talking dogme (2) looking back

Plaza Mina by Corma on flickr

This week has been a fairly busy week, a lot of hours away from my computer screen for a change, and lots of walks in and out of shady Plaza Mina in the centre of old town Cádiz.  That’s where the TEFL del Sur event took place last week (see last post) and that’s where a lot of my reflections have kicked off this week, starting on journeys home through the square, writing and rewriting this blog post in my mind, revisiting and rethinking my – and other people’s – impressions of the morning.

There were three sessions, and although we hadn’t planned it that way, the three balanced each other very nicely.  The opening session by T (Teresa Bestwick) offered Fifteen things to do on Monday and was practical, hands-on and exactly what we needed to wake us up on a (relatively) early Saturday morning. The second session by Simon Pearlman was an inspiring talk from the heart about discipline and control in the YLs classroom (from VYLs to teens) and explored both sides of (an) Iron Fist, (in a) Velvet Glove.  After a coffee break in the sun, it was great to sit back and listen to someone speaking passionately and eloquently about a topic they feel strongly about (at the end of the post there are links to Simon’s slideshow and notes taken during the session).

Simon at the board

In the third session, Dogme: what’s it about? we changed the room around and switched from listening to speaking.  We sat in a horseshoe, I sat at the front, but to the side and I started as I’d intended with the word Dogme on the board and asking the others to jot down a couple of questions they’d like to ask.  The question writing spilt over into conversation and loathe as I was to stop it, I did, and handed out board pens so that people could come and write their questions on the board.

We looked quickly at the questions and the range and feel and depth showed that there were a lot of people in the room who already had definite feelings and ideas that they wanted to share.  But before plunging into the more detailed questions we went back to basics and answered – in part – the apparently simple, but actually enormous, question “What is it?” I asked everyone to write a simple definition of what it meant to them, individually or in pairs or groups as they preferred.  I had forgotten to ask them to write it within the limitations of a tweet (as I’d seen Scott Thornbury do at TESOL Spain) and so asked them to go back and pare it down to 140 characters before handing it on to the person/people next to them.  We then called out a few and discussed the elements that came up. Here are a few of the definitions and reactions to them (thanks Sarah for taking such great notes during the session!) :

• communication based learning technique invented by a Kiwi (sic).
• a paper free teaching approach that emerges from students’ needs.
• it’s a spontaneous, unplanned (not unprepared), minimal materials class.
• reactive teaching that is prepared.  It’s always prepared because you are a teacher.  Your mind is constantly acting and considering past experiences.  You go into a class with a starting point.  Bring in all of your teaching skills.
• use the students as a main resource.  The student is in control.
• the teacher is thinking outside the book, letting students decide where the class goes and what the lesson will concentrate on.
• the class focusses on emergent language instead of following set grammar and vocabulary.  Students are playing with and starting to form, conversations that come up as they enter the class.  Emergent needs feed  into the class.  It can be better for students, giving them what they need.
• listening activities are all based on interactive listening skills which is better than a CD.  Teacher is more a participant in the group, less the teacher more part of the class.  The students can bring in their own audio to ask for help.
• there are Dogme moments in all types of class.  The students often continue the conversation from things that come up in textbooks.
• it’s always been part of what we do, it’s nothing new.

As the conversation started to lose momentum, I asked for a show of hands of people who felt confident that they could explain the roots of the approach/movement. There were enough volunteers to be able to divide the session into groups which then shared what they knew about the Dogme film movement and the links between the two.   Again there was plenty of discussion.  We pooled our information and I shared a scoop.it link with articles and short video clips for anyone who wanted to delve further (I also posted it on our facebook page later that weekend).

We then turned to the questions on the board (apologies for the quality of the image – taken on my phone with the blinds halfway down – if you click on it you’ll get a bigger, clearer picture) :

 

Rather than open them to the floor I asked everyone to take another look, decide which questions they’d like to discuss and then asked the teachers to mingle, discussing their questions or issues with people they hadn’t spoken to yet.  I asked them to regroup three times, aware each time that I was breaking up conversations, but knowing also that some might be picked up again at the end of the morning.

I don’t really know what went on in those discussions. I picked up on a couple of common themes and when we regrouped we kicked off with one: the question of whether dogme is more suitable for experienced or inexperienced teachers. One view was that you needed to be experienced in order to have developed a repertoire of activities or lesson templates that you could call on, as well as the language analysis skills to be able to pick up on and exploit emergent language, while others suggested that more experienced teachers might actually find it more difficult to break out of the mould of coursebook-based lessons.

