Snippets from the book by Luke Meddings & Scott Thornbury

1. [Teaching ]
[snippets from the book by Luke Meddings & Scott Thornbury]
amin neghavati
neghavati@gmail.com

2. http://the-round.com

4. Dogme 95 & Dogme ELT
• A filmmaking movement set up by a group of Danish
filmmakers who challenged what they saw as cinema’s
dependency on special effects, technical wizardry and fantasy.
The emphasis on the here-and-now requires the filmmaker to
focus on the actual story and its relevance to the audience.

5. Dogme 95 & Dogme ELT
• A teaching movement set up by a group of English teachers
who challenge what they consider to be an over-reliance on
materials and technical wizardry in current language teaching.
The emphasis on the here-and-now requires the teacher to
focus on the actual learners and the content that is relevant
to them.

6. Dogme Philosophy
• Education is communication and dialogue. It is not the
transference of knowledge.
Paulo Freire, Brazilian
educationalist and author
of ‘Pedagogy of the
Oppressed’

7. Dogme Philosophy
• The only question asked in a school should be by the pupils.
A.S.Neill. Founder of the
progressive school
‘Summerhill’

8. Dogme Philosophy
• Success depends less on materials, techniques and linguistic
analyses, and more on what goes on inside and between the
people in the classroom.
Farl Stevick, humanist
English language teacher
and thinker

9. Dogme Philosophy
• To most truly teach, one must converse; to truly converse is to
teach.
Roland Tharp & Ronald
Gallimore, reforming
educationalists and
authors of ‘Rousing Minds
to Life’

10. Dogme Philosophy
• A good teacher cannot be fixed in a routine…. During
teaching, each moment requires a sensitive mind that is
constantly changing and constantly adapting.
Bruce Lee, kung fu
practitioner and film star

11. Ten Key Dogme Principles
• Materials-mediated teaching is the ‘scenic’ route to learning,
but the direct route is located in the interactivity between
teachers and learners, and between the learners themselves.

12. Ten Key Dogme Principles
• The content most likely to engage learners and to trigger
learning processes is that which is already there, supplied by
‘the people in the room’.

13. Ten Key Dogme Principles
• Learning is a social and dialogic process, where knowledge is
co-constructed rather than ‘transmitted’ or ‘imported’ from
teacher/coursebook to learner.

14. Ten Key Dogme Principles
• Learning can be mediated through talk, especially talk that is
shaped and supported (ie scaffolded) by the teacher.

15. Ten Key Dogme Principles
• Rather than being acquired , language (including grammar)
emerges: it is an organic process that occurs given the right
conditions.

16. Ten Key Dogme Principles
• The teacher’s primary function, apart from promoting the
kind of classroom dynamic which is conducive to a dialogic
and emergent pedagogy, is to optimise language learning
affordances, by, for example, directing attention to features of
the emergent language.

17. Ten Key Dogme Principles
• Providing space for the learner’s voice means accepting that
the learner’s beliefs, knowledge, experiences, concerns and
desires are valid contents in the language classroom.

18. Ten Key Dogme Principles
• Freeing the classroom from third-party, imported materials
empowers both teachers and learners.

19. Ten Key Dogme Principles
• Texts, when used, should have relevance for the learner, in
both their learning and using contexts.

20. Ten Key Dogme Principles
• Teachers and learners need to unpack the ideological baggage
associated with English Language Teaching materials- to
become critical users of such texts.

21. Three core precepts
• Dogme is about teaching that
is conversation-driven.
is materials-light.
focuses on emergent language.

22. ‘The importance of interaction in not
simply that it creates learning
opportunities, it is that it constitutes
learning itself.’
Dick Allwright

23. Conversation-driven
• Conversation …
– is language at work.
– is discourse.
– is interactive, dialogic and communicative.
– scaffolds learning.
– promotes socialism.

24. ‘Communicative competence is a much
wider concept than accuracy. Learn to
value fluency, confidence and
imagination as well as accuracy.
Recognise that accuracy will, whatever
methodology is employed, always be
the last element of competence to be
acquired.’
Michael Lewis

25. Conversation-driven
• In a task-based approach, the teaching-learning cycle starts
with a fluency activity, and the learner’s production forms the
raw material for subsequent language-focused work.
• In fact, a Dogme approach shares many of the beliefs and
features of a task-based approach.

26. Conversation-driven
• Traditional language teaching:
– analysis and production of sentence-level language features, e.g. verb
tenses.
• The Dogme Approach:
– analysis and production of larger stretches of language (ie discourse),
e.g. connected talk.

27. ‘Language always happens as text,
and not as isolated words and
sentences. From an aesthetic, social
or educational perspective it is the
text which is the significant unit of
language.’
Gunther Kress

28. Conversation-driven
A Dogme approach favours conversation:
not just as the end, but as the means of
language learning.
How?

29. Conversation-driven
• By making the classroom a discourse community in its own
right, where each individual’s identity is validated, and where
learners can easily claim the right to speak.
• A conversational mode of classroom talk would seem to be
better suited to establishing such a community than would a
didactic one.

30. Materials-light

31. Materials-light
• Basic principles for a whole language approach: (Ynonne & David Freeman)
 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 learners now.
 Learning takes place in social interaction.
 Reading, writing, speaking and listening all develop together.
 Lessons should support learners’ first languages and cultures.
 Faith is the learner expands learning potential.

32. ‘Students themselves are in a unique
position to look for relevant resource
materials. They know what their own
needs and interests are.’
David R. Hall

33. Focus on Emergent Language
• Uncovering vs. covering (John Wade’s experience)
• Communication vs. code
• Process vs. product
• Emergence vs. acquisition
• Second language vs. first language
• Responsive teaching vs. pre-emptive teaching

34. ‘The class is not a class in the
traditional sense, but a meeting-
place where knowledge is sought
and not where it is transmitted.
Paulo Freire

35. Focus on Emergent Language
• Ten crucial strategies to encourage learners to engage with
emergent language:
Reward
emergent
language!
Retrieve it! Repeat it! Recast it!
Report it! Recycle it! Record it!
Research
it!
Reference
it!
Review it!

36. http://www.amazon.com/dp/1905085192
http://www.deltapublishing.co.uk/titles/methodology/teaching-unplugged
Why not buy
the book?

37. Unplugged Websites & Blogs
• http://www.thornburyscott.com
• http://lukemeddings.wordpress.com
• http://www.thornburyscott.com/tu/portal.htm
• http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/seminars/20-steps-
teaching-unplugged
• http://teachertrainingunplugged.com
• http://www.mikejharrison.com

38. neghavati@gmail.com