‘TI Scott Thombuy, Dogmever see a Danish film called The Idiots? Or one called Celebration? Or + Mitune? Iso, then } you may have heard of Dogme 95. In 1995 a group of Danish film-makers signed a “vow of }-ehastity”. Their intention was to rid cinema of an obsessive concern for technique and rehabilitate a cinema which foregrounded the story, and the inner life of the characters. ‘They rejected the superficiality and “trickery” of mainstream film- making. Dogme 95's first “com- ‘mandment”, for example, is that ‘Shooting should be done on location. Props and sets must not be brought in (ifa particular prop is necessary for the story, a location must be chosen where the prop isto be found). Films made according to Dogme 95 prescriptions (such as Lars von Trier’s The Idiots) typically have a rough, gritty, even raw, quality and are cer- tainly afar remove from the slick artifice and technical virtuosity of Hollywood. You may not like Dogme films, but they are not easy to forget. It has been my belief that it's time to apply similar, Dogme-tike, principles to the language classroom. The wealth of mate- rials now available for the teaching of English, coupled with the wide range of classroom techniques and procedures recommended on training courses, may have blinded us to “the story"-that is, the essential conditions for language learning. Where, for example, is real communication? More often than not, itis buried under a weight of photocopies, visual aids, OHP transparencies, MTV video clips, board games, and what have you. ‘Somewhere in there we may have lost the plot. ‘Think about it: how many of your best lessons just happened? For example, a really goodI | | | 2 discussion cropped up, and you let it run, And run. Or something that had happened to a student at the ‘weekend became the basis of the whole lesson. Or, because you missed the bus, or because the photocopier wasn't working, you had to go in unprepared. But the lesson really took off. On the other hand, how many really memorable and engaging lessons have you given that were based on slavishly following the ‘coursebook? And how many times have you spent hours preparing ‘material for a lesson, only to see it fizz and splutter, like a damp sky rocket? Inher inspirational book, ‘Teacher, the New Zealand primary school teacher, Sylvia Ashton- ‘Warner records a similar frustra- tion with materials: | burnt most of my infant room ‘material on Friday. | say that the more ‘material there is for a child, theless pull there is on his own resources (..)) burnt all the work of my youth Dozens of cards made of three-py, ‘and hand-printed and illustrated. Boxes of them. There willbe only the following lst in my infant room: Chalk, Books, Blackboard, Charts, Paper, Paint, Pencils, Clay , Guitar, Piano ‘And when a child wants to read he ‘an pick up a book with his own hhands and struggle through it. The removal of effort and denying to the child ofits right to call on its own resources... (Iwas sad, though, seeing ital go up in smoke) But teaching is so much simpler and clearer asa result. There's: much ‘more time for conversation communication. (You should have heard the roaring in the chimney!) If time for conversation and ‘communication was considered so important in a primary school class, how much more important must it be in a language class? Language, after all, s communica- tion. So here is the first “command- ment” for a “Dogme of ELT" | | Teaching should be done using only the resources that teachers cand students bring to the class- room-te. themselves-and whatever happens to be in the classroom. Ifa particular piece of material is necessary for the lesson, a location must be chosen where that material is to be Found (e.g. library, resource centre, bar, students’ club...) (See Box for the full Dogme ELT “Vow of Chastity”) Iwas with the intention of exploring the implications of a pedagogy based on this and related principles that a small but growing group of teachers around the world set up an internet discussion group called dogme ELT, (http:/groups. yahoo.com/group/dogme) with the by-line: For a pedagogy of bare essentials. By this means we were able to share our beliefs and practices, and at the same time broadeast them to a wider audien- ce. A ively, and often heated, discussion developed, and a ‘number of common themes started to-emerge. Concepts that eropped up again and again included such things as engagement, relevance, Interaction, talk, voice, dialogue, emergence, classroom dynamic, autonomy, empowerment and liberation. Here, for example, is Graham (in Newcastle), describing an experien- ce in which he found himself liberated from the materials: | was teaching on a Cambridge First Certificate course (in which, by chance, about half the class worked in the health sectod in Hungary, where the exam took place @ couple ‘of weeks before the end ofthe paid- Up semester which meant we had a ‘ew lessons in which we were free ‘rom the pressure of the exam, its syllabus, and related coursebook. ‘What subsequently emerged was a period of time in which the learners ‘explored {among other things) more intrcatefintimate vocabulary for parts of the body; the connotations of vocabulary