VOICES
Here is an edited A to Z of highlights from the Dogme ELT discussion group, organised according to topic:
Authenticity
Bare
essentials
Conversation
Dogme
Emergence
Freire
Grammar
Humanism
Input
Jamming
Key
Learners
Materials
Nakedness
Open
Space
Planning
Questions
Routines
Scaffolding
Tasks
Unplugged
Vested
Interests
Whole
language learning
eXams
Young
Learners
Zone
Lesson content is rarely based on the authentic life experience of the learners. Authentic discourse, conversation is rarely allowed into the classroom. Learners are asked to pretend to be someone they are not or not to tell the truth during exercises. Learners and teacher are not encouraged to use their own rich personal life experience, knowledge of language learning, experience of using a foreign language in real communicative situations. We are looking at a way of teaching which proposes that authentic communication between real people, teacher along with students, should be the basis for language learning.
(David F.) back to top
I totally agree with David about the feeling of self-confidence and anticipation that comes from knowing that one can walk into any classroom with the bare essentals (board pen or chalk) and generate relevant material in an enjoyable context that will feel fresh to everyone involved. (Including the teacher - which is important - the worst teacher is a bored teacher and that was another reason I first started to question the value of planning lessons in detail - it took all the fun out of doing the lesson!)
I was talking to one of my high-level students today, she's an English language teacher from Romania and agrees that the mania for planning and timing that characterises orthodox teacher training is constipated beyond belief and militates against the development of real teaching skills like flexibility and adaptability to the class as it happens. Isn't that the point - the class does just happen, and it's the live analysis and where appropriate subsequent reflection on the language that emerges that uses teacher expertise, not cutting up bits of paper beforehand or anticipating problems etc. There are two things I'm keen to share with other teachers - one is that this can be a fascinating job even after - in fact increasingly after - many years; the other is that so many of the stresses that I hear teachers expressing (''the photocopiers broken again' / 'so and so just came in late again' / 'I don't know who's going to be there from one day to the next' / 'I can't find the listening tape' / 'my discussion on capital punishment bombed' / 'they never use the grammar they're supposed to use in free conversation' (!!) / 'they're not all the same level' / 'I've used this material with some of these students before') - need ... never ... matter ...again.
(Luke) back to top
These days I spend a lot of time in whole-class discussion mode - and when I say discussion I really mean chat. It takes a bit of determination some days, but generally speaking you can get more than enough structural and lexical material to work on from the students' own lives and concerns without hauling out a unit on the past perfect or herding them into a debate about the environment, etc - where invariably only one or two students will have opinions at all, let alone much to say.
In general chat mode I emphasise that what they have to say doesn't have to be clever or even 'interesting' - as it's sharing experiences which make them interesting. I suppose it's like hosting a party? You help everyone feel wanted, at home, not pressurised to do or say anything except what they're comfortable with. Contrary to often-expressed views about eg Japanese students, no one is predisposed to say nothing and in the right environment everyone will contribute equally. There's one caveat here - you do have to be interested in people to teach like this!
(Luke) back to top
How do you feel about the name 'dogme'? My thinking is that we could close a chapter of this group at the point of the meeting in London and consign the name to history, re-emerging with 'teaching unplugged', grassroots teaching, organic English or whatever (but something descriptive). I don't want to sit in Brighton next year going refuting the fact that it's a dogma or explaining the name.
(David)
I can't help remarking that Lars von Trier has just won the Palme d'Or at Cannes with a film that violates just about every principal that he encouraged his fellow directors to postulate as the Dogme manifesto. In the light of all this, what metaphorical capital can be made from Dogme then and now, critical response to it, and what teachers are for?
(Jeremy)
In a very brief reply to Jeremy´s questions:
I don't think the fact he broke all the rules makes much difference. The non-use of materials is not another approach or methodology we are trying to impose, but a state of mind, an attitude towards the students as people and language as a process of socialisation. This is the end. The Dogme stance I then see as a means to an end, the end being the above.
(Neil)
Re. the name:
People seem to really relate to names/labels, and I think Jeremy's point (a long time ago) about selecting the metaphor for the image you want to give is quite important. It seems that if the first 'Dogme' article in Iatefl Issues was in part intended to provoke, then the dogme metaphor was ideal. However, if we're trying to build something coherent, then perhaps it is time to reassess in order to use a more illuminating title. At the meeting, it was evident that we were concerned about connecting with a wide range of tachers in a wide range of teaching situations - a pretty broad church. How to reflet this? The word 'teaching' appeared in a couple of David's suggestions. 'Learning' also seems important (learning by all participants in the classroom - about language, about the classroom, and about each other).
