Teaching Unplugged: Dogme in English Language Teaching

Delta Teacher Development Series

by Luke Meddings, Scott Thornbury

Teaching Unplugged is the first book to deal comprehensively with the approach in English Language Teaching known as Dogme ELT. It challenges not only the way we view teaching, but also the way we view being a teacher.

Dogme ELT advocates teaching ‘unplugged’: a materials-light, conversation-driven philosophy of teaching that, above all, focuses on the learner and on emergent language.
Teaching Unplugged contains three distinctive parts A, B and C which focus in turn on theory, practice and development:

A:
• A background to the ideas behind teaching unplugged.
• A detailed explanation of the core principles behind Dogme ELT.
• An invitation to reflect on the best way to learn a language and, consequently, to teach it.

B:
• A bank of activities that teachers can use right away and which help them ‘unplug their teaching’ from the start.
• Activities that involve little or no preparation, often requiring no more than pen, paper and the people in the room.
• Tips, techniques and key terms to facilitate a new approach to teaching.

C:
• A reflection on questions relating to how Dogme ELT can be applied in different teaching contexts.
• An in-depth examination of the issues and implications of adopting this new style of teaching.

Genres: Teaching, Education, Nonfiction, Language, Reference

104 pages, Hardcover

First published April 2, 2009

Reviews

[Michal Golis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great as this book's potential is I'm not sure it has been met completely. Had it been a tad bit longer, real-life examples could have been added of working with the emergent language - a part that I personally felt was discussed all too briefly considering its crucial role in developing student's awareness of the formal aspects of language. The activities proposed also seem to be tailored mainly for a 1-hour class and, while with more communicative students they can be expounded on fairly easily, more follow-up tasks would be welcome.
With all that being said, how badly did I need someone like Meddings and Thornbury to help me grow as a communicative teacher (still a looong way to go), as well as justify much of what I had already gravitated towards intuitively prior to discovering Dogme. Teaching Unplugged is a great introduction to what might turn out to be a life-long journey of discovery and learning. It provides a fresh outlook on ESL teaching for those who for one reason or another don't feel overly enthusiastic about the current textbook or method-based practice. It is not a methodology to serve as the be-all and end-all of teaching in all contexts and situations, yet it forms lens that can dramatically change your view of what a language classroom has the potential of becoming if you have an open mind and active interest in your students as persons.

[Betty C. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Whether or not you decide to follow the ever-evoloving tenets of dogme language teaching, if you are a foreign language teacher, you should read this book. I will not go into a debate about dogme, but I can say that "Teaching Unplugged" helped me develop a more personal relationship with my students, be a more confident teacher, and adopt an approach that now allows me to do less with more, thus simplifying my lesson planning and freeing up more time for independent research on all aspects of ELT.

[Olga Yolgina · Rating 4 out of 5]

A thorough explanation of a solid approach.

I’ve been interested in finding out what exactly the Dogme approach entails and how I can use it in my classes. This has been an insightful journey and thought I don’t see myself burning all my coursebooks and going 100% into Dogme teaching, I found tons of ideas that with a bit of tweaking can be incorporated in my mostly lexically approached lessons.
A must read for any CPD-oriented teacher, even if just to understand what Dogme is.

[Melvyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

I find the primary reason for not slavishly following a syllabus is simply that advanced students often know a lot of it already, and they need more individual attention. Dogme or no Dogme, a teacher needs to respond flexibly to student requirements, and learner-centred approaches can certainly help in my experience. Alas, some old-school schools require a bit of a culture-shift to accommodate this focus, but the authors here argue quite convincingly IMO that the time is ripe and the market is ready for a greater focus on individual requirements.

I am not very comfortable with this use of ‘Dogme’ as a kind of umbrella trademark for all the whole-language learning techniques that have long been in use to accommodate students' individual needs beyond coursebooks and curricula. Do we really need to fetishize an anti-coursebook approach as much as the coursebooks themselves? All very Hegelian. Yawn. Still the authors themselves will occasionally admit that trying Dogme isn’t an all-or-nothing affair. Teachers can have their Dogme moments.