previously heard but not {uly understood; the workings, advantage and disadvantages of the British medical system compared to the Hungarian, discussion of whether they would lke to work abroad (related to Eastern European salaries), etc The discussions of their work (and, for the non-health professionals, the se of these services) was relevant well beyond the classroom. Not too much grammar emerged, but after 3 semester of First Certificate practice, the learners seemed to welcome the chance to exchange relevant stories and opinions, and the vocabulary (generated was their main aim and outcome (one of the most memora ble vocabulary sessions |, and hopefully the earners, can remem bed. twas perhaps the first time | stepped away from text- books/mateias for any length of time. 'm not a medical expert, and learned a lot from the students. The point, it seems to me, is that realy it was the learners who generated these 2 or 3 lessons and the earning ‘opportunites within them, talking about themselves, their lives, and as 2 result, finding the English language necessary to achieve this, Another teacher, Kevin, in Barcelona, discovered his teena- gers really wanted just to talk: We have done three more classes consisting of everyone sitting in a circle and "just talking”. have been surprised how many reall interes- ting things we've discussed and how well the students have reacted to these lessons. | certainly get the feeling that the students can learn 3 lot inthis type of lesson, one reason beeing that they are so interested in what's being sid A teacher in Romania (Carmen) ‘commented that many of her colleagues confess to the fact that the teaching they enjoy most takes place in the two months at the beginning of the school year-before the coursebooks have arrived!And a teacher in Seotland (Olwyn) described a writing class in which the content of the class ‘came from the “people in the room”: ‘My writing class wrote about the conference | had just attended. 1 «gave them the frst sentence and said they could ask me any questions they liked so long as they were a) written down and b) grammatically correct. | handed back any incorrect ‘questions for reformulation. After an intial uncertainty, questions flew thick and fast from the writing ‘groups. After half an hour they had 10 organise the material they had collected into an essay and had an ‘opportunity at the end to fillin any ‘gaps. The students commented that the {questions helped them to waite fot more than they normally would and they felt supported in the writing task by the eror correction of their questions, Next week we'll ook a little bit more at how they organised the mass of answers into a coherent tert. ‘The implications for teacher training have also been explored. Neil, a teacher trainer in Barcelona, noted a mismatch between trainee teachers’ attitudes and students’ expectations: | have recently started 2 CELTA (Centficate) course and | set my 12 trainees the task of deciding which of the three teacher roles was the most important-the social, the ‘educational, or the organisational The final result was that they could not decide whether educational was ‘more important than organisational and vice versa, but they were ‘unanimous thatthe social role was the least important. With my Advanced & group of students | did the same task. Again they were Undecided about organisational vs ‘educational and unanimous about the social-but that this was the most important. What, then, makes a Dogme lesson? A Dogme lesson is one that is grounded in the experience, The Vow of Chastity 1. Teaching should be done using only the resourees that teachers and students bring to the classroom-ie. themselves~and whatever happens to be in the classroom. Ifa particular piece of material is necessary for the lesson, location must be chosen where that material is tobe found (eg brary, resource centre, bar, students’ club...) 2, No recorded listening material should be introduced into the classroom: the source ofall “listening” activities should be the students and teacher themselves. The only recorded tmaterial that is used should be that made in the classroom itself, eg. recording students in pair or group work for later replay and analysis. 8.'The teacher must sit down at all times that the students fare seated, except when monitoring group or pair work (and even then it may be best to pull up a chair). In small ‘lasses, teaching should takeplacearounda single table. 4. All the teacher's questions must be “real” questions (such as “Do you like oysters?” Or “What did you do on Saturday2”), not “display” questions (such as “What's the past ofthe verb to go?” or“Istherea clockon thewall?”) 5, Slavish adherence to a method (such as audiolingualism, Silent Way, TPR, task-based learning, suggestopedia) is ‘unaceeptable. 6. A preplanned syllabus of pre-selected and graded ‘grammaritemsis{orbidden. Any grammar hatisthe focus ‘of instruction should emerge from the lesson content, not dictateit. 7. Topies that are generated by the students themselves ust be given priority over any other input. 