(Graham) back to top
My favourite metaphor at the moment seems to be encoded in the word "emergent" - the language "emerges" in the lesson, the system "emerges" in the student's consciousness, etc - sort of derived from complexity theory. Teacher's job to create the conditions for emergence, and then to draw students' attention to whatever emerges? Like you, I find the "delivery" metaphor very suspect.
Here's another neat distinction: teachers always talk about "covering" the grammar (we haven't covered the 2nd conditional yet" - but never about "UNcovering" it - i.e. uncovering the learner's developing language system. Or DIScovering. Or even REcovering!
(Scott)
Moving on a little -- Scott wrote:
"...the notion of a pedagogy that foregrounds the learners' meanings and takes as its launching pad the learners' grammar (however rudimentary this is), and the belief that talk can scaffold learning, especially talk that is mediated by a "better other"...".
On the theory side of things, this would seem to link in with ideas of interlanguage (yet another area where I have only dangerously little knowledge). In this month's IATEFL Issues, Kevin Keys talks about moving away from a deficiency model of grammar towards 'intervention aimed at refining variant forms to keep the learner on track towards less L1-like and more L2-like linguistic behaviour', and talks of 'variant' forms rather than 'incorrect' forms. To me, this seems complementary to the ideas everbody's talked about i.e. safe space created in the classroom for learner's self-expression with any grammar emerging from communication according to the learners' needs, interests, and level. Learners' language thus develops according to what they and others put in.
(Graham) back to top
I've started wondering if Freirean ideas can help approach these issues.
Firstly, there is the move away from seeing learners as 'passive receptacles' to whom knowledge is given towards learners who start to create knowledge for themselves. This starts a move from external towards internal factors affecting learning. It might also deal with making the classroom/lessons genuinely appropriate to the learners.
However, the whole liberation issue with Freire is probably too much for the EFL/ELT industry. Perhaps, therefore, it is reasonable for us as teachers to limit our horizons to what actually goes on on the classroom. Which brings me to Dogme... I suppose it all depends on how you see the classroom. For me, maybe the best we can hope for as teachers is to provide opportunities for interaction and (therefore) opportunities for learning. The nature, content, and values of the interaction are what might re-assert the 'social ownership' of the learners. This isn't just asking the learners what they want to do, but genuinely negotiating with them throughout the course of lessons - negotiation itself becomes content/learning opportunity, as the how and the what of the classroom become inter-related (there's a fair bit of Candlin's ideas somewhere in there). This would mean that teaching "cannot be transplanted, it must be re-created" ( another quote -Wallerstein), and leads me towads notions of 'small cultures' (Adrian Holliday), localism, empowerment etc. This would lead to a change in the whole social genre of the lesson, teachers becoming facilitators helping learners to generate choice, and enabling them to reach goals that they set for themselves. I'm not (I think) saying this would involve absolutely no materials, but what it would involve is preparation by teachers in terms of thinking through the needs of the learners, the social context within and outside the classroom, how to generate appropriate opportunities for learning etc.
It seems to me that this could/should all be far less materials/technology driven than at present (... and there's the return to the ideas of dogme). It would also involve preparation by learners (whereby they would take more responsibility for their learning).... That's a pretty brief summary of how I got to Freirean ideas and towards the ideas we've been talking about - I hope it retains some degree of coherence (and relevance). Maybe its a bit theoretical, but in my ideal world it would be possible. I've 'adapted' a Freirean quote to summarise - 'pedagogy with the learner, not for the learner'. Again, nice and glib.
(Graham) back to top
Just to continue on the topic of coursebook grammar: my main problem with coursebook grammar is less to do with whether they teach will before going to, or the future passive as an entirely novel (i.,e. non-derived) entity, but that they teach grammar AT ALL - in this kind of "structure of the day" approach - the delivery model of learning.
This does not mean I am anti-grammar - teachers need to know their grammar fairly well so as to be able to respond to the linguistic challenges thrown up by texts and students.
But (as I said in a piece in the EL Gazette in January that was wrongly attributed to Deborah Cameron):
"More important, it seems to me, is that teachers have a sound knowledge of their students' grammar - I don't mean their students' mother tongue grammar (although that wouldn't be a bad thing) - but a knowledge of their students' developing interlanguage grammar - because this surely is what we should be teaching to, not to specifications laid down in some coursebook or syllabus. Having a sound knowledge of your students' grammar means being sensitive to their current level of development, what they can do and what they can't do, so as to be able to lead them through one zone of proximal development, and into the next."