Time was running out and to tie up we looked back at the questions and whether or not we were any closer to answering them.  There was a general consensus that yes, dogme is fashionable at the moment, but no, it’s not showing off. That yes, there may be an element of dogma in the “thou shalt not ..” commandments of the vow of chastity, but that there are definite benefits in terms of responding to students’ language and learning needs.  There was a question in some teachers’ minds as to whether there was a role for controlled practice in a dogme classroom and it was argued that yes, there was, as there is also room for “teaching moments”.  We quickly discussed the question of ages and levels. It was felt that with YLs there could be a dogme element but that VYLs also love and enjoy set pieces like songs and nursery rhymes.

In response to the question about exam classes, I mentioned the cry for help from a school in Christchurch, New Zealand, after the earthquake, for ideas for teaching exam preparation classes without text books.  Here’s a link to the blog post by Anthony Gaughan asking for help and ideas.  In response to the question about student awareness of what they were learning – and a sidelong look at providing evidence of learning – I talked about my own experimental course where the students wrote lesson summaries and shared them initially by email and then on a class blog, pinpointing learning outcomes and language areas covered during the classes.  And that really was about it.

Looking back I wish I’d taken some kind of “exit poll” at the end, asked everyone to write down or articulate one thought, question or idea they were going to take away with them.  But I didn’t. Maybe if any of you are reading this you could add your thoughts in a comment?  The session ended there, but the conversations didn’t.

As has become the habit with the TEFL del Sur events, the next move was down to the square to cash in our beer vouchers, and there we talked about coursebook restraints, and dogme moments and standby classes and personal loves and hates of planning and going unplanned.   And I think there may be space for a session in one of next year’s events to share stories of “dogme moments” or  ”unplanned” lessons with a range of different classes, ages and levels. Anyone fancy it, just let T and the rest of the TEFL del Sur committee know!

[Here's a link to Simon Pearlman's  slideshow Iron fist, velvet glove  and notes taken by Sarah Davies during his session Velvet Glove, Iron Fist notes. Thanks Sarah and Simon for sharing those! ]

talking dogme

TEFL del Sur

Tomorrow morning (Saturday, May 4), I’m attending a local teachers’ event at the Active Language centre in Cádiz.  The event is run by TEFL del Sur. It’s a relatively young association.  It was set up in 2011 and is spear-headed by the ever enthusiatic and energetic Teresa Bestwick.  It offers professional development and support to teachers in the Cádiz bay area and beyond.  It’s fun, it’s vibrant and it’s Saturday morning events are always well-attended with free beers at the end to keep the conversations rolling.

Tomorrow I’m leading a session called Dogme: what’s it all about? I say leading, but I should say facilitating, or opening, or kicking off, I guess.  Until it happens I don’t think I’ll know which verb is most appropriate because for this session I’m taking a (the?) vow of chastity. I’m not preparing an outline, there will be no slideshow, and obviously, no handouts!  To be purely dogme, of course, there should be no pre-set agenda.  The topics of conversation should come from the people in the room, not pre-ordained, so by giving the session a title I’m already straying from the straight and narrow.  I guess the fact that the session has a name and poses a question is already straying off the straight and narrow.  And I must admit I have chosen a simple task to kick off. As I can’t be sure that everyone in the room will already be familiar with dogme then I can’t start with Scott Thornbury‘s “write a definition” task, so instead I’m going to ask teachers to write a few questions they’d like to ask/air about dogme.  And then we’ll take it from there.  As Active is a connected school, we’ll have access to a projector and wifi, so, if needs be, our conversations can also develop beyond the four walls.

So, no preparation, well, apart from the silent conversations I’ve been having with myself as I cook dinner or wash the dishes, and the thoughts that are running through my mind as I write this post. But I know that the joint knowledge, experience and curiosity of the people in the room will easily be enough to fill an hour with conversation and comment. Oh, and yes, I must admit I have stolen a page from Luke Meddings and Burcu Akyol‘s book, or more specifically the session they both lead at IATEFL in Liverpool this year, and I’ve prepared a scoop.it page with links to videos and articles about the origins and birth of the dogme approach/movement which might be useful as a starting point for those people who want to know more.