8, Grading of students into different levels is disallowed: students should be free to join the class that they fee! most ‘comfortable in, whether for social reasons, or for reasons of ‘mutual intelligibility, or both, As in other forms of human social interaction, diversity stiould be accommodated, even ‘welcomed, but not proscribed, 9. The criteria and adminstration of any testing procedures rust benegotiated with thelearners. 10. Teachers themselves willbe evaluated according to only ‘one criterion: that they are not boring. 3Meroe rds beliefs, desires and knowledge of the people in the room. It is alesson to the target language-but who asserts her authority only in order language is not used for display but to facilitate the group's common purpose-to extend the frontier of the second language, to turn ‘motivated not by the need to pass a learners into users. Is Dogme a dogma? No, [hope commonly felt need to express their not. I think, rather, that Dogme is, membership of a small and interde- more like a state of mind, a stance, that inevitably permeates all of where the teacher is simply another one’s classroom practice and one which will (and must) adapt to local freely”. that is language-rich but where {for meaningful exchange. It is a lesson where the learners are test or to earn a tick, but by the pendent culture. It is lesson member of the group-somewhat more knowledgeable when it comes conditions. In that sense itis not a dogma. It may even be compatible with a coursebook. But the prineiple-or belief-that must hold true is the foregrounding of the “inner life” of the learner-and teacher for that matter. And if there are rules, they are not so much preseriptive as facilitative: a: Lars von Trier said in an interview “That's the whole point of these rules-they are a tool to be used A Dogme lesson "greeted the students, (a class of about twenty teenagers whose abilities range widely, but are called intermediate) and sat down. lasked them to take out pen and paper and to write down the following sentences, each of which I dictated clearly two or three times: often spend my weekendsin the country. ‘am reading a good book by Isabel Allende at the moment. I generally don't stay out late on weekdays. Uharely ever cook for myself. am doing an intensive computer course thismonth am looking after my neighbour's cat while she isaway. United the students to ask questions if they had any problems (What's number three again? How do you spell ‘neighbour?) and to compare their sentences in pairs. | asked one or two students to read back the sentences, again checking that they had been copied accurately | then told them thatthe sentences are about me, and that some of them were true and some fase. In pats, they had to ‘decide which were which, and mark thers T or F accordingly. ‘Once they had done this, asked them to tell me what they thought, and why before teling them the “answers”, and adding some explanation. “Yes, it's tru, | hardly ever cook for myself -1 usually just have a salad ora sandwich i'm on my ‘own. then asked the students if they had any more questions theyd like to ask me about my neighbours cat for example. A short chat about neighboursand cas followed Then (stil seated) | asked the students to look at the sentences again, and to underine any expressions of time inthe sentences, such asoften. These wroteon tothe boar! often pardyever conweekdays thismonth _atthemoment generaly... while | then asked learners to write (individually) six truc sentences about themselves using these time expressions. The: did this individually. ! moved around the class, available fo {questions about vocabulary, and keeping an eye on the senten ces the students were producing. When most students had fou or five sentences, | invited individuals to read a sentence ou loud. | commented on the sentence, and asked two or thres ‘questions about it: You generally watch TV on weekdays? Wha kind of things do you watch? How many hours do you spenc ‘watching? Do you watch TV on your own or with your family etc. |then organised the classinto groups of three and instructec them to take turns to read out sentences to each other and-ver portanty-to ask each other questions about what they heard Het the students talk for as long as they needed-a good ten tc fifteen minutes-and then invited individuals to tel the clas anything interesting that they had found about their classmates For example, one student told the class that Rosa is doing < ‘course in tackwando this month. | asked Rosa to tell the class ¢ litle more about this. Finally, | asked the class to write up a report of their group conversation, asf forthe two or three students who wereabsen' that day. The groups worked on their report while | monitored, ‘made suggestions, corrected, and answered questions. Group: ‘exchanged, read, and commented on each others reports. Ene oflesson.” Scott's comment: Thisis a materials free lesson, and one inwhich the language thatis generated “belongs” to the people in the room. It breaks only Vow Number 6, since the teacher is Clearly working to an externally imposed grammar agenda However, given the fact that many teachers have no choice in this, the lesson is @ good example of how the external sllabus can be “blended” with the internal one, without jttisoning other Dogme principles.