(Scott)
I just found this quote I'd copied down on ther back of an article ages ago and forgotten about: "Die Grammatik kommt aus der Sprache, nicht die Sprache aus der Grammatik" (Langenscheidt) Loosely translated as "Grammar emerges from speech, not the other way round".
(Scott) back to top
humanism
input
What I have to share here is an extract from a conversation between two musicians, the guitarist Derek Bailey and the (late) drummer/teacher John Stevens. They once worked together, practising, writing, teaching, and the extract below comes from a book written by Bailey in 1975 and first published in 1980, called Improvisation - its Nature and Practice in Music (now Da Capo Press). It's Part Six: Classroom Improvisation, where Stevens describes the free jazz music workshops that he was setting up in London. The date is 1960- something, but anyway:
When I go out to do a workshop, though I've been doing it for a long time, as I approach the place there is no real confidence in me about what is going to happen. I always have the same sort of feeling. I can never take it for granted. And walking into the room I'm always apprehensive. And sometimes I wonder "What am I doing? I'm still doing this and worrying about it" And there was one period recently which, because of other problems, was particularly hard. And as I travelled towards the place I would think: "I'll have to give this up. I just don't have that sort of energy any more." Then I would get there, walk into the room, and there would be about 15 people in there all playing their arses off - great! The impact was just beautiful. And they, the `pupils´, got me there during that time. Then it was easy. The energy came from them.
What's interesting, one of the things that I see as important, is this: I've had to try and avoid a situation where they relied on me to come in and set the whole thing up. I made a rule: I said to them "You're coming here because you're supposed to want to play. This is a room in which you can play, so, as soon as you get in this room you are going to prove you want to play by getting on and playing. If you don't want to do that, none of what I'm doing here makes any sense whatsoever. If there are four or two or even if you are the first to arrive, as soon as you get here - start playing. And if someone comes who's new to the class then it's the responsibility of the people who are experienced in the class to invite the newcomer to play. In a sense, that is what it is about."
There are nice measures here of both generosity of spirit and toughness. Toughness in that I imagine Stevens was actually working very hard, which is in the nature of things, and generosity of spirit in that he understood the value of being uncertain, of fretting and getting going without a very clear map, and that he was always bowled over by the effect of it afterwards. Either way, it makes me feel better. If I look at the things that matter to me, if I consider myself growing older and being a teacher, what I would most like to go on doing is (a) fret and then (b) see things happily saved. That's one way of putting it, anyway.
To close this, what I find attractive about the dogme idea is that the people involved decided to go out, away from a teaching discipline to somewhere else, to then get back again and re-explain the teaching. I can see how the film making ideas were particularly apt for this, but I reckon that it could have come from many places. It makes so much sense to look out, and there are so many fantastic things going on out there, why close the windows and be miserable?
(Barnaby) back to top
Another extract from Sylvia Ashton-Warner -- this is from her novel, Spinster, 1958, which incredibly, was made into a film with Shirley MacLaine - has anybody EVER seen this? (Not a Dogme film, I suspect)
"A rainy, rainy Thursday and I talk to them all day. They ask ten thousand questions in the morning and eleven thousand in the afternoon. And more and more as I talk with them I sense hidden in the converse some kind of key. A kind of high-above nebulous meaning that I cannot identify. And the more I withdraw as a teacher and sit and talk as a person, the more I join in with the stream of their energy, the direction of their inclinations, the rhythms of their emotions, and the forces of their communications, the more I feel my thinking travelling towards this; this something that is the answer to it all; this . . . key."
(Scott) back to top
...what I've been doing recently is to start my courses with a wide ranging discussion of how they [the learners] see learning a language (learning to ride a bike/play chess/historical dates etc) and justify their perspective.
This moves on to what parts of learning a language they like and why. How do they operate in those areas which they like? Ideas arise and are shared which others in the class have not heard of. Learners then consider what people in different roles can do to help - themselves, the teacher/each other/friends outside the class/host families etc.
It often takes all this just to focus learners on the fact that they can have a role in determining what we are going to do and how we are going to do it, and for them to share their knowledge to develop a process for the classroom. Although the initial topic often doesn't arise from the learners, the language problems/areas which arise and can be examined later are theirs, the communication is 'genuine' in that their is an exchange of real life experiences which is relevant to their immediate needs. It also almost always provides the learners (and myself) with ample evidence that they are individuals sharing the classroom, each with different learning preferences and styles. Not only is it interesting and motivating, it helps to create that 'safe space' and sense of mutual cooperation that I keep banging on about.
