss in English; when stumped for the next expression, I'd pause. She'd then providethe missing word. I'd write it down in a notebook I kept week after week. ... Day after day I trekked toLucrezia's and she tore out the seams of my shoddy,ill fitting Italian and found ways to tailor it to my needsand interests."

Obviously this kind of reactive, reconstructive teaching works fineone-to-one - but is whole other ball game with a class. Nevertheless,the principle still holds - let the learner(s) lead. Thereafter theproblem is not a planning one so much as a management one.


10/16



(Scott) back to top

open space

Has anyone attended a conference/meeting run in Open Space?

Open Space Technology is a rather misleading name for ahumanistic approach to problem-solving developed in the States bysomeone named Harrison Owen. We adopted it for a whole-school

conversation session and for staff training a couple of times and I'mkeen to incorporate it into a course design proper.

In essence it works like this: a theme which encapsulates a shareddifficulty or concern is framed and participants notified in advance.Everyone turns up and in whole-group mode people are invited topost sessions on the board. People posting the session areresponsible for being present for the session and for reporting backlater. People sign up for different sessions; there is a choice andwithin a given time-frame people can attend one only, or go fromsession to session, or do nothing at all.

The principles are that whatever happens is the only thing that couldhave happened, that the people who turn up for a given session arethe right people, and so on. I like the reporting angle when I think of how it could work in ELT. Although my first experience of it was in anarea in which I was out of my depth (it was to do with managingchange and I had a staff of ten while other participants were runningthe entire gas network for the UK, etc) and not naturally verymotivated, it was a really fascinating event and very liberating - itwas pure peer-teaching and a surprisingly powerful experience. Itworked well for staff training and the whole-school conversationevent was a great success, with people peeling off into differentrooms in varying numbers to discuss topics nominated by the

students.(Luke) back to top

planning

The lessons being described - and the classes in the bar - soundvery much like Jim Scrivener's 'Jungle Path' in some book of his(now what was it?) - well Learning Teaching , of course. The teacher goes in without a specific plan and it all develops from there. In thebook Jim describes this kind of lesson (and this kind of lesson only)as 'student-centred'.

Yet in my investigations of what students think good teachers are,something that comes up frequently is that they (students) like tothink that teachers have prepared classes - that they have had therespect and taken the time to think about what they are going to askstudents to do. Surely, it is just as student-centred to think about aparticular group of students and try and come up with material andactivities which are suitable for them as it is just to go with the flow?Or am I straying away from the point of all this discussing.

Much more critical, it seems to me, is the fact that most teachers in


11/16



the world would perhaps feel less relaxed in true free-fall thannative-speakers do. I am not belittling non-native-speaker teachers -indeed many of them that I have worked with around the place haveastonishing competence in the language - but many of them are lesssecure than that. One of the things that helps such teachers ispreparation and material.

(Jeremy)

I'm very prepared for my lessons. I get to know the learners prettywell, e.g. I know who is shyer and who is more confident, who it'sbetter to ask to act as manager of a discussion.

My lessons are made up of different activities and I know that somethings can be allowed to develop and other things can run out of steam. Class management is important. I also take my learners'opinions and suggestions seriously. But I am ready to leave thespace for things to happen. 'Going with the flow' requires a lot of awareness and quick thinking on the part of the teacher, if by thatexpression we are to understand facilitating non-structuredspeaking.

I consider that I'm maturing to this kind of teaching - it's not the easyway out. To me the skill is setting up a structure within whichcommunication and creativity can arise. There are a lot of factorsinvolved in preparing the space, it's just that you don't know what willrise up in it. That's the learning vacuum. If you've brought in all thematerials and activities you don't leave much space for the learners -unless you do.

Have we had this one? You can only improvise when you'reextremely well-prepared. But the preparation isn't material in termsof armfulls of books, handouts etc, it's not visible.

