Two questions about Dogme that kind of dog me.

Today, I watched Daniel’s interview with Scott Thornbury, which I thought was great, by the way, but it brought up some more questions, especially regarding materials and assessment.

Materials

I know that one aspect of Dogme from what I’ve read so far is the provision of materials by students. However, from my own experience students tend not to do what you ask them to do or perhaps they forget, but I remember one time a few years ago, I had asked students to bring their favorite possession to talk about for the next class. Unfortunately, only a handful of students out of a class around 25 or so brought something, which of course resulted in students presenting things such as an eraser, or other school supplies, if my memory serves me well; I could be wrong though as I said this was a few years back. I think some students did use an article of clothing which was OK, but it would have been nice if they had brought something that they chose after careful consideration. I was also probably hoping that if they had brought something they would have prepared some of the English that they would need, although from what I gather, Dogme seems to focus on spontaneous English. Again, I could be wrong. The question then is what can a teacher do in order to be confident that when asked, students bring the necessary materials? Should I dock points if they come unprepared? But is that the best solution? Perhaps, everyone has already experienced the above situation and perhaps it can never be avoided especially in large classrooms, so maybe I shouldn’t lose any sleep over it.

Assessment

The second concern involves assessment. My main sources of assessment and evaluation come from quizzes, midterm and final exams, attendance, participation and in-class activities usually in the form of worksheets that I collect to mark. Sometimes I also have presentations. Now, I remember in Daniel’s interview that Scott first replied ‘None’ to his question about what kind of testing should be used, but then went on to mention different testing methods, integrative, holistic, skills and how that it was difficult to do, but not impossible, with such tests as the Cambridge proficiency test being available. As I am always curious about how other teachers assess/evaluate their students, I started to think, ‘Well, how would one really evaluate/assess students in such a class?’ Can tests still be incorporated in such a method such as Dogme ELT, or would class-by-class evaluations based on presentations and participation be used, or would portfolios be possible? I would assume that the evaluation would be somewhat subjective, but it would be interesting to hear about other teachers’ evaluation schemes. I’m starting to think that I should buy Scott’s book, Teaching Unplugged, but with all the reading I have to do, especially now that I am in grad school, I am not sure if I would have the time, and besides, what better way to learn about such a method than discussing it with one’s peers, right?

Would you be so kind as to not be so polite when you talk me, dear?

Monday – Foreign Communication Class

Today was my first Monday class of 2010, and I think it went well. As I have already mentioned before, Monday’s and Friday’s classes follow the same pattern except that Monday’s class is about two weeks behind. So today, we started with a review quiz of unit 9 on apologizing. This took a little while longer than expected, but this may have been due to the fact that for the fill-in-the-blank exercise, I did not give them a clue (I usually give them the first letter). The second question was a sentence reordering type, which was also a little harder than usual because some questions had two sentences rather than just the one.

After collecting the tests, I dictated the questions for unit 11, a unit on polite English and requests. As usual, I put the questions and answers on the board for everyone to see. Next, I wrote four requests, well one could be called a command, on the board and asked them which one would be the most polite and which one would be the least polite. Here are the requests/command:

Can you open the door?
Would you be so kind as to open the door, please?
Could you open the door?
Open the door.

I then asked them to look at the utterances and tell me what differences they could find. The answer I was looking for was length, as it is common in English to lengthen a request to make it more polite. However, I accepted two other responses regarding the lack of a question mark, and the difference in modal verbs because they, too, are necessary for politeness.

The next activity was from the book – it was a fill-in-the-blank dictation task. There were four questions, and the students seemed to have no problem with this activity except for the last question whose answer was ‘I’m wondering if you could…’ which I had to play a third time because many students could not catch it. I have to say though that despite the book having ‘I’m wondering if…’ I feel that this is somewhat strange, and that personally, I would say ‘I was wondering if…’ However, this may just be a case of idiolect. Which one would you use?

After we had corrected this task, I handed out the conversation construction worksheets and gave them 6 minutes to practice and remember the conversation that they had to make. This brings up a question that I have been thinking about and should really research – How much time would you say a student needs to remember 3 or 4 fairly short lines of a conversation? I would think that between 5 to 10 minutes would be enough, but let me know what you think.

Once we finished the presentations, I handed out the worksheet on disappearing sounds. I told them that knowing about these sounds would be helpful when listening to English because I think we can all agree that English has many such sounds. First, I wrote an example on the board:

I can’t come tonight.

I then circled the two final t’s of can't and tonight, and had them repeat after me first slowly, pronouncing all sounds clearly, and then quickly reducing the t’s. I gave them enough time to work on with a partner, about 5 or so minutes, and then I went around the room checking their answers before having them go up to the board to write them. After that, I had them again repeat each sentence/question twice, first slowly and clearly and then quickly with the disappearing sounds.