If things have been very successful, subsequent lessons (some, not all), focus on learning experiences, knowledge about language, and knowledge about language learning. e.g. we have discussions along the lines of - what do you know about grammar/vocab etc, how do you go about learning grammar/vocab etc., what do you want to focus on in class, how do you want to go about it? It's often quite difficult stuff, and takes some getting used to for the learners, but it does provide loads of opportunities for the negotiation of meaning when they use the language. I wouldn't call it learner training either - more 'thinking critically about learning and finding your own way'...
Basically, what I'm suggesting (I think) is a class-wide discussion, exploration and on-going evaluation of the classroom's pedagogy within the pedagogical process itself by the teacher and the learners. It's therefore not a question of finding an 'appropriate methodology', but a process of 'becoming appropriate' (oops - getting glib!).
(Graham) back to top
materials
Overheard: "I wouldn't want to go into the classroom taking nothing with me"
Well ... you can be 99% sure that you will know all the words and structures which may emerge during the lesson. You will have x number of hours/weeks/months/years teaching experience behind you which will help you choose what emergent language to analyse, how to pace the emergent stages of the lesson, how to involve as many students as possible, and so on. You will also have back-up/failsafe routines in mind which can be used if all else fails. In other words, you take a great deal with you as knowledge and experience, readiness and enthusiasm. Unlike the Emperor in the tale, you aren't naked at all. The meeting of a teacher and students who want to teach and learn respectively* creates enough of a dynamic without any extras (which is not to say that materials and machines can't be used, but that they should be seen as secondary, as back-up). The setting is a reasonably predictable one - the idea that 'anything could happen' is false; indeed while 'any' language may emerge, this will happen within fairly predictable boundaries.
*I'm referring to the (young) adult education model with which I'm familiar!
(Luke)
This question of planning came up in the teachers meeting I gave yesterday on Dogme-type principles (but incorporating the use of the coursebook). Some teachers seemed to think that reactive/organic teaching might require more preparation - especially if there is less use of the coursebook - but it seems to me the very opposite and this is what I was attempting to prove. With a few basic lesson "formats" or planning macro-strategies the teacher can in fact generate enough language from the learners (or from him/herself) to provide the "text" of the lesson.
Of course, it's then another matter as to what you do with that text - and this is where experience comes in. In that sense, you need a life time's preparation to be able to react constructively and appropriately to students' errors - I suppose. But then again, I like to think that even inexperienced teachers can rely on their intuitions sufficiently to provide the kind of feedback that students need. We tend to know when students have made an error, even if we can't always explain it. But it's probably not explanations that the students need - they simply need to know that X is not possible in this instance and that Y would be better. At the risk of repeating myself, I have to quote one of my favourite teaching descriptions - the novelist Edmund White's account of his private Italian teacher (from The Farewell Symphony):
"Her teaching method was clever. She invited me to gossip away in Italian as best I could, discussing what I would ordinarily discuss in English; when stumped for the next expression, I'd pause. She'd then provide the missing word. I'd write it down in a notebook I kept week after week. ... Day after day I trekked to Lucrezia's and she tore out the seams of my shoddy, ill fitting Italian and found ways to tailor it to my needs and interests."
Obviously this kind of reactive, reconstructive teaching works fine one-to-one - but is whole other ball game with a class. Nevertheless, the principle still holds - let the learner(s) lead. Thereafter the problem is not a planning one so much as a management one.
(Scott) back to top
Has anyone attended a conference/meeting run in Open Space?
Open Space Technology is a rather misleading name for a humanistic approach to problem-solving developed in the States by someone named Harrison Owen. We adopted it for a whole-school conversation session and for staff training a couple of times and I'm keen to incorporate it into a course design proper.
In essence it works like this: a theme which encapsulates a shared difficulty or concern is framed and participants notified in advance. Everyone turns up and in whole-group mode people are invited to post sessions on the board. People posting the session are responsible for being present for the session and for reporting back later. People sign up for different sessions; there is a choice and within a given time-frame people can attend one only, or go from session to session, or do nothing at all.
