10 video clips that will help you to enter the world of Dogme ELT

Time for a bit of end-of-year reflection… and video clips.

Have you ever actually tried to organize a piss up in a brewery? I mean, there’s this huge assumption that this is the one single action against which all other efforts at organization are to be measured. I for one don’t buy it. I’ve been on a couple of tours of breweries and let me tell you they don’t just happen. Firstly, you have to organize the event way in advance, book the travel arrangements, get everyone to meet at a prearranged time, get them onto and off a bus and make sure they don’t get lost when you’re going round the brewery. Secondly, you then have to make sure that you get as much booze down you in the allotted twenty minutes of complimentary drinking time as is humanly possible. No, arranging a drinking session in a brewery is wrongly perceived to be the one activity so easy to organize that all other efforts at organization use it as a yardstick of comparative difficulty.

There is a phenomenon in ELT which suffers from a similar level of misconception: the Dogme lesson. For me, Dogme is a frighteningly dangerous concept, yet one that has positively influenced my own teaching. I work in an environment which is heavily content-based, as we are trying to prepare our learners for the language they will encounter in their university courses. Equally heavy are the demands of assessment and that all learners receive *standard* input. Many people reading this blog will undoubtedly find themselves in a similar position, at least in terms of the role of assessment. What are you to do when you are shackled by having to do the same as other teachers? My response is to use Dogme as a lens through which to view what I have to do. Sure, I have a text to cover, a listening to do, or objectives to try and meet. How I go about this, and the degree to which the students in my class are involved in the flow of these activities has changed greatly in the last few years and in the last twelve months in particular. I spent many years making the text or the tape script the core around which my lessons would unfold. Sure, I would incorporate a variety of activities and try to pick up the pace when things seems to be dragging and cool things off when necessary, but it was essentially nearly always coming from me. The toughest thing for a teacher can be to accept that the other people in the room might have just as much value in terms of input into how we go about meeting objectives. Nevertheless, this is an important realization for one very simple reason: my classes have been more enjoyable and led to more learning – for me and undoubtedly for my students – since I’ve been employing a strategy of ‘how can *we* get there?’

Adopting a materials light philosophy when you’re teaching a content based course is no easy thing. Indeed, this is where I diverge from the tenets of Dogme ELT. Nevertheless, activities that I used to view as being peripheral to the main agenda of the day, i.e. the reading text or the coursebook listening exercise, I now see things such as a video clip related to the issue in the text that raises heated classroom discussion and learner generated language input to be more central to my teaching philosophy. Where once these were mere appetizers, they are now increasingly the main course.

It seems pertinent at this time of the year to reflect back on the course the last year has taken. While I wouldn’t describe myself as having undergone any extreme volte-face, I do think the way I’ve gone into class each day has fundamentally changed forever. I’m as critical of Dogme ELT as anyone, but this is simply because I don’t want to see it become a ‘bag of tricks’ methodology: Let’s go into class, just start chatting and then after a while I’ll do that activity that I saw in the back of Teaching Unplugged. Would this honestly be any improvement on Headwayism? Just like those who arrange the piss up in the brewery, those of us who try to place the learner at the center of the class know that there’s so much more to it than walking in and seeing what comes up.

I don’t regard Dogme ELT as a methodology. Rather, as I mentioned earlier, I regard it as a lens through which to view what I have to do. You can teach content literally – open book to page 42 and do exercise 1.4 – or you can engage learners in the subject. The former approach is easy and numbingly boring: trust me, I did this for years. The latter can actually lead to learning in an engaging and motivating environment.

If you’re not entirely sure what the Hell I’ve been talking about so far, I selective a festive collection of video clips that I hope will inspire you in the coming year. Although they don’t appear in any particular order, I’ve deliberately spread out the Scott Thornbury clips so that you get some idea about the range of people who are being influenced by this learner centered philosophy.

1. Dogme for People Doing Business in English

In her talk at the BESIG Annual Conference in Bielefeld, Germany Candy van Olst argues that: The video highlights the current move in Business English towards totally needs-based, learner-focused language training, demands an approach that is as individually tailored as possible. Business people do not have the luxury of time to explore and discover the language for themselves – they need guided and directed training. This talk looks at how the three fundamental precepts of Dogme are able to meet these demands successfully in the Business English classroom, without recourse to any additional materials.

2. Responses to Dogme

High priest of Dogme ELT Scott Thornbury discusses 5 typical responses to the idea of Dogme ELT. The responses Scott addresses in this video are:

1. Haven’t we always been doing that? Good teaching is good teaching and always has been.
2. It’s OK for some contexts / It’s only sensible for experienced teachers.
3. It’s prescriptive / descriptive.
4. It’s evil to promote dogme among inexperienced teachers.
5. It changes the way people think about teaching.

3. Bethany Cagnol interviews Dale Coulter

TESOL President Bethany Cagnol interviews Dale Coulter on reflective practice and blogging. Dale is still a relatively new teacher, yet he has embraced the unplugged philosophy and writes about it quite beautifully in his blog, which you should immediately start reading.

4. Doing a Dogme lesson on a course like the DELTA

Scott Thornbury answers the question: Should I do a Dogme lesson as part of my DELTA course experimental practice? A few years ago I would have laughed at the very notion of this. Although I’m glad I examined TBL when I did the Dip, a part of me wishes I’d had the guts to take the unplugged plunge.

5. Teaching Unplugged – Teaching Practice

Martin Sketchley – a diamond geezer BTW – delivers a formal Teaching Practice at the University of Sussex with an attempted unplugged lesson. Yep, this is what teaching unplugged looks like.

Martin’s full lesson plan and reflection is available here.

6. Dogme Myths

That man Scott Thornbury attempts to dispel some myths about the language teaching approach popularly known as Dogme ELT. I have some issues with this particular clip which I intend to develop into a fully blown blog post at some point in the future. Let me know what you think of this attempt to bust the myths.

7. A Dogme Blog Challenge

This is Dave Dodgson’s video response to the 4th installment of Kalinago English’s Dogme blog challenge. Dave is a teacher in Ankara and has fully embraced the philosophy of materials light teaching. Karenne Sylvester remains one of my favourite ELT bloggers – sorry again for my lack of comments, Karenne – and last year she set fellow professionals a series of Dogme related challenges. Dave writes an excellent blog about his teaching (and learning) and I hope this will tempt you to read about his educational journey.

8. The Secret History of Methods: A Discussion with Scott Thornbury

A common question in our profession is “what’s the latest method?” suggesting that the concept of method persists, despite recent attempts to bury it. Drawing on a collection of old textbooks and training manuals, Mr. Thornbury reviews the history of language teaching methods, so as to both critique it, and to draw some lessons from past practices. He also shows how methods can be described in terms of certain key parameters, and address the question as to whether “Dogme ELT” is in fact a method.

9. English Central in conversation with Scott Thornbury and Luke Meddings

Scott Thornbury and the other spiritual leader of the unplugged movement Luke Meddings talk about their book, “Teaching Unplugged”. About a decade ago, Scott and Luke made the argument for “Dogme ELT”, the idea being that the classroom should be materials light with a focus on student-generated language and content.

This book, the background to which they discuss in this video, is a culmination of the ideas and arguments that have emerged, giving teachers an introduction to this approach, as well as offering some practical ideas for implementation.

10. Engaging hard-to-reach learners through conversation

In this video of a webinar from a recent IATEFL BESIG event Luke Meddings talks us through a series of enlightening case studies that illustrate how we can teach unplugged. I’ve never actually seen Luke speak live and so have had to make do with clips like this, which is enough for now.

If you know of any other great Dogme inspired videos, please let me know in the comments section below.