The Dogma of Dogme

I still need to answer one of my reader's questions on what do with her problem class but as I'll be starting off my posting with

"As a dogmeist..."

I thought I'd better give you a heads up on what dogme actually is.

The term dogme is borrowed from a film movement initiated by Lars von Trier in a backlash against the overuse of the monomyth, Journey of the Hero, uncovered by Joseph Campbell and made famous by Chris Vogler.

Have you ever been watching a film and had a premoniton or two: the 'oh, right, everything in his natural world is just about to change, sigh. I bet he'll meet an old man right about now who'll tell him what he has to do.

Or, wait, time for some suffering - he probably won't win this fight, ah here's the pretty girl, they'll hook up - whoops, he's going to learn a lesson now and finally, everything will be right again.'


Done that?

Well, basically, that's because you've been subconsciously aware of the mythic structure all along.

Its plot points are the structure of most Hollywood movies, post 70's, and is the backbone of Matrix, Star Wars, The Terminator, The Pursuit of Happyness, Whale Rider, The Lion King or even American Quilt.


However, before I bore you, what does all of this have to do with textbooks, methodology and teaching English?



Er, pick up the nearest course book on your desk. Next time you're in the library, compare it against Headway and against just about anything produced since. Whether they've added a handful of unrealistic case studies or dilemmas, got gap fills or pointless vocabulary exercises, been jam-packed with grammar explanations or don't have any, they're all playing off a similar structure.

Somewhere in the deep dungeons of most ELT publishing houses, someone whose name we don't know, but at a random guess he's not a socio-linguist, has done some kind of very-necessary-to-show-on-the-page-so-it-feels-and-looks-like-Headway-because-the-teachers-might-be-afraid-if-it's-different kind of breakdown which goes -- well, if I knew the plot points I'd tell you.

Now there's no doubt in my mind that someone much cleverer out there than me is reading this and has figured out the structure of your average textbook so I'll just ask go on ahead and tell you: share it with us!

I mean do the publishers even care that the unit themes they've chosen have no direct relationship to the following one?

That they rarely have anything to do with our students' lives?

That the lexis presented on one page doesn't show up in the next unit or even the one after that?

That there's no space on the page to write?

That from one house to another they're parodies of each other?

More in kin with Howard the Duck, The Postman, Dumb & Dumberer than Citizen Kane.

Anyhoo, let me get on with talking about the alternative to all this.


Dogme in ELT

Back in '00, Scott Thornbury highjacked the phrase dogme to launch his, often accused-of-being-Luddite methodology, burn-the-books-and-talk-to-the-students message, based on frustration and an anti-wizardry battle yelp for teaching practices to become more student-centered.

Thornbury defined teaching without a course book as:

• conversation driven
• materials light and
• focusing on emergent language

Sharing subjects and themes, which

• are relevant to the learner
• provide a space for the voice of the learner
• scaffold, shape and support the students' conversations
  
• pay attention to features of the emergent language.

In his latest book, Teaching Unplugged, co-authored with Luke Meddings, they stress that teaching practices should

• encourage a dialogic process,
  
• acknowledge that knowledge is co-constructed
• empower the learner
  
• engage the learners and
• trigger the learning process which is already there

Basically adding a bit more of Before Sunrise to the classroom.

In the same way that Christopher Columbus was not the first to 'discover' the Caribbean and Alexander Graham Bell didn't invent the telephone, Thornbury and Meddings neither invented nor discovered the process of teaching without coursebooks.

Teachers all over the world have been working without textbooks for a very long time (probably as long as English teachers have been around) some because

• there is no choice nor access to materials
• their students have requested this
  
• they like supplementary materials, making their own stuff and others
  
• are simply not happy with the standardization, monomythic production of many an ELT publisher.

Are you one of these teachers?

In the way that Bell made the phone sexy (or was that Steve from Apple?) and Columbus renamed the islands and charted maps so we could all go have great vacations, Thornbury and Medding's explorations into this theme are turning teaching sans parachute into a very cool dialogic methodology so I, for one, am very happy referring to myself as a dogmeist.


Which makes it kind of difficult to answer S.F's question regarding what she should do with her runaway class.

Would you like to help me answer her?


What about you?