“Dogme: 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.”

Now I can understand the desire to dispense with glossy coursebooks, but downplaying online material too is like throwing the bath out with the baby IMO. I would normally encourage students to use concordances, corpora and other online research aids in the classroom. If it empowers them to contribute in a more informed way then I’d say go for it.

Anyway, some of the philosophy behind Dogme might sound a bit more-holistic-than-thou and/or overly ideological, but I find that adopting the persona of some ditzy American situation comedy teacher :-) can put the underlying message across to students in a digestable form… (because even teaching methodology can be a fun and profitable conversation topic, especially when the students are themselves teachers). :-)

Some quotes:

“The major tenet underlying whole language learning is that:
... 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 as one of facilitator and the role of the student as an active participant in a community of learners.

• 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 in the learner expands learning potential.

Since its inception, Dogme has had the reputation of being a movement whose goal it is, if not actually to burn coursebooks, at least to banish them from the classroom, along with any other materials and technological aids that teachers now take for granted. Dogme proponents have been labelled as luddites, iconoclasts, and ELT ‘Amish folk’. This reputation is not entirely unfounded, of course.

Over twenty-five years ago, Gillian Brown noted that coursebooks promoted a kind of English that she called ‘cosmopolitan English’ because ‘it assumes a materialistic set of values in which international travel, not being bored, positively being entertained, having leisure, and above all, spending money casually and without consideration of the sum involved in the pursuit of these ends, are the norm’

You may feel that the learners’ aspirations are being manipulated in the interests of globalisation and/or the hegemony of English, and that coursebooks simply serve these wider interests.

The critique of language textbooks, on the grounds of their atomistic approach to syllabusing and their aspirational cultural content, is part of a wider, anti-positivist, post-colonialist discourse that has its roots in what is known as ‘critical pedagogy’.

‘Liberating education consists of acts of cognition, not transferrals of information.’ -- Paulo Freire

Freire proposed that the educational process should be grounded in the local needs and concerns of the participants. ‘Whoever enters into dialogue does so with someone about something; and that something ought to constitute the new content of our proposed education.’ This meant basing learning on themes that were elicited in consultation with the learners themselves, and replacing the imported texts with the learners’ own texts.

Expensive elaborate materials are not needed when implementing whole language approaches.Students read texts that are familiar and meaningful, drawing on familiar concepts and experiences to which they can relate.

One thing that there is no shortage of in this digital era is texts - and texts in English. In fact, the enormous availability and accessibility of texts - both written and spoken - is one very good reason why, as teachers, we need be less dependent on textbooks than, say, in the 1970s and 1980s.

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

Conversation scaffolds learning.

An alternative to a positivist, discrete-item, grammar McNugget view of language learning is the more holistic approach offered by what is called ‘whole language learning’. The whole language movement is largely a North American phenomenon, although it has parallels with other ‘deep-end’ approaches, such as task-based learning and project work, which may be more familiar in European circles.

If learners are supplied with optimal conditions for language use, and are motivated to take advantage of these opportunities, their inherent learning capacities will be activated, and language - rather than being acquired - will emerge.

In the 70s and 80s the buzz-word was learner-centredness. The notion of the learner-centred curriculum found a natural ally in the communicative approach. Faith in the ability of syllabuses - and of teaching generally - to deliver knowledge ‘on a plate’ was replaced by a faith in the potential of collaborative tasks to provide the right conditions for learning to occur.

A process syllabus is a syllabus that grows organically out of the needs and interests of the learners: there are no pre-selected goals or specifications of content. It is also a negotiated syllabus. That is, the content of the syllabus, and even the methodology itself, is subject to a continual process of negotiation and evaluation by learners and teacher.