(David) back to top

questions

One doubt (two really): if you trash the coursebook, don't you finishup with a methodology that is not going to suit all learners and alllearning styles? And secondly, don't many teachers and learners findthe coursebook comfortable, something to hang on to and buildaround, besides - with its examples and exercises and grammar reference sections - being both useful and necessary?

(Tom)

Quite a long time ago now, Luke mentioned his slight concern thatdogme seemed ideal for one-offs, but how would it run over wholecourses. This is now the issue I'm thinking about. I have to admit, attimes, I lose my nerve and out comes a worksheet. There again, it'susually one I have thought about myself, and it is at a time thestudents and I feel is relevant)so am I really losing my nerve, or am Iin fact, following a reasonable dogme-ish path?

(Graham)


12/16



One of the problems I encountered was `the face factor' - I know I'ma very focussed teacher with a highly professional persona - peoplesee me as very business like and thorough and `hard' (so I'm told)and non-nonsense kinda thing - and clearly they see me like thatycos that's the image I must project. So it was not easy for me to gointo a class and use behaviours that co-incidentally overlap with thevery behaviours of what one is wont to think of as `slack' teachers egI 've done no prep so let's just talk about whatever you wanna talkabout kind of thing. Has anyone else found this paradox-conundrumin `being dogme'?

(Ruth)

I was intrigued to find this sentence in the Trainee book of Penny'sUr's A course in Language teaching (it is included in a list of the prosand cons of coursebooks, for discussion): "A learner without acoursebook is more teacher dependent". Somehow it reminded meof that old feminist slogan: A woman needs a man like a fish needs abicycle. The learner needs a coursebook like a ..... needs a.....perhaps this could be our Xmas competition???

(Scott)

What is dogme?

(Jesse) back to top

routines

Something I do in the interests of capturing random input and also inthe interests of improving the students' ear and conversationalfluency is this:

when I say something to no one in particular I often ask a student torepeat what I've said - which they often do perfectly, but as areformulation. I might for example say, more or less thinking aloud,'let's have a go at this,' and a student might reformulate this as 'let'stry this.' We'd then look at the two and discuss what thedistinguishing characteristics are. I think the students' success inreformulating language they don't yet know or can't yet use, whichthey are able to do because the context is real, is proof of the valueof opening one's mind to the possibilities of random input.

So, for example, in a class yesterday, a police car went by: 'howwould you describe that sound?' ... 'we sometimes say that sirenswail ... what else wails (a baby, someone complaining when wail isused as a reporting verb, etc) .. Bob Marley and the Wailers ...'

I call this a back-of-the-envelope activity where I note either on theboard or, better, in board pen on paper when sitting with thestudents, what we can come up with in terms of synonyms,opposites, word family/lexical field work. It's a kind of continuousbrainstorm and review. Most of this involves language they alreadyknow, but ensures that when I or a student introduce language theydon't yet know, it is grounded in a real context and the language theyalready know.


13/16



(Luke) back to top

scaffolding

tasks

A colleague here in Barcelona and I have redesigned the CELTAcourse that we run to try as far as possible to bring it into line with atask based approach. I see this as being very consistent with the

issues that the dogme group has been discussing - learning is bestaccomplished when students have opportunities to use languagemeaningfully - both receptively and productively (this being backedup with a focus on form - as opposed to formS). While we have donethis, it is important to remember the context in which many recentgraduates of our courses will have to operate - the textbooks, schooland learner expectations they face, exams and syllabuses they haveto work to etc. I feel we would be doing them a serious disservice if we failed to equip them with tools and techniques for working withdiscrete language points. But even here what we can do is to helpthem to realise the limitations of working with language in this way,discuss language learning, draw out the default settings, and, most

importantly, help them to experience the buzz and pleasure that isfelt by all when a genuinely communicative activity takes off.

(Kar

Another very positive aspect of tbl for both learners and pre-servicetrainee teachers (and dogmetists!) is the teacher role that it implies -to set up and manage (in a limited classroom management sense of the words) a context in which students have lots of opportunity toexpress their own meanings.