We’ll be taking notes during the session and I’ll be back to describe what questions were asked and what answers were offered.  In the meantime, if you’re reading this before Saturday morning (or after in fact!), and you’ve got a moment, could you let me know what questions you’d ask?  Thanks

To close, here’s a clip from an early TEFL del Sur event, just to give you a taste of the great atmosphere. Thanks go to Steve O  for the video

Bridging the gap

shared by tripadvisor

Here is a link to the slideshow for my workshop/presentation at IATEFL 2013 in Liverpool.

Bridging the gap IATEFL Liverpool 2013 2003

A note on the images:  all the images in this slideshow are either shared under a creative commons licence or taken from one of The Big Picture coursebooks, Please click on the images to see the original source.  If there is no hyperlink, the images are taken from the coursebooks.

Choice – is it really that important?

make a choice (orangejack on flickr)

Maybe I should put that question in context because, of course, choice is important. It empowers, it validates, it motivates, it engages.  But in the context of extensive reading, is it really that important?  Being able to choose the text you read, I mean.  It’s cited as one of the cornerstones of extensive reading along with ease, variety and pace.  But I’m not so sure it is always that important.

Recently I was giving a presentation at TESOL Spain on extensive reading, and how we, as teachers, can support and encourage students to become confident, independent extensive readers. Choice was one of the issues that came up.  I touched briefly on its importance, and on ways we can help our students choose. I also touched very briefly, too briefly, on the idea that maybe it isn’t actually that important.

We were talking about how we choose books in a bookshop (or online): being attracted by a cover, looking at the blurb, reading the first paragraph, turning to page 99 – and how we can simulate these choices in the classroom.  They’re all fun activities but as I was describing and modelling them in the workshop I was thinking about the last couple of books I’d read, and how I’d chosen them. Or maybe more precisely how they’d been chosen for me, and I realised that for me, for those books, choice wasn’t at all important. Not the choice of the book at least.

I’ve read and enjoyed (well, more precisely am still enjoying) three novels in the last month or so.  In my pre-parenting days that would have been very slow, but at the moment that counts as avid reading!  And I didn’t choose any of them.  Two were given to me by a new friend, a friend of a friend in fact, who was passing through and left two books with me, two books he’d enjoyed.  We’d only met for an hour or so for a walk on the beach, but enough for me to treasure the gifts and to be interested to read his recommendations.   So I didn’t choose the books, but I did choose to trust the reader who was passing them on.  So I guess not purely devoid of choice.  And I did choose to read them. They could have sat on my bookshelf gathering dust (like a few Christmas presents have) but there’s something about a second hand book, especially when it comes with a recommendation.

The first still fills my head with images and dialogues.  I finished it on the train to the conference and recommended it to another friend of a friend – someone I’d met for the first time that day.  It seemed very fitting!  The second was (as recommended) a “real page turner”, a thriller that kept me up late into the night.  A weak ending, but a great premise for a film. That one’s still on my bedside table, waiting for the right reader.  And the third I’m reading for work.  It isn’t a book I knew about before, it isn’t a book I’d chosen to read. I’m reading it to see if there are any extracts we can use in an anthology.  But the pleasure of reading it has taken over from the work (in fact possibly even slowed it down a little as I can’t choose what to excerpt till I read to the end!)

Which brings me back to choice.  I didn’t choose any of those books, but I avidly read them all. And I can remember a couple of occasions recently where students didn’t choose the book they read – or didn’t choose to read, but read avidly.

The first was with a group of high school students in their last year, studying for their university entrance exam. One of the most important skills for the exam is reading – speed reading, skimming, reading intensively – and they need to be confident readers. I knew that some of the students were already reading in English (the strongest students, the ones who had no problems with the exam). I also knew that some weren’t even reading in L1. We, the teachers, chose four short stories, each at a different level, and asked the students to choose the level that was most suited to them. We explained that we wanted them to be able to read the story quickly and easily and enjoy it.  We “guided” the choices so that everyone was reading at their own level (or below).  There was a very limited element of choice. There was a thriller, a love story, a sci-fi story and a horror story, but most of the students couldn’t choose by genre as they needed to put level first.  They were told they had to read the story over the holidays and would gain bonus points that would go towards their final classwork assessment if they did (no choice there, quite the opposite in fact!) But despite this lack of choice, the response positive, especially among the “non readers”:

• I liked reading the story at Christmas because we never read in English and it was a great opportunity.
• I liked the Dracula story because it was interesting.
• This was the most interesting activity. I like the story very much.