Dogme ELT Video

I would like to mention that Part 7 A and B have been re-uploaded to youtube (thank you Nicole!), so I have embedded them into my previous blog on that subject.

Thank you!

I would finally like to thank everyone for their comments/links and for becoming a follower. I know I have responded to the comments individually, but I thought I’d give another shout out to you all.

Cheers,
eisensei

Dogme EL-what-T?

Today I had no classes due to the entrance exam preparation, so I wasn't intending to post, but I was checking my blogs when I noticed a comment from Karenne (thank you!) on my post from yesterday in which I was talking about whether or not to go with a textbook. She said that she doesn't like textbooks and that she practices Dogme ELT. Now, I had never heard of Dogme ELT, so I did some research on the subject and thought that maybe I could post what I found so that others like me who don't know exactly what Dogme ELT is can learn for themselves.

What is Dogme ELT?

Simply put, it is the practice of teaching without depending on books, technology etc and only using what is at hand in the classroom. It is also a style of teaching that is learner-focused in that the lessons evolve from the students' contributions.

Is it for me?

I'm not sure. While the ideas of breaking free from such teaching tools as computers and course books and focusing the lesson on the learner are quite appealing, I am not sure if this would be a method that would work for me because despite my qualms about textbooks, they do have their advantages, and when I don't use a textbook my style of teaching usually consists of various worksheets and handouts, so I am not sure if I would be ready to abandon them completely. However, I am sure that one could incorporate such a method into one's style to mix it up a little and give variety to the course and in this way, it may be an interesting addition to one's repertoire, especially in a speaking class. I would be very interested to hear teachers' experiences with using Dogme ELT and how it worked for them, especially those teachers teaching a homogeneous group of learners, as I get the feeling that Dogme ELT would be better suited to a more heterogeneous group, but I could be wrong.

Further Information

I found a video, a 'webinar' actually, offered by a site called English Central, discussing a book written by Scott Thornbury and Luke Meddings entitled "Teaching Unplugged" about Dogme ELT which also gives some example activities. Interestingly, I had to do some hunting to find the different parts of the webinar, but unfortunately, part 7 seems to have disappeared from the Internet, so if anyone knows where I could find it, let me know so I can post it here.

Thank You

I would also like to thank Karenne for becoming my first follower ever. I greatly appreciate it, and also thanks for the information on blog publishing!

Cheers,
eisensei

I need a vacation to recover from the vacation I took to recover from my vacation.

Well, this post will probably be shorter than usual because first of all we followed the recent pattern of book followed by pronunciation and second, today's class went fairly smoothly, perhaps ideally may even be a word I could use to describe it. We started with the review test, and then I dictated eight questions about the dialogue. As I asked students to repeat the questions, I wrote them on the board so everyone could see them in case they weren't sure. After getting the answers and writing those on the board, too, I had them repeat once after the CD with books open, and then with books closed, the latter being harder, which was to be expected. Next, I had them do the exchange; I gave them between 5 to 7 minutes to practice and memorize the dialogue before having them present. I did do something different though - I chose which dialogue each pair would do because often you have most groups choosing the same dialogue, and it's always a good idea to have different patterns. After their time was up, I had several groups present, some doing better than others with regards to memorizing the lines, which I can and cannot understand because the conversations are short giving each partner about 3 lines to remember, but then again, short-term memory can easily vary, but perhaps the main reason is lack of concentration in trying to remember the lines. After finishing the presentations, I told them that we would do the pronunciation next because I wasn't sure if we would have time to do both that and the listening in the textbook. I told them that if we had time we would come back to the book. As in Friday's class, I simply reviewed the handout from before the break, well actually, we hadn't finished part B of the handout, so it was necessary to complete that, but we also reviewed part A because it had been a couple of weeks since we last looked at it, and by the time we finished, it was time to go. I think today's lesson went surprisingly smoothly, but it was probably due to the fact that I did not stray from the content, and I made sure I had time to complete what I had planned.

