Scott: On dealing reactively with learner language

"What do the people in this group do with the information we gather? Information gathering (known more humanly as listening) is a central feature of this method but what is the next stage? How do we make exercises, drills, board the words, role-plays etc.? In short how do we make a lesson from the material we receive?"

Here is a more considered answer to Dan's question (because it's a good one, and it goes straight to the heart of the matter)

First of all, it's important to emphasise that dogme is not about materials-free activities (like warmers and fillers) but it is about materials-light teaching. That is, it's about designing and managing whole lessons that are primarily based on the language that emerges out of the communicative needs, interests, desires of the people in the room. So, the implication of Dan's question is - having got some emergent language, how do you fashion a lesson (ie. coherent sequence of activities) out of it?

Let's start at sentence level (or utterance level) with a concrete e.g.. A student, in answer to the question, "What are your plans for next month" says "Next month, I plan go to San Francisco for sightseeing". Immediately the teacher has the option of focusing on the content ("Oh yeah, have you ever been before? etc) or on the form - by correcting, by eliciting a self-correction or a peer- correction - or on both meaning and form together, by asking for clarification ("You what?) or through a recast ("Oh you're planning to go to SG to do some sightseeing?). Or the teacher stores this away (makes a note, say - Luke's "back of the envelope technique) for later. Or s/he may be recording the student. At some point, either sooner or later, the teacher has the option of retrieving this sentence. It could go up on the board; it may come up in a transcription of the recording (as in CLL or the Lynch idea in my last posting).

At this point (of retrieval) there are lots of ways to go. Here are some options:

Save the boarding of it until more errors of a similar type (either relating to futurity or to non-use of to-infinitive ("for sightseeing") have emerged. Put them up together and ask learners in pairs/groups to correct them, and to justify their corrections by reference to rules. Elicit substitutions (I'm planning to go to ___ to ___). Have learners write as many as they can in X minutes. Drill some of these for fluid pronunciaiton if necessary.

If no more errors of the same type come up, put it up, anyway, as part of a selection of varied errors, and follow more or less the same procedure.

Have learners translate the corrected sentences into their L1, clean the board, and then get them to translate the sentences back into English.

Have them reconstruct from memory the part of the conversation that elicted the targeted sentence, and to write it, incorporating their corrections. (If the conv has been recorded, you can play back the section to refresh their memories).

Re-enact the conversation with the student who produced the mistake. Have pairs of learners do this (role play it).

Have them write a new conversation, but incorporating some of the corrected sentences. Practise and perform.

Get learners to test each other on the sentence corrections: if a monolingual class: How do you say [L1 version]? If multilingual: "Andreas said ... Can you improve that?"

So far we have been talking about isolated (and non-standard) sentences. Suppose, however, the teacher had followed the "Oh yeah, and have you been there before?" option, and had elicited a chunk of talk about this student's planned trip to SF. The teacher then wants to "capture" this emergent language and use it as a focus for language work.

Ideas: Ask learners in pairs/groups to reconstruct the chunk of conv, writing down what they can remember. Monitor, correct, collect errors, problems, for boarding and plenary discussion.

Or, get Andreas up the front and say, "OK let's have that chat again. You lot listen, and see if you can improve it". Re-run the conversation, but signal pause, rewind, when you want to involve the others. Keep a running transcription of the conversation on the board, if you can. For further study later on.

Extract some useful functional, chunk-type language from the reconstructed conversation: "Oh yeah. Ever been before? How long for?" etc. Board this - get the rest of the class in pairs to have (real) conversations starting "What are your plans for next month?" and ask them to incorporate these chunks where/if appropriate. Re-run some of these conversations, e.g. performance style up the front of the class, or record one or two. Have them write them up for homework.

Extract relevant grammar points and have learners write their own "grammar reference" for the lesson. With exmaples. Same with vocab. This goes into their folios.

Have them in pairs/groups design a test based on the above (e.g. gap fills, jumbled sentences etc). They then exchange tests, do them, and then send them back for marking.

Have students write a summary of the lesson (in narrative form) for the Absent Student.

Take Andreas's conversational chunk and reformulate it as a letter, say, on to the board, with the rest of the class helping. "Next month I plan to go ot SF. etc" Or leave the room and let them do this, leaving half the board free for your re-casts when you return (the Time magazine cover idea).

Role play the conversation as if you were a TV interviewer - you could record it at same time. Go back and look at the strengths, weaknesses.

Have them do the same to you - then they attempt to reconstruct from memory (writing).

Have students prepare questions to ask Andreas about his trip. (While he anticipates these and writes possible answers). Collect these questions for later study and analysis, and redeployment when they have simialr conversations with each other in pairs. Role play various stages of Andrea's trip (travel agent, customs, hotel, police station etc).

Role play the conversation they will have when Andreas gets back ("How was yr trip...?"

and so on.

The important thing, I think, is to capture text, whether sentences, bits of talk or whole conversations, and then put it to work, improving it, reheasring it, performing it, re-formulating it in another mode (speech to writing, writing to speech) or register (formal, public or informal, private). And there must be some focused attention on the language - but not just the weaknesses, also the strengths. And there must be some kind of summarising activity, for the record.