Almost a third of the students (out of 120) choose the short story reading task as one of the three most memorable activities during the seven month course. All those students were in the non-reader bracket.

The second example was an individual student in a similar class. But this class was streamed. Most of these students had little hope of getting their reading up to speed in time for the exam. Some had given up.  One in particular was sullen and unparticipative and generally negative. One day I took some elementary graded readers into class. A different book for each student. We talked about level and pace and they each took a book home to read for the next lesson, a week later.  This was no great sweeping victory. Only one student actually read the whole book. But it was the sullen student.  He had finished the book. He wanted another. And he had a smile on his face.  I guess it had been a long time since he’d experienced success, and the pleasure of success, in English.  A small victory.

In the comments on a recent post on Jeremy Harmer’s blog about reading , there are some interesting examples of “book club” type reading programmes, where the students don’t choose their texts as such, but all read the same book (or in some cases short story). Here’s one example from Swansea university where taking the element of choice away has helped tutors target the students who need it most.

So, maybe choice isn’t all that important, at least not as a starting point.  In fact choice can sometimes be daunting. Too many titles in a bookshop, too many suggestions on Amazon.  Sometimes there’s so much choice that you just give up!   And sometimes, maybe, in order to help our students, we can take the element of choice away, and just leave them with the simple pleasure of reading.

loop or lope?

gray wolf

 

a new fixation continued …

In my last post I wrote about the books I’ve been reading with – or rather alongside – my 10 year old son and the insights we’ve shared into how we “grow” language through reading.

This is another of our conversations, this time on the way to school.  After the Christmas break we adopted a pup. She’s six months old and walks the kids to school every morning.  As she’s a new element in our morning routine she’s often the main topic of conversation.  So, one morning, we’re walking to school and I say, “look, she’s loping!”  ”loping?” “yes, like Wolf.”  (The books we’ve been reading are set in the forests of Northern Europe 6000 years ago.  Wolves play an important part.)

“Loping?  I thought it was looping!” in disappointed indignation. I explained the difference. The indignation didn’t go away!  ”I know the difference, I just thought it was looping, I prefer looping, I’m going to keep reading it as looping!”

What interested me was the meaning making and storage process behind this one “misunderstanding”.  My son knew loop, he didn’t know lope, as he read the word he cast around for a word that was already in his vocabulary that would match the shape of the word on the page,  and in order to do this he sounded out the word in his head. And having “heard” it, he stored it as another layer of meaning for the word loop.

No real problem with that, it didn’t spoil his enjoyment of the book, it didn’t impair his understanding of the story or the creation of Wolf”s imaginary world  in his mind.  But what it did do was short-circuit any opportunities for noticing and reinforcing the word lope in speech. In our previous conversation we’d talked about how he’d noticed the word kin – phonologically so much easier to store – in conversation after learning it in his book.  The same didn’t happen with lope till I pointed it out.

Which brings me to another loop – the phonological  loop (click here for a video that explains the term) and a new, more personal understanding of the importance of pronunciation in reading (thanks to Rachael Roberts  and Robin Walker  for the online paper trail that led me to explore this phenomenon in more depth).

The term was coined by Baddeley in his research into working memory.  In his model of working memory, words (both spoken and written) are committed to our working memory via the phonological loop ie we sound out the words in our heads, we silently articulate them and through articulating them we commit them to  our memory.  If we don’t know, or can’t guess, what a word sounds like,  we can’t remember it, and we can’t recall it.  This is an aspect of learning through reading that I’ve been neglecting with my classes.

So, what are the implications?  Well,  in the case of my son, I guess the more we talk about the books he’s reading and share our favourite passages, the more likely it is that we’ll straighten out some of those loops.  In terms of L2 readers I guess it suggests to me that fostering the same kind of conversations when encouraging extensive reading would probably throw up similar “loops”.

And in terms of using reading texts in class,  and intensive study of those texts, I think I need to give a little more time and thought to sounds.  Maybe stop and look at short passages where there are potential sound/spelling problems, ask students to notice any differences between the way they hear the word in their head and the way it sounds out loud, ask them to recast the new word in a new context, drill it, repeat it, come back to it again later.

(More and more workbooks and even coursebooks offer audio recording of reading texts these days. I guess this might be one good way of exploiting them – and training students to exploit them too.)