As for the textbook situation, I still haven't decided whether or not I will continue using this book next year. I'm really can't make up my mind because, honestly, the themes are not so interesting, or even relevant at times, and since there are only 12 units, you can't really skip them, right? Also, you can't really modify the units, or well, maybe I could, but then it leaves me wondering if I really need to use a textbook, especially if I am going to modify the unit or add my own units to replace those that aren't so interesting. I should mention here though, that I will get the students' opinions at the end of the course and see what they thought of it, but when I say that the book is not interesting, it really is my opinion that I am expressing, so as long as the students are interested, there should be no problem, right? But then again, if the teacher finds something boring, it may affect the way he or she teaches that particular lesson, am I wrong? However, I do find the dialogues, the listening activities and the exchanges good for the students, and considering the time it would take to make such materials, the textbook is good in that sense. Another problem I have been having with the book is that I am only doing a quarter and sometimes less than that each week. This is mainly due to the pronunciation practice I include in the lesson, so in the future it may be an idea to eliminate the pronunciation and focus more on the textbook, but I think the pronunciation is quite important for students especially for listening to music etc and honestly, repeating such activities in several of my classes is not a bad idea because the more you practice the more you should retain, right? I think I'm rambling because looking back at this paragraph, my thoughts are going all over the place, but this is what I feel when I think about the textbook - it has good points and bad points, and despite its bad points the potential for this book to be a better than usual textbook is there. Now, it is interesting that while I was writing that sentence, I was thinking the opposite, and actually thinking that perhaps a book that focuses more on conversation strategies may be better as the chances of students actually using such strategies are higher in an EFL setting than going shopping or eating out or giving directions. Wouldn't you agree? I guess I had a lot to say after all, and it also seems that the book debate is still far from over.

And remember kids, every Thursday is Autonomy Day!

Today was my first reading/writing class of 2010. I tried something a little different with regards to the handouts and I think it worked out well. Until now, I would have them come up and collect the different sheets, but today I put them all together in a package and put them on desks and told students to sit where they saw a package. I think this worked much better because students did not have to take time waiting to get the sheets, and sometimes someone might not collect all the sheets etc, so I will continue this next class as well. I also told them that once they were finished they could leave so many students started right away.

For today's writing assignment I had them write about what they did during the winter break. This time they had to start from the beginning and brainstorm ideas before writing unlike before when all they had to do was write the first draft because we had taken an earlier class to brainstorm ideas for the themes that had to write about. I had to explain though that they needed to start with step 1 because I observed several students starting step 2 without brainstorming. However, this does bring up a point - is brainstorming really effective when writing a short paragraph of 5 to 8 lines? Perhaps if I were writing an essay, I might brainstorm beforehand, but for such a short text, is it really necessary?



The grammar activities for today focused on prepositions for time (on, in, at) and the past tense, especially the irregular verbs. The former task was a sentence correction, while the latter was a fill-in-the-blank.





I also gave them another review task for the indefinite and definite articles because students were still making mistakes with them. Honestly, when I was making this task the other day, I started thinking that maybe in the future I might make such an activity a temporary part of the class. What I mean by that is that maybe I will have, say, five review worksheets on the difference between the articles, and over the course of the semester hand them out. In this way students may come to have a better understanding of their usage than if we only did it one time and moved on. This would also be useful for other grammar points that students often have problems with.



The next activity pretty much comes from the above idea - the sentence correction task. This semester especially, I have been giving them a task each week in the hope that they may start to notice certain common mistakes. The tasks are usually based on mistakes I find in their writing samples, but sometimes I make it up myself. Of course, their understanding or noticing of these misktakes really depends on whether or not they actually look at the work when handed back. Perhaps in the future it may be a good idea to take a few minutes to explain or at least ask some students to read the answers so that everyone will have had the chance to take a look at their work again. However, this would be an explicit focus in which case students may not fully take in the information whereas if they noticed on their own, the chances of retaining the knowledge would be greater.



The last activity for the day was another reading task. I won't really explain this as it is pretty much straightforward.



I think overall today's lesson went well, although towards the end some students became a little noisy because many were finishing at the same time. Also, since I asked them to show me their first drafts, they had to wait in line, which easily leads students to talk with those next to them. However, some students stayed despite being finished and talked to their friends, so as not to disrupt other students who were still working, I asked them to leave. Other than that time the students quietly worked away.

This week I have been talking about changing textbooks and this class is no exception, except that I am thinking of using a book again instead of my own materials. I have found one that looks good, but as with all textbooks, you never know what they are really like until you use them in class. I also know that I have been trying to give students as much freedom as possible - although that freedom is really only limited to choice in order of doing the tasks, so one could easily ask whether or not I am really helping students build autonomy - so using a textbook would potentially put control squarely back on me. Of course, I could have students choose the order of the units, but it would be challenging to actually give them choice within each chapter. Furthermore, I have taken two semesters to make my own materials, and although things are not always perfect, going with a textbook would mean not being able to use those materials which I took a lot of time to work on. However, depending on how long it would take to do a chapter, I could easily incorporate some of my materials, especially the reading and sentence correction tasks. I think I will need some more time to consider what to do for this class, but if I do decide to go with a textbook, I will have to order them soon because books tend to take a long time to arrive.

Hip hip vocabulary! Hip hip vocabulary!

Today was our first class back from the break. We started with a vocabulary review, but unfortunately many, if not most of the students had not finished, so I had to rearrange those who were with those who weren't so that everyone could get some practice. I wish students would take vocabulary learning more seriously, but alas they do not, even after explaining to them almost each week the importance of vocabulary for such a test such as the TOEIC. I told them today to register for the test because they have to take it, but I am worried that some will be cramming for it, which is not such a good idea.

