CC BY
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УДК 372.881.111.1
М. В. Романова
канд. пед. наук, доц. каф. лингвистики и профессиональной коммуникации в области экономики МГЛУ e-mail: rmw80@mail.ru
ПОДХОД «DOGME» В ПРЕПОДАВАНИИ АНГЛИЙСКОГО ЯЗЫКА КАК ИНОСТРАННОГО
В статье рассматривается «Dogme», новый подход к преподаванию английского языка, который основывается на критике чрезмерного использования учебных материалов и информационных технологий в учебном процессе. Автором анализируются его основные принципы и методический потенциал в применении к российскому современному образовательному контексту.
Ключевые слова: подход «Dogme»; обучение спонтанному языку; учебный процесс, ориентированный на разговорную речь; коммуникативный подход; материалы для обучения языку.
Romanova M. V.
PhD, Associate Professor, Department of Linguistics and Professional Communication in Economics, MSLU e-mail: rmw80@mail.ru
"DOGME" APPROACH IN TEACHING ENGLISH AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE
The focus of the article is set upon one of the recent trends in Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL), particularly the programme of Dogme or Teaching Unplugged, which raises a rather burning issue of overusage of supportive materials as well as information technologies in the classroom. The basic concepts of the Dogme approach are critically analyzed with a special emphasis on their potential for the current language teaching context in Russia.
Key words: Dogme approach; teaching an emergent language; conversation-driven teaching process; communicative approach; language teaching materials.
The Dogme teaching approach was first distinguished by Scott Thornbury - a Curriculum Coordinator of the MA TESOL programme and a practicing English language teacher - in his article "A Dogma for EFL" (2000) where Thornbury criticized English language teaching's (ELT) over-reliance on published materials in classrooms, which in his view complicates the language learning process. This is one of the recent trends in global TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Lamnguage), particularly the programmes of Dogme and Teaching Unplugged. Although the approach of Dogme language
teaching was dubbed on an analogy with the Dogme 95 film movement (initiated by Lars von Trier), the connection is not quite close.
Luke Meddings - ELT practicing teacher and Thornbury's adherent -in his article published in the Guardian, which was devoted to the 4th anniversary of Dogme ELT, made the following simile on this issue:
.„we've gone materials mad. We consume published materials, like McDonald's breakfasts, all too readily. Both have their place in the grand scheme of things, but neither can be enjoyed every day without things eventually seizing up. We use course books because they make it easy to get from 9 o'clock to 10 o'clock, not because they are a good way to promote learning. We reach for the supplementary materials as if they were vitamins, when in fact they are the same old junk: processed food, refined sugar, a quick fix when we are too late or too lazy to think of something better [2].
The alternative for this Thornbury and Meddings see in a materialslight approach to language teaching, driven by the students in the room, their lives and their language. They formulated their methodological pillars in the book "Teaching Unplugged" (2009), which can be shortly listed as:
• 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 [4, p. 7]. Needless to say that the conversation-driven aspect of Dogme matches
the principles of the contemporary communicative approach - teachers organize learners in real-life communication, stimulating them to be more engaged in the accuracy of their message for genuine and authentic social interaction.
However skepticism may have ground concerning how far a conversation driven by students especially with a low level of language proficiency can go from the syllabus and a proper lexical input as well as error correction. Although Dogme proponents assure that in a spontaneous environment lexis emerged from the students themselves is guaranteed by higher propensity of remembering due to involuntary memory production, still in a self-driven context a learner always tends to stay within their comfort zone using their personal thesaurus not making any effort to upgrade it.
The second challenge that a conversation-driven organization of the lesson represents is deviation from the syllabus, since students' interests cannot be planned and tied to the necessary lexical minimum. Under Dogme methodological requirements the lexical minimum is to be organized
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spontaneously upon students' request and choice, as well as grammar formation, which in its turn is reduced to error correction. The efficiency of such an approach seems rather doubtful in application, for instance, to teaching language for specific purposes, due to the fact that linguistic proficiency in a particular domain, e.g. "marketing", requires operation with a minimal set of professional terms, lexical structures and definitions, which are to be delivered via the teacher or the teaching sources.
Concerning the second pillar of the Dogme approach - materialslight teaching or also known as Unplugged approach - teachers say that ELT classrooms have experienced "an invasion of materials in the form of copious photocopies, workbooks, tapes, tape-scripts, flashcards, transparencies, and other miscellaneous technological gimmicks" [2]. They argue that "students find personalized contexts much more engaging", thus teachers should encourage learners to find their own reading and listening texts in addition to the conversation they provide at the lesson.
As for application of IT in the classroom environment it is worth emphasizing that there is not a clear consensus among Dogme practitioners on this issue, which can be understood from the discussions on the ELT Dogme Yahoo Group. Although Dogme teaching has been regarded to be anti-technology, Thornbury maintains that he does not see Dogme as being opposed to technology as such, rather that the approach is critical of using technology that does not enable teaching that is both learner-centered and is based upon authentic communication [4]. However, among Dogme proponents still there is a dominant view that the physical classroom is preferable to substitution of physical presence with communication via digital technology, such as Skype virtual lessons.
Criticism of the materials-light aspect also comes from practitioners who find it rather challenging "to tailor a lesson to suit the needs and interests of multiple students in the classroom" [1]. Undoubtedly this task may seem to some teachers overwhelming as it requires constantly making on-the-spot decisions regarding the language focus, skills focus, and practice activities.
Moreover it makes a teacher deliver a lesson lexically and grammatically spontaneous and students may regard this as a lack of preparation for the lesson and professional disinvolvement:
It makes the teacher come across as unprepared and students feel cheated. Many think being given books and handouts is a sign of a good class and thus won't take notes or will lose them in a Dogme class [1].
