Go With The Flow (Part 1 — Dogme: the dirtiest word in ELT)
By Scott Donald
It sounds dirty, but it isn’t. I’ve given a few talks on Dogme now, and almost all of them have been met with a few chuckles from the crowd. This is partly my fault. I certainly encouraged it in the early days by doing talks with names like Doing it Dogme Style. I’m resisting that kind of smut now. Not necessarily because my sense of humour has matured since then (it hasn’t), but we live in more fragile times, and I’m a coward.
Actually, that’s not what I mean about Dogme being a dirty word. I mean dirty in the sense of it being unpopular with an air of disapproval surrounding it. I believe that Dogme meets both these criteria. Its author, Scott Thornbury, may still be talking about it, but given that it’s closer to 20 years since its conceptualisation, discussion and adoption of the approach are lacking.
As for disapproval, I can think of many occasions where those in senior positions have all but winced when I’ve dared speak its name. I once mentioned Dogme in a job interview and I could almost hear the Director of Studies panicking down the phone, before shaking it off and steering the conversation back to safer territory.
The problem I have with this kind of disapproval, is that it often seems to be based it on what people have heard about Dogme, rather than the reality of what Thornbury and his co-author Luke Meddings set out in their book Teaching Unplugged.
That’s why I’m going to kick off this series of articles by defining Dogme. Think of it as an introduction for those who are new to the approach, and a clarification for others who need a refresher.
Dogme? Ehhh…It’s that thing where you go into a lesson without planning anything, right?
Well, no, not really. But at least comments like these go some way to explaining why DOSs have reacted so badly to it. Considering Teaching Unplugged consists mostly of activities that you can use in class with your students, this is a pretty poor summation of the approach. In fact, I recommend you get your hands on a copy of the book. It’s split into three sections: a definition of the approach (which I’ll quote from here); the activities (some of which I’ve demonstrated at conferences); and the implications of applying the Dogme approach (which we’ll look at in subsequent articles through action research). As much as I want you to read these articles and come to my talks, there really is no substitute for the book.
Ok… so what is it?
Dogme ELT (its proper name) is named after Dogme 95, a Danish filmmaking movement aimed at proving that quality films could be produced without special effects and elaborate techniques. The filmmakers believed that these contrived techniques created a ‘lack of reality’ in film (Krause, 2006), and that a minimalist approach would emphasise the true essence of film. It was through these ideas that Scott Thornbury found his metaphor for Dogme ELT. Like the filmmakers, Thornbury felt that aspects of ELT were also in need of this ‘rescue action’ (Meddings and Thornbury, 2009, p.3).
Thornbury’s article, A Dogma for EFL (Thornbury, 2000), adapted some of Dogme 95’s ideas for the world of ELT. This gained momentum in a Yahoo group (like Facebook, but for old people), which Thornbury used to develop his ideas for Dogme ELT.
Principles of Dogme
I’ve used the word approach to describe Dogme, but ultimately I don’t really care what it’s classified as - I like to save such semantics for the classroom. More importantly, Dogme is a way of reactive teaching that predates Thornbury’s article, and as he himself states, the conceptualisation of Dogme is simply a way of asserting this type of teaching as a ‘viable option’ (Thornbury, 2011). Incidentally, I think the grassroots element of Dogme (i.e. that it came from real teachers, talking about genuine classroom concerns) is one of its strongest attributes.
The principles of Dogme are underpinned by the belief that, ‘Learning opportunities happen best when learners are given some control over the content and the direction of the lesson’ (Thornbury, 2010a).
“Dogme is about teaching that,
· is conversation-driven.
· is materials-light.
· focuses on emergent language.” (Meddings and Thornbury, 2009, p.8)
The conversation-driven aspect of Dogme relates to the idea that the learners’ stories and ideas and their attempts to explain them, are the very essence of language (Meddings and Thornbury, 2009, p.24). It seeks to take the idea of conversation as the ‘product of learning’, and use it as the primary feature of learning; the idea being that the importance of conversation in everyday life should be reflected in the classroom (Meddings and Thornbury, 2009).
Dogme has been regarded as anti-materials, hence some of the pushback from DOSs and material writers, but Thornbury has been keen to show that the materials light approach is a ‘consequence, not a cause…of the methodology’ (Thornbury, 2010b). The rejection of materials is to ensure that input comes from the learners, and the teacher’s reaction to their emerging language, rather than the lesson being governed by a prescribed text or language focus.
Emergent language is that which arises as the learners attempt to communicate their desired message. This also includes their developing interlanguage; the middle ground that forms between their first and second language. Dogme encourages the teacher to consider this language and how best to deal with it.
Dogme in Practice
So far, so theoretical. What does it look like in practice? For me, Dogme is centered around the teacher’s ability to teach reactively and to micro-manage the lesson. This ultimately dictates the lesson’s quality and how useful it is for the students.
Some people have criticised the pressure that teaching without preparation could potentially press upon inexperienced teachers. However, Thornbury has attempted to address these concerns by stating that Dogme should not be about going into the classroom without a plan and playing it by ear, but instead about considering the students’ needs and having a clear direction for the lesson (Thornbury, 2011). As a teacher trainer, I often see stronger CELTA trainees who feel frustrated that this ability is not a bigger part of the course’s assessment criteria. Indeed, I know other trainers who have similar feelings.