(Karl) back to top

unplugged

vested Interests

whole language learning

...on the subject of the whole language movement.

For your information... A definition (from Strickland and Strickland,Un-covering the Curriculum):

Rather than a program to be followed, wholelanguage is a set of beliefs, a major tenet of which isthat language is best learned in authentic, meaningful situations, ones in which language is not separated into parts, ones in which language remains whole.Whole language integrates reading, writing, listening and speaking and defines the role of the teacher asone of facilitator and the role of the student as anactive participant in a community of learners.


14/16



A program, from Freeman and Freeman ESL/EFL Teaching:Principles for Success...

Learning goes from whole to part

Lessons should be learner-centred because learning is the active construction of knowledge

Lessons should have meaning and purpose for students now Learning takes place in social interaction

Reading, writing, speaking and listening all developtogether

Lessons should support students' first languages and cultures

Faith in the learner expands learning potential

And a Dogme orientation (from Strickland & Strickland)

Expensive elaborate materials are not needed whenimplementing whole language approaches. Studentsread texts that are familiar and meaningful, drawing on familiar concepts and experiences to which they can relate. It is not necessary to purchase elaborate"units" designed by publishing companies, material that often controls the curriculum by failing to consider student need and input. The whole language teacher does not worry about a pre- ordained sequence or hierarchy of skills; the curriculum becomes organized as teacher and students share planning (p. 18)

Needless to say, the whole language movement has been roundedon by grammar and phonics bigots, and associated with everythingthat is wrong with education and society. There must be somethingin it!

(Scott) back to top

eXams

It`s exam time again and, as David is DOS here and has given examcontent flexibility, so my UP-INT students have decided how theywant to be tested. Here is what they came up with:

Writing: a choice of tasks; description, short story or account (noformal writing but they have done this in class).

English in Use: a comprehension text with some answers open to


15/16



interpretation/discussion - meaning any reasonable answer isacceptable (in real life we interpret things according to opinion too);some kind of dialogue sentence writing; a cloze (not multiple choice)and sentence restructuring (i.e. putting the words in the right order).

Listening: This has already been done by a student who off his ownback volunteered a rendition of Rumplestiltskin with 15accompanying questions - which he had to create himself without atranscript. It was intended as a general class exercise but turned out

to be so well done that I decided to make it their test. It was about 20minutes in length and quite difficult but the students made me smileby scoring 9 to 13 out of 15 even though they heard it only once. Itwas a pleasant surprise.

Speaking: Always a difficult one but the agreement we reached wasfor free-speaking between students in pairs, with an `external`teaching observing and taking notes. A big improvement over themethod I tried last year of recording them, in one to oneconversations, in a seperate environment.

The general concept of the openness of these student

designed/requested tests, and the fact that they encourage andreward lateral/expansive thinking and interpretation, correlates wellwith my own views on teaching - i.e. we should reward our studentsfor thinking in 3 dimensions instead of restricting them to just 2; for example: this exercise requires you to put: `must`, `have to` or `needto` into the correct gap, and then give them sentences like: `TonightI ________ go home by 7pm.` In the key there would be just onecorrect answer but in real life all of them are applicable, dependingupon circumstance and opinion, so to me such artificial exercises arerestrictive and I`m delighted that the whole group has now woken upto that and grown to enjoy it.

Another point to make, for anyone who has doubts about studentdesigned/marked tests, is that once students see you respect their opinions, and that making mistakes is part of the learning processand not something to be scolded for, they don`t cheat or createstupidly easy tests - on the contrary they tend to make the testsmore difficult and mark themselves more harshly.

In keeping with Scott`s and David`s comments on dogme, thestrength of our discussion group is indeed that we are speaking fromfirst-hand experience from the classroom and we are not theorists or teachers who comment `with authority` on things they have never tried.

Hope you all enjoy your exams too.

(Richard B.) back to top

young learners

zone


16/16


Documents

Teaching Unplugged - Voices