The principles are that whatever happens is the only thing that could have happened, that the people who turn up for a given session are the right people, and so on. I like the reporting angle when I think of how it could work in ELT. Although my first experience of it was in an area in which I was out of my depth (it was to do with managing change and I had a staff of ten while other participants were running the entire gas network for the UK, etc) and not naturally very motivated, it was a really fascinating event and very liberating - it was pure peer-teaching and a surprisingly powerful experience. It worked well for staff training and the whole-school conversation event was a great success, with people peeling off into different rooms in varying numbers to discuss topics nominated by the students.
(Luke) back to top
The lessons being described - and the classes in the bar - sound very much like Jim Scrivener's 'Jungle Path' in some book of his (now what was it?) - well Learning Teaching, of course. The teacher goes in without a specific plan and it all develops from there. In the book Jim describes this kind of lesson (and this kind of lesson only) as 'student-centred'.
Yet in my investigations of what students think good teachers are, something that comes up frequently is that they (students) like to think that teachers have prepared classes - that they have had the respect and taken the time to think about what they are going to ask students to do. Surely, it is just as student-centred to think about a particular group of students and try and come up with material and activities which are suitable for them as it is just to go with the flow? Or am I straying away from the point of all this discussing.
Much more critical, it seems to me, is the fact that most teachers in the world would perhaps feel less relaxed in true free-fall than native-speakers do. I am not belittling non-native-speaker teachers - indeed many of them that I have worked with around the place have astonishing competence in the language - but many of them are less secure than that. One of the things that helps such teachers is preparation and material.
(Jeremy)
I'm very prepared for my lessons. I get to know the learners pretty well, e.g. I know who is shyer and who is more confident, who it's better to ask to act as manager of a discussion.
My lessons are made up of different activities and I know that some things can be allowed to develop and other things can run out of steam. Class management is important. I also take my learners' opinions and suggestions seriously. But I am ready to leave the space for things to happen. 'Going with the flow' requires a lot of awareness and quick thinking on the part of the teacher, if by that expression we are to understand facilitating non-structured speaking.
I consider that I'm maturing to this kind of teaching - it's not the easy way out. To me the skill is setting up a structure within which communication and creativity can arise. There are a lot of factors involved in preparing the space, it's just that you don't know what will rise up in it. That's the learning vacuum. If you've brought in all the materials and activities you don't leave much space for the learners - unless you do.
Have we had this one? You can only improvise when you're extremely well-prepared. But the preparation isn't material in terms of armfulls of books, handouts etc, it's not visible.
(David) back to top
One doubt (two really): if you trash the coursebook, don't you finish up with a methodology that is not going to suit all learners and all learning styles? And secondly, don't many teachers and learners find the coursebook comfortable, something to hang on to and build around, besides - with its examples and exercises and grammar reference sections - being both useful and necessary?
(Tom)
Quite a long time ago now, Luke mentioned his slight concern that dogme seemed ideal for one-offs, but how would it run over whole courses. This is now the issue I'm thinking about. I have to admit, at times, I lose my nerve and out comes a worksheet. There again, it's usually one I have thought about myself, and it is at a time the students and I feel is relevant)so am I really losing my nerve, or am I in fact, following a reasonable dogme-ish path?
(Graham)
One of the problems I encountered was `the face factor' - I know I'm a very focussed teacher with a highly professional persona - people see me as very business like and thorough and `hard' (so I'm told) and non-nonsense kinda thing - and clearly they see me like thaty cos that's the image I must project. So it was not easy for me to go into a class and use behaviours that co-incidentally overlap with the very behaviours of what one is wont to think of as `slack' teachers eg I 've done no prep so let's just talk about whatever you wanna talk about kind of thing. Has anyone else found this paradox-conundrum in `being dogme'?
(Ruth)
I was intrigued to find this sentence in the Trainee book of Penny's Ur's A course in Language teaching (it is included in a list of the pros and cons of coursebooks, for discussion): "A learner without a coursebook is more teacher dependent". Somehow it reminded me of that old feminist slogan: A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle. The learner needs a coursebook like a ..... needs a..... perhaps this could be our Xmas competition???
(Scott)
What is dogme?
(Jesse) back to top
Something I do in the interests of capturing random input and also in the interests of improving the students' ear and conversational fluency is this:
when I say something to no one in particular I often ask a student to repeat what I've said - which they often do perfectly, but as a reformulation. I might for example say, more or less thinking aloud, 'let's have a go at this,' and a student might reformulate this as 'let's try this.' We'd then look at the two and discuss what the distinguishing characteristics are. I think the students' success in reformulating language they don't yet know or can't yet use, which they are able to do because the context is real, is proof of the value of opening one's mind to the possibilities of random input.
