Dogme

Dogme

A description

Who better than Scott Thornbury, known to be the dominant force in spreading the word and practice of this approach to teaching, than the man himself to describe it.

"Dogme language teaching is both a methodology and a mindset. It is an approach to teaching that is conversation-driven and focuses on emergent language and student needs over materials. Learning how to make interaction with learners the foundation of your teaching can also help teachers use coursebooks more effectively, create grammar lessons that stick, build literacy, and encourage participation in online lessons"

The move away from textbooks, flashcards, Cuisenaire rods, and tapes appealed to me. I often look back with a shudder on lessons where the stress of relying on worksheets, infuriating printers and trying to liven up dry textbook topics, that were often dated or repetitive.

10 principles of Dogme:

1. Interactivity: The most effective path to learning is in the interactivity between teachers and students and between the students themselves.
2. Engagement: students are most motivated and interested by the content they have made themselves.
3. Dialogic processes: "learning is social and dialogic, where knowledge is co-constructed."
4. Scaffolded conversations: Effective learning is done through conversation, this is done by the student and teacher through co-constructing knowledge and skills.
5. Emergence: language and grammar emerge from the learning process.
6. Affordances: the teacher's role is to enhance or optimize the benefits of language learning by directing attention to emergent language.
7. Voice: the student's voice is heard along with their beliefs and knowledge.
8. Empowerment: students and teachers are empowered by freeing the classroom of published materials and textbooks.
9. Relevance: materials should have relevance for the learners.
10. Critical use: teachers and students should use published materials and textbooks in a critical way that recognizes their cultural and ideological biases

This video is of a workshop Thornbury did for some new teachers and illustrates the technique well:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GF_4gAfNQYQ

Luke Meddings is an award-winning author, trainer and international speaker. In 2000 he co-founded the Dogme ELT movement with Scott Thornbury, and their book Teaching Unplugged (Delta, 2009) won a British Council ELTon award in 2010.

A Dogme lesson with Luke Meddings :

https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/dogme-lesson-luke-meddings-exeter

Here is a link to some great Dogme lesson plans written with clear instructions and aims by Steve Krajewski

https://englishcoachonline.com/blog/dogme-lesson-plans/

References

Meddings, Luke; Thornbury, Scott (2009). Teaching Unplugged: Dogme in English Language Teaching. Peaslake UK: Delta. ISBN 978-1-905085-19-4.

 Thornbury, Scott (2005). "Dogme: Dancing in the dark?". Folio. 9/2, 3–5. Retrieved 2009-06-23.