Our understanding of the way language emerges, both interpersonally and intrapersonally, has benefited from developments in the study of complex systems in nature. Emergence -- the idea that certain systems are more than the sum of their parts, and that a small number of rules or laws can generate systems of surprising complexity’.

Some scholars - notably Diane Larsen-Freeman, Lynn Cameron and Nick Ellis - have been studying language through the lens of complexity theory, both in the way languages develop in society, and in the way that a learner’s first language (or the second language learner’s
interlanguage) develops over time.

‘What we think of as grammar is the product of the accumulation of all the lexical primings of an individual’s lifetime’. Hoey

Some writers, including Michael Long, have homed in on a ‘focus on form’. A focus on form ‘overtly draws students’ attention to linguistic elements as they arise incidentally in lessons whose overriding focus is on meaning or communication.

Note that Long is not advocating the explicit teaching of grammar items in advance of communication, but as the need arises during communication. This is an approach that is entirely consistent with the Dogme view - that the grammar syllabus (and also the lexical one, for that matter) should emerge, not as an attempt to anticipate the learners’ communicative needs, but in response to them. That is, it is a syllabus that is both usage driven and responsive.

“Education is communication and dialogue. It is not the transference of knowledge.”
(Paulo Freire, Brazilian educationalist and author of ‘Pedagogy of the Oppressed’)

Some very valid points and critiques are made:

By the 1990s one might have been forgiven for thinking that language learning was all about grammar and accuracy. Coursebooks were colourful and full of glossy pictures of celebrities, but it was as if we had regressed to the era of grammar translation.

Strike a balance between generating new vocab and doing new things with that vocab.

Make fun of yourself when you make mistakes.

Footnotes

Ten strategies
Reward emergent language. Show learners that you value their output. This does not mean excessive praise, but simply some sign that learner participation and creativity is welcome in your class.
Retrieve it. Otherwise it will just remain as linguistic ‘noise’. This might mean simply making an informal note during a speaking activity, or, at times, writing a learner’s utterance on the board.
Repeat it. Repeat it yourself; have other learners repeat it - even drill it!
Drilling something has the effect of making it stand out from all the other
things that happen in a language lesson.
Recast it. Reformulate the learners’ interlanguage productions into a more target-like form. This is not the same as correction. It is simply a way of indicating ‘I know what you’re trying to say; this is how I would say it’.
Report it. Ask learners to report what they said and heard in groupwork. Apart
from anything else, knowing that they may have to report on their groupwork
encourages learners to pay attention to what is going on.
Recycle it. Encourage learners to use the emergent items in new contexts. This may be simply asking for an example of their own that contextualises a new item of vocabulary, or it may involve learners creating a dialogue that embeds several of the new expressions that have come up.
Record it. Make sure learners have a written record of the new items. Writing something down not only helps fix it in memory, but it’s a good way of conferring importance on material that has come up incidentally.
Research it. Help your learners to find regularities and patterns in the
emergent language. This may involve asking them to formulate explicit rules, or simply to find some kind of pattern or regularity in a number of items.
Reference it. Link emergent language to the ‘external’ syllabus objectives. This helps satisfy the need of some learners to know that the emergent syllabus bears some relation to the formal syllabus, as it is represented in the coursebook, for example.
Review it. At the end of the lesson, ask your learners to write five words they have learned. Have them share what they have learned. Do this again at the beginning of the next lesson. All learning, after all, is simply remembering that you have understood something.

Because Dogme is about teaching that is conversation-driven, this implies:
• establishing a classroom dynamic that is conducive to interactive talk;
• setting up conversations between and about ‘the people in the room’;
• taking advantage of conversation as it occurs incidentally;
• providing the necessary scaffolding to support talk in a second language;
• being a participant oneself in the classroom talk.