Nevertheless Martin Sketchley - ELT practitioner and Young Learner Co-ordinator at LTC Eastbourne - stated the following idea in his article reflecting the criticism of the Dogme approach:
This decision to flexibly apply the key tenets of 'Dogme ELT' is anything but lazy. It is not necessarily making my life easier but it is stretching my knowledge and understanding of language learning and the appropriacy of this technique in the classroom. When teachers decide to sprinkle in Dogme ELT in their classroom and used effectively, it is a difficult task. Teachers are required to develop techniques which maintain learner interest and purpose for when teachers respond to opportunistic areas of language learning [3].
Interpreting Sketchley's ideas we can formulate the challenge for a Dogme practitioner - to elaborate such techniques as elicitation, feedback maintenance, monitoring, and interaction stimulation without minimal mentoring. Assuming all the mentioned techniques are efficiently applied in the language teaching process, the supreme appreciation of a teacher's professionalism may be assurance of the students of their self-directive roles in their language education.
Developing the issue of language learning as an emergent phenomenon it is necessary to outline that firstly Dogme considers language teaching to be a process where the language emerges rather than a process where it is acquired, thus classroom activities lead to collaborative communication amongst the students. Secondly, learners produce language that they were not necessarily taught. The teacher's role, in part, is to facilitate the emergence of language. However, Dogme does not see the teacher's role as merely creating the right conditions for language to emerge. Alternatively the teacher is expected to encourage students to engage with the language learning process in a variety of ways, including rewarding, repeating and reviewing their performance.
It is worth mentioning that Dogme teaching is considered to be both a methodology and a movement in modern language pedagogy. Specifically Dogme has its roots in communicative language teaching and it represents the opposition to the present prevalent teaching paradigm in Russia -Obsessive Grammar Syndrome where grammar and lexical knowledge is still at the heart of the English teaching process starting from primary school up to higher education institutions. Scott Thornbury in his article "Grammar, Power, and Bottled Water" identifies this problem very precisely:
.grammar is order. From the point of view of course design, materials choice, and assessment grammatical organisation is a lot less messy than, say,
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a functional or a procedural or a lexical one. At the level of classroom practice, explicit attention to grammar provides structure, literally, to an otherwise potentially anarchic situation, and is one reason why teachers who lack either classroom experience or confidence in their own linguistic competence, or both, embrace grammar so eagerly [6, p. 20].
In this respect Dogme criticism of textbooks on their tendency to focus on grammar more than on communicative competency is approved. It is also approved in the light of teachers' orientation towards students' knowledge of lexical and grammar rules in contrast towards their linguistic competence development. It is embarrassing to mention the fact that some Russian teachers of English as a foreign language still stick to the traditional old-school assessment criteria, while the focus of the current approach is placed on students' proficiency of communicative task achievement, which means a pragmatic approach.
At the same time it should be admitted that contemporarily in Russia the orientation of language teaching has been shifted from the grammatical onto pragmatic approach with the introduction of the Unified State Examination (USE) assignments. However since the Speaking part is not introduced in the USE, the focus on oral communication is not as strong as on the rest competences which are tested (Listening, Reading, Writing). And here the Dogme approach could make its contribution to development of real communication during English lessons as the teachers' practice shows:
Academic subjects, texts, videos etc can be chosen by students + teachers and then conversation-based lessons can be created based on this input or used as homework before or after. Instead of dictating a course to students a Dogme course would give them choice and usually cover more and in a more interesting way. Tests can still be done and a final exam but students will probably remember information better because they were involved in creating it [1].
Indeed incorporating Dogme approach in classroom activities may allow Russian school teachers to organise maximum interaction during the open class discussions and develop students' confidence to forge ahead without a teacher's constant guidance. Dogme can also be incorporated in an exam preparation and benefit students not only from the point of oral communication but also from the emphasis put on emergent language. Even though the process of preparing students for examinations usually presupposes strict adherence to the syllabus and the use of past examination papers in the classroom, Dogme provides an opportunity to 'elicit, teach
and practise the kind of structures that the exam will test, but to retain the immediacy and engagement of real content' [4, p. 95].
In this article we have made an attempt to point out the methodological flaws of the Dogme concept, which may deteriorate the English teaching process in the Russian environment with students lacking enough self-motivation and discipline to introduce a necessary participant-driven input in their learning.
The second issue targeted by our criticism concerns Dogme recommendation to remove authentic listening materials from the teaching process, which in our professional opinion will deprive students of possibilities to copy standard pronunciation of native speakers and thus to build up correct listening comprehension skills and a good accent in speaking.
In conclusion it should be stressed that though proponents of the Dogme approach already interpret it as another form of the learner-centered methodology and critical pedagogy, the potential of this approach remains to be seen and verified by fundamental scientific researches and teaching experiments.
REFERENCES
1. EFL Experiment 2: The ultimate Dogme criticisms and responses. - URL : eflthoughtsandreflections.wordpress.com/2012/02/12/efl-experiment-2-the-ultimate-dogme-criticisms-and-responses
2. Meddings L. Throw away your textbooks. - URL : www.theguardian.com/ education/2004/mar/26/tefl.lukemeddings
3. Sketchley M. Reflecting on Criticisms of Dogme ELT. - URL : eltexperiences. com/2012/04/09/reflecting-on-criticisms-of-dogme-elt/
4. Thornbury S., & Meddings L. Teaching Unplugged: Dogme in English Language Teaching. - Peaslake : DELTA Publishing, 2009. - 250 p.
5. Thornbury S. A Dogma for EFL // IATEFL Issues. - 2000. - 153(2).
6. Thornbury S. Grammar, power and bottled water // IATEFL Newsletter. -1998. - 140. - P. 19-20.