After we finished the review, we looked at their homework, again many were not finished or so it seemed. I first had them repeat the words after me before correcting the homework.

Next, we started unit 21, another chapter focusing on Part 7 of the test. This time we looked at the 'NOT' questions, the hardest type on the test. The strategy for these is to leave them to last and do the other easier questions first so that you can get some information to help answer these questions. After looking at this strategy in some detail, we did the mini-test. Finally, I gave them the rest of the class to study vocabulary from the unit that they did not know. I told them to review the lists for next week, but I am not so confident they will. I also assigned Unit 21 Quiz for next week. Next class will also be the last class and we will focus on Part 7 one more time; the last two classes will be for the mock test.

I think I've made my decision regarding the textbook – I am going to try another. I feel that this textbook is too long for 15 classes, and it may be better to have a little more Japanese support. I think though that it will be a good idea to keep teaching the test strategies found in the text, so it may be challenging to incorporate such ideas in the text that I am looking at because it is structured in a much different way. For example, there are no strategies at all, and each chapter is not just one part as the current book; actually, the chapters are not divided into parts at all, but each chapter may have a listening and reading part and the rest is made up of vocabulary and other activities. However, there is a little more Japanese and it is structured so that one can finish in a semester. Another thing I will do, which will also be challenging, is to give them tests and make them part of their score because this semester I have been going with a marking scheme that is based on their actual test scores, which means that even if I assign homework, many are not doing it perhaps because they feel that it is not part of the grade. Maybe then, having homework and quizzes part of the mark should encourage students to actually do the work. The only setback is that to give them such quizzes I would have to make the tests when really, the students should be learning words that they do not know, not words that I give them; something that I will have to work out if I choose to go this way.

First class back and already a long weekend.

Happy New Year and all the best for 2010!

I had my first class for the new year today, and I think things went well despite the students looking a little tired, but who can blame them? I started the class off by wishing them all a Happy New Year before giving them a short review quiz. I then introduced the topic of the day - Inviting and Making Plans after which I dictated four questions for the dialogue in the book. As usual, I wrote the questions and answers on the board to allow everyone to write them down. Next, I had them repeat after the CD. After that, we did Task 2, a fill-in-the-blank dictation activity. After we finished, I told them to practice with a partner. There was an odd number of students, so I sat with one of them to even it out. I don't always do this because it obviously impedes me from observing the students, but at the same time, it allows all students to have an equal amount of time practicing because if you were to put three students together for a dialogue for two, there's a chance, especially if you give them a time limit, that they will not finish. By the time we finished this activity, I noticed that our time was running out, so instead of doing the second part of Task 2 which was answering questions on the dialogue that had just practiced, I handed out the conversation construction worksheets and gave them five minutes to get ready. Actually, I gave them more than that, but I find that 10 minutes is too long, but it also seems now that even 5 minutes is not short enough to prohibit students from speaking in Japanese about unrelated topics and with different partners! When I do notice that, I ask them if they are ready which helps them get back to work. I also tend to choose those pairs who aren't working on task to present, but I just don't spring it on them; I usually hint at the fact that they will probably be on the list to present, and sometimes even first. However, I should also add that not everyone gets distracted and that most, from my own observations, tend to stay on task, or maybe they're just good at hiding it!







The remainder of the class, we reviewed disappearing and linking sounds. I did this because first, we did not have time in the last class to finish both parts of this worksheet, and second two weeks had passed since we last did it, so some much needed review was in order. I had also planned to look at contrastive stress, but by the time we finished the review, we did not have enough time, so I told them we would do that next class (I will talk about this at that time). This of course means that I might have to make something extra for Monday's class if we are able to finish the disappearing sounds handout in our next class. However, since our first class for the new year will be January 18, perhaps I should review the linking sounds that they did before the break. Decisions, decisions, decisions.

I was just going to post this when I had a thought. Obviously, I will have to think about this further, but it may be an idea to split the chapter into halves instead of doing one chapter a week. I think some teachers already do this, and honestly, I used to do exactly that when I was teaching at a language school. Of course, at such schools you may have students for a long time, so this was the main reason for doing it, but it may be worth considering, especially since I am not just using the textbook, but using the pronunciation activities as well, and as I have said before, sometimes I'm not able to finish everything completely, and there have been times when I'm sure I've had to rush it, when I was hoping to spend more time on the topic at hand. Perhaps if I reorganize my lesson plans, I may be able to do certain topics in more detail, although the setback is that I will not be able to do as many topics, but one could argue that not all topics are necessary. Hmmm...I guess I have one more thing to consider then, don't I?