Because Dogme is about teaching that is materials-light, this means:
• orienting lessons to the learners’ needs and interests;
• foregrounding the learners’ topics and texts;
• making the most of minimal means;
• if using materials, using ones that are locally generated;
• challenging the assumptions inherent in imported materials.
Because Dogme is about teaching that is focused on emergent language, this means:
• setting up activities that are language productive;
• using learner language to inform lesson and course planning;
• viewing learners’ errors as learning opportunities;
• retrieving instances of learner language and analysing them;
• recording, reviewing and recycling instances of learner language

Some useful activities described:
What’s in a name?
Roleplaying real situations from learners’ lives
Sharing suggestions for beating a bad mood
Using maps as creative stimuli
Predicting the text type - homing in on register and domain
Keeping a diary
Newspaper lead sentences
Noting down numbers in listening comprehension
Pause the lesson -- anybody can pause the lesson to analyse an utterance
Prompting students to fine-tune their output - teacher raises hand as signal
Decoding a sequence of events / focusing on tense
Concordance work for students
Paraphrasing each other
Word maps
Weekly news slot
Sharing opinions about famous people
At the end of the lesson students write quiz questions about new findings for each other
Students test each other on vocab
Looking out for particular lexemes in everyday life
Collecting new terms from everyday situations
Dictogloss - reconstructing anecdotes

[Thomas Jones · Rating 5 out of 5]

Essential reading for ELT teachers.

I wish I'd read this book few years earlier. Especially applicable to a lot of my colleagues in ELT, where there is currently a strong trend towards 1-to-1 classes, which lend themselves naturally to the Dogme approach, particularly with adults.

[Jarda Kubalik · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is my Bible now. I think it will cost me my job.

[Jacqueline · Rating 3 out of 5]

A comprehensive description of Dogme teaching. You'll understand very clearly what it is after reading this book. It looks at three core precepts (conversation-driven, materials-light, and emergent language) in detail, and by doing so, lays the foundations for the practical classroom procedures and activities that make up a Dogme approach: an unplugged approach.

From the book:

"Ten (10) Key Principles that characterise a Dogme approach:

1 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.
2 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’.
3 Learning is a social and dialogic process, where knowledge is co-constructed rather than ‘transmitted’ or ‘imported’from teacher/coursebook to learner.
4 Learning can be mediated through talk, especially talk that is shaped and supported (ie scaffolded) by the teacher.
5 Rather than being acquired, language (including grammar) emerges: it is an organic process that occurs given the right conditions.
6 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.
7 Providing space for the learner’s voice means accepting that the learner’s beliefs, knowledge, experiences, concerns and desires are valid content in the language classroom.
8 Freeing the classroom from third-party, imported materials empowers both teachers and learners.
9 Texts, when used, should have relevance for the learner, in both their learning and using contexts.
10 Teachers and learners need to unpack the ideological baggage associated with English Language Teaching materials - to become critical users of such texts.

Of these Ten (10) Principles, three (3) Core Precepts stand out:

• Dogme is about teaching that is conversation-driven.
• Dogme is about teaching that is materials-light.
• Dogme is about teaching that focuses on emergent language.

Let’s look at these three precepts in more detail, and in so doing lay the foundations for the practical classroom procedures and activities that realize a Dogme approach: an unplugged approach."

[Marina Zhogolyeva · Rating 5 out of 5]

The book kind of validates the way I have been subconsciously trying to teach for a while: trying to juggle between using textbooks and following my own intuition to inspire conversation in class, so I was kind of happy to read it.

Moreover, the book has dozens of amazing games that require little or no before-class preparing but are excellent conversation starters!

[Mark · Rating 5 out of 5]

The best book around on materials light, emergent language and conversation driven teaching.

[Flexanimous · Rating 2 out of 5]

I have many issues with Dogme as presented here (and I find it a bit cheap not to give any guidance bar a series of standard warmer/filler activities), but it did serve as a good reminder to be mindful of my resources and whether I'm really exploiting materials or just handing out photocopy after photocopy.

[Roberta · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent Dogme resource for those new to the idea.