Want to join the 'movement'? Then follow the links below and/or buy Teaching Unplugged: Dogme in English Language Teaching (Amazon UK / US here)
- with its in-depth analysis of the practice and relevancy of dogme in our modern classrooms: highly readable, packed with teaching tips and lesson ideas
(some new, some very 700 Classroom Activities
and some surprisingly innovative).

Or do you think this whole dogme thing is a load of tosh? Whatever your views, feel free to add in your 2c, nickels or dimes by clicking on the comments below.

Useful links related to this posting:

Dogme, the movement

• Dogme (film genre)
• Technology and culture, the film reader
  
• Interview with Lars von Trier (article)
• Interview with Lars von Trier (video)
  
• Dogme'00 in music (post Luddite parody)
  

Dogme in ELT

• What does a dogme classroom look like?
  
• Nik Peachey' interview with Scott Thornbury while in SecondLife
  
• Article by Scott Thornbury on Dogme
• Article by Luke Meddings on Dogme
  
• Article on Dogme 2.0 by Howard Vickers
• A teacher's view of Dogme (strict dogmeist in a way I'm not)
  
• The Dogme Yahoo Group
• Delta Publishing ELT methodology /contents+sample pages of Teaching Unplugged
  

Best,
Karenne
p.s. dogme is the danish word for dogma

n.b Most of the photographs on this page are by Pareerica on Flickr and a very special thanks must go to her for allowing these fabulous pics to be used under a creative commons license.


Update 13 May 2009

And now there's even Dogme ICT, spearheaded by Gavin Dudeney, looks rather tempting! More AI than Dogville!

In the age of Twitter and Facebook, what's happening to English vocabulary?

In one of the LinkedIn groups I belong to, the question was asked about whether on not platforms such as Twitter/Facebook/Orkut or Instant Messenger services are bad for one's vocabulary.

Anirudh Maitra, entrepreneur and designer of weboword feels very strongly about holding on to the 'old' vocabulary.

He believes that the usage of web2.0 platforms will affect spelling and due to the speed required in response, young people will repetitively use the same vocabulary from a restrictive pool.

Considering the fact that the number of words in the English language is growing exponentially, as a direct result of the lexis coming in from all of these new technologies, coupled with the effect of globablization (other cultures learning English and bringing along with them a variety of new words of their own), I think that's nonsense.

So this is what I responded:

• Language is dynamic. Words that remain necessary, stay.

• Those we no longer need, go. It's simply the nature of the game.

• We don't need to hold on, we need to move with the river - the river has its own force. Fight the river: drown.

And it seems that we're not the only ones pontificating the question. The Boston Globe is asking whether language is dead or simply just evolving here and Grammar Girl's come up with her own Strunk and Twite.


What do you think?

Do we really still need words like eleemonosynary?*



Useful books related to this posting:

The Adventure of English. The Biography of a Language (Sceptre) Absolute genius

Mother Tongue: The English Language

A History of English: A Sociolinguistic Approach (Blackwell Textbooks in Linguistics)


Best,
Karenne
p.s. Thanks Neal for the crazy word via twitter - and no I am not going to give you the meaning as it all too perfectly supports my point!

What can your Business English students teach you?

I have another great secret.

My students are incredible people.

They are bankers, managers, managing bankers; they are CEOs and CFOs, web programmers and designers; they are parents, they are wives and husbands, they belong to groups and associations - they work in the Energy sector, the Automobile industry, in Finance and Marketing.

They're champions.


They have hobbies. They have dreams, ambitions. They've failed at stuff, won awards and prizes, done a lot with their lives. They certainly know a heck of a lot more about business plans and web design than I ever will.


So you know what I do?

I listen and learn.

Sometimes they're so passionate about all the things they can teach me how to do, that while they're sharing their immeasurable knowledge, they completely forget they're speaking in English. Sometimes, I feel like I'm floundering in a sea of vocabulary that I'm sort of, kind of aware of but don't really know what it really means (the investment bankers).

I get them to teach the stuff they do in their normal lives as if I were one of their pupils.

I concentrate on the structure of the sentences while they do this, correcting their mistakes subtly, simply as a part of the conversation and encourage them to pay attention, to self-correct and auto-correct each other.

And all the while they are becoming completely themselves in my language.


Are your students special people too?

Who are they? What knowledge have they got, what do they really know heaps about that they 'd enjoy teaching you? Are you willing to let them be the bosses?