As I said above. Teaching Unplugged contradicts idea that a Dogme teacher should be going into lessons empty-handed, by providing a list of activities for Dogme lessons. Teachers are told to encourage, explain and help learners through the activities, whilst highlighting, adjusting and extending their language (Meddings and Thornbury, 2009, p.25). Teachers are also expected to anticipate the possible language which might emerge in the lesson.
Here is a potential scenario for a Dogme lesson using the activity from Teaching Unplugged ‘Slices of life…’ (Meddings and Thornbury, 2009, p.41).
· Teacher draws a pie chart on the board and splits it in three: like, don’t like, don’t mind.
· Students ask questions trying to find out which things fall into these categories for the teacher, e.g. do you like housework? I don’t love it, but if I listen to music while doing it, it’s not so bad.
· Students add things to the three categories depending on the teacher’s response.
· Students then work in pairs repeating the same activity with each other.
· The teacher listens, encourages, and helps students with their language.
· Afterwards, in feedback, likes and dislikes are compared and then language feedback given.
Whilst the teacher may not have planned a specific language focus for such a lesson, possible emergent language could still be anticipated (e.g. gerunds and infinitives) in order to take some pressure off the teacher. Other activities from the book are freer and less predictable, such as responding to a stimulus like a thunderstorm by inviting students to react to the event (Meddings and Thornbury, 2009, p.33). Following the Dogme approach, the teacher can capture any language that comes from the students’ reactions and work with it. The suggestion in the book is for them to write adjectives describing how the storm makes them feel, which is arguably a nice idea, but what about something like conditionals for what they might do if there’s a powercut? In fact, the language being upgraded or corrected doesn’t even need to belong to the same grammar or lexical set (see the Alazne example, below).
I put together this chart for a recent talk on Dogme to demonstrate that there are aspects of the approach that teachers are probably doing already. I also wanted to show that this was something they could take further.
As you can see, I definitely feel that there is a scale to this approach. And I hope that the first two points are already common practice for most language teachers. But in terms of taking it further, I’ll finish with a recent example of derailing in my classroom, which demonstrates the freer, more reactive Dogme teaching, and I’ll save the true ‘Hardcore Dogme’ or what is sometimes called ‘deep-end Dogme’ for the following articles.
So I was recently teaching young learners/wee ones/the age group I feel least confident with. I hadn’t noticed that one of the girls, Alazne, had already finished and had taken it upon herself to begin drawing a portrait of me. She called me over once she had finished and mischievously presented it to me. I hadn’t been expecting it, and when I realised what it was, I started laughing. Before I could decide how to handle the situation, the other students had already started flipping over their notebooks to do the same and to see if they could get a similar reaction from me.
Now, I should probably have seized the opportunity to embrace my authoritative side, but the experimental and vain side of me decided to run with it. I projected a timer on the board and gave them three minutes to finish drawing me (who said teaching is for those with a god complex?) While they were drawing, I started writing up various nouns related to my appearance, some of which they knew, others which they didn’t. When they finished, I allowed them to compare their drawings, have a giggle, and then we went through the vocabulary and I exploited the opportunity to push stronger students, getting them to add some adjectives. As I’ve suggested above, I didn’t constrain myself to one lexical set (clothes, physical descriptions, adjectives of colour, size, etc.).
Is it dangerous to lead my young learners to believe they can derail my lesson? Quite possibly. Did I just want some cute drawings to show off with ? Quite probably. But were those five minutes wasted? Did the students benefit from the activity more than the crossword that I had intended to give them instead? My feeling is that they did. I’d be interested in hearing your thoughts. Personally, I feel I could have taken the reactive teaching even further, and this is something I’ll be considering in my subsequent piece on Dogme.
Join me for the next article where I share my own experiences of giving over an entire lesson to ‘hardcore Dogme’ in the name of action research. And as always, get in touch here, or via Facebook, to share your own thoughts and experiences.
Bibliography
Meddings, L. & Thornbury, S., 2009, Teaching Unplugged: Dogme in English Language Teaching
Thornbury’s website. Have a search for ‘Dogme’ and you’ll find several useful articles <http://www.scottthornbury.com/articles.html>
Thornbury, S., 2010a, Youtube:Doing a Dogme Lesson.<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5ZPlrMajDA>
Thornbury, S., 2010b, <Youtube:Dogme Myths. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E4pjfEgEbG4>>
Thornbury, S., 2011, Youtube: Responses to Dogme. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZx04ehtMfk>
Meddings, L., 2011, British Council: A Dogme lesson with Luke Meddings at Exeter<https://englishagenda.britishcouncil.org/continuing-professional-development/teacher-educator-framework/understanding-teaching-context/dogme-lesson-luke-meddings-exeter>
Thornbury, S., Speaking Unplugged:30 Activities for One-to-One Classes <https://www.onlinetefltraining.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/SpeakingUnplugged-30Activities.pdf>