If I’ve  understood the function of the phonological loop I guess that this kind of conscious noticing, awareness-raising, focusing on phonological form, might aid learning.  (For an interesting discussion of extensive and intensive reading see Jeremy Harmer’s recent post Does reading (and learning a new language) require two brains?)

And going back to lope and loop, it also seems to point to the importance of teaching s0und/spelling rules (the “magic” final “e”, the possible pronunciations of “oo”) at the point of need ie when the mismatch takes place, in order to help readers process similar words when they come across them.   And a final note, although my son stubbornly claimed that  ”I’m just going to keep reading it as loop!” , I’ve noticed that lope has now entered his active vocabulary

a new fixation …

 

A couple of weeks ago I was walking home from football practice with my son and our conversation turned to reading for pleasure and language acquistion (… though maybe not in quite those terms).

The conversation stuck with me. I wrote a blog post in my head as I did the washing up. But then time and events took over and the conversation was forgotten.

In the meantime reading  - both intensive and extensive – came up a couple of times in a couple of different contexts. A blog post.  A twitter exchange. A conference proposal. And the conversation bubbled back up to the surface.

Back at football practice with notebook and pen in hand I jotted down what I could remember, more or less word for word, or as close as I could.

But first, some backstory. About a year and a half ago my son got the reading bug. He found and latched onto a series of adventure stories that fired his imagination. He’s a collector and over the next nine months he’d collected 36 books. Now he’s moved on to a new series (Wolf Brother in the image above is the first book) and once again he’s hooked. As well as a collector, he’s a sharer, He wants to talk about the new books, about the world they conjure and the experience of reading them. So he persuaded me to read the books too.  Hence our conversation:

- Have you got to the bit about the clans yet?

- yeah, I have

- Do you know what clans are?

- yeah, groups of people who live together.

- Did you know about clans before?

- yeah

- I didn’t. When I first read it in the book I didn’t know what it was – but then it came up again and again and I started to understand

- yeah, you kinda learn it slowly …

- and you know there’s a word you didn’t know before but then you learn it and you start noticing it everywhere. Like I learnt “kin” in the book and then you used it when we were talking at dinner

- yeah, amazing that …

- yeah, it’s like it was always there but you don’t notice it until you’ve learnt it …

So now I’m hooked too – to the books and the great conversations we’re having about them!

Back to school

This is a very personal post.  From a different side of the learning fence.  It’s about the challenge I face as a parent at the beginning of the new school year.

I have two kids, 8 and 10, who are very happy in their schools.  They have great classmates and so far – OK it’s only day four! – getting ready for school in the morning is a happy and positive affair.

They go to local Spanish schools following a traditional curriculum taught in a pretty traditional fashion.  Rote learning, memorization, accuracy and constant testing is at the basis of the teaching philosophy.  That’s not the full picture of course.  Individual teachers and their individual approaches bring a breath of fresh air, they look for creativity where they can, but the kids still end up filling pages and pages of activity books and worksheets, ticking the correct answers, counting the mistakes , being graded once a month.

This is their day to day learning reality. And I find myself having to support it.  Even on day three my 8 year old daughter already had to memorise (verbatim) a punctuation rule.  And I helped her.  Of course we discussed the how and the why and the where – the bigger picture as it were – but in the end she insisted on being tested, on repeating the rule word for word.  She was only happy when she could parrot it comfortably and confidently.

Don’t get me wrong – I think memorization and rules have a role to play in learning – I’m just worried that the over-riding philosophy, the message about learning, that’s coming across is one of pleasing the tester, ticking the boxes, getting things right, which brings me to my question and personal challenge (a repeated, yearly, constant challenge but one that changes and shifts all the time as the kids get older, as the “learning” load increases):

How can parents help bridge the gap between traditional schooling and creative learning? 

I guess it’s mainly an attitude, a mindset, letting them explore and learn on their own terms, in their own time, offer opportunities, be there to discuss questions … but that takes time, and once they’ve finished the worksheets and the memorizing all they really want to do is take it easy, which is fair enough, right?  But still … I wonder … am I doing enough?

I wonder if any of you are facing the same situation?  I guess I’m not really looking for easy solutions, just airing a quandary …

But it does lead me to another question, related to another aspect of learning/teaching and my day-to-day life and that’s constantly present in my mind at the moment:

How can published materials help bridge the gap between a static syllabus and the dynamic process of language learning?  

Now that’s a biggie … and one I’m going to be coming back to, but not in this post!