What is something you're interested in learning about? Or better yet, what is something you never ever thought you'd be interested in knowing more about? Are you sure? You've got some free schooling up ahead of you if you want it.

I must warn you, though, this exercise comes with a warning: your life, hobbies and interests could seriously change beyond repair.

Best,
Karenne
p.s By any chance did you already do this? Tell us what you learned about!

I dislike the word homework

I was just about to turn off the Kalinago and go on over to write in How-to-Learn-English, about idioms and ballparks but just before I do that I just gotta get something off my chest.

I hate the word homework.

I teach mainly adults these days and you know what happens to their faces when you say '...and your homework is...! Ya, you know. But think about the little ones, the kids, if you've ever taught these. They like homework. It's fun.

Remember when you were a kid?

It was fun! Always something cool to do, drawing or making stuff. Sticking and gluing, putting together projects and talking to Mummy and Daddy. And getting praised by the teacher the next day.

Even math was enjoyable because with a little bit of work, erasing, more work, you could easily get to the solution.

Remember?

Somewhere along the way from childhood to early teens the word homework went and got itself distorted and it just began to signify pain: hard annoying tasks with no tangible value. Your students were teens once too so...

Newsflash: they still feel the same way.

It's not that learning English isn't fun - it really is - it's the word that's the problem. Yuck. Homework.

What am I doing about this? You don't really expect me to twitter on without a suggestion, do you? LOL. You know me, I've been experimenting for over a year now. I've some alternative phrases so don't laugh, they work:

Pre task activity &
Post task activity

Today, in class, I asked my little group of students at an investment bank "So, guys, what would you like to do for your post-task?"

V told me he is going to watch part 3 of the Taleb interview on CNBC because he didn't get around to doing this yet and M is going to continue developing his map of collocations from our dissection of a Nokia investor relations speech (er, a future blog post, coming soon)

No grumbling. No fuss.

'So what's the plan for this week's PTA?' I ask.

MA at the other bank is going to make a poster of linking words - she's having a bit of trouble keeping them straight and P is going to write up a short email about Chinese investments; G is very busy this week but she might listen to the Business Spotlight podcast while running. H is going to learn about RFID technology via slideshare as he's got a client in this field.

They choose. They do. It's really as simple as that.

Best,
Karenne

p.s - What do you think? Want to give it a go? (You'll feel a bit strange at first, getting that yucky word out of your active vocabulary - actually I still smirk when I've got a brand new group and I have to explain to them that we're not using the word homework - they do look at me like I'm nuts - but it's working!) Or perhaps you've got an alternative phrase to PTA/ post and pre-task activity?

Or do you just think I've been teaching way too long and finally flipped out? Whichever it is, do let me know your thoughts as I love sharing and learning from you guys too... xK

I hate the words "Blended Learning"

I woke up this morning thinking about tags.

Aside from the fact that tags are things which hang off the collar of your shirt, tags  - in the world of the web - are used by people who create content (text on web-pages, blogs, media etc) and they are used to bring these like items together.  The tag system is at its finest form on delicious where they have even gone a step further and created bundles (a way of creating uber categories for your tags) but you can also find them on youtube, slideshare and just about any web 2.0 website.

Examples of tags include the blue labels at the top of this and all my posting - they're there so that if you want to find another blog entry which is similar then all you have to do is click on one of those and travel around.



But I'm getting distracted.

Back to my point, the reason for writing this post:: I really, really, really, hate the term blended learning.

It doesn't say anything to me - a blended what? A mix of... oh man, what does that mean exactly?  Are we talking about mixing skills or are we talking about mixing styles... I mean if I use a tape-recorder instead of my smartphone to listen to an audio recording then I'm now not blending?   Why is that device any different to any other device.... And how exactly do I tag that in my posts - using the keywords blended+learning? Nah, don't like it. I just can't do it anymore, I simply cannot get my fingers to type this phrase nor to make my mouth to move that way.  In fact I can't even get my head around it.

I even looked it up on wikipedia and then got a rather in-depth explanation that even they'd like to be cleaned up. The explanation brought me somewhat closer to its meaning, I guess, but sorry love the concept hate the brand, way too stuffy for my tastes.

So, you know what... from now on guys, I'm going to refer to the whole teaching with technology as  TwIT: http://kalinago.blogspot.com/search/label/TwIT

There's a little irony in there but ya kno', it says what it is.


Best,

Karenne