So, for example, in a class yesterday, a police car went by: 'how would you describe that sound?' ... 'we sometimes say that sirens wail ... what else wails (a baby, someone complaining when wail is used as a reporting verb, etc) .. Bob Marley and the Wailers ...'
I call this a back-of-the-envelope activity where I note either on the board or, better, in board pen on paper when sitting with the students, what we can come up with in terms of synonyms, opposites, word family/lexical field work. It's a kind of continuous brainstorm and review. Most of this involves language they already know, but ensures that when I or a student introduce language they don't yet know, it is grounded in a real context and the language they already know.
(Luke) back to top
scaffolding
A colleague here in Barcelona and I have redesigned the CELTA course that we run to try as far as possible to bring it into line with a task based approach. I see this as being very consistent with the issues that the dogme group has been discussing - learning is best accomplished when students have opportunities to use language meaningfully - both receptively and productively (this being backed up with a focus on form - as opposed to formS). While we have done this, it is important to remember the context in which many recent graduates of our courses will have to operate - the textbooks, school and learner expectations they face, exams and syllabuses they have to work to etc. I feel we would be doing them a serious disservice if we failed to equip them with tools and techniques for working with discrete language points. But even here what we can do is to help them to realise the limitations of working with language in this way, discuss language learning, draw out the default settings, and, most importantly, help them to experience the buzz and pleasure that is felt by all when a genuinely communicative activity takes off.
(Kar)
Another very positive aspect of tbl for both learners and pre-service trainee teachers (and dogmetists!) is the teacher role that it implies - to set up and manage (in a limited classroom management sense of the words) a context in which students have lots of opportunity to express their own meanings.
(Karl) back to top
unplugged
vested Interests
...on the subject of the whole language movement.
For your information... A definition (from Strickland and Strickland, Un-covering the Curriculum):
Rather than a program to be followed, whole language is a set of beliefs, a major tenet of which is that language is best learned in authentic, meaningful situations, ones in which language is not separated into parts, ones in which language remains whole. Whole language integrates reading, writing, listening and speaking and defines the role of the teacher as one of facilitator and the role of the student as an active participant in a community of learners.
A program, from Freeman and Freeman ESL/EFL Teaching: Principles for Success...
Learning goes from whole to part
Lessons should be learner-centred because learning is the active construction of knowledge
Lessons should have meaning and purpose for students now Learning takes place in social interaction
Reading, writing, speaking and listening all develop together
Lessons should support students' first languages and cultures
Faith in the learner expands learning potential
And a Dogme orientation (from Strickland & Strickland)
Expensive elaborate materials are not needed when implementing whole language approaches. Students read texts that are familiar and meaningful, drawing on familiar concepts and experiences to which they can relate. It is not necessary to purchase elaborate "units" designed by publishing companies, material that often controls the curriculum by failing to consider student need and input. The whole language teacher does not worry about a pre- ordained sequence or hierarchy of skills; the curriculum becomes organized as teacher and students share planning (p. 18)
Needless to say, the whole language movement has been rounded on by grammar and phonics bigots, and associated with everything that is wrong with education and society. There must be something in it!
(Scott) back to top
It`s exam time again and, as David is DOS here and has given exam content flexibility, so my UP-INT students have decided how they want to be tested. Here is what they came up with:
Writing: a choice of tasks; description, short story or account (no formal writing but they have done this in class).
English in Use: a comprehension text with some answers open to interpretation/discussion - meaning any reasonable answer is acceptable (in real life we interpret things according to opinion too); some kind of dialogue sentence writing; a cloze (not multiple choice) and sentence restructuring (i.e. putting the words in the right order).
Listening: This has already been done by a student who off his own back volunteered a rendition of Rumplestiltskin with 15 accompanying questions - which he had to create himself without a transcript. It was intended as a general class exercise but turned out to be so well done that I decided to make it their test. It was about 20 minutes in length and quite difficult but the students made me smile by scoring 9 to 13 out of 15 even though they heard it only once. It was a pleasant surprise.
Speaking: Always a difficult one but the agreement we reached was for free-speaking between students in pairs, with an `external` teaching observing and taking notes. A big improvement over the method I tried last year of recording them, in one to one conversations, in a seperate environment.
The general concept of the openness of these student designed/requested tests, and the fact that they encourage and reward lateral/expansive thinking and interpretation, correlates well with my own views on teaching - i.e. we should reward our students for thinking in 3 dimensions instead of restricting them to just 2; for example: this exercise requires you to put: `must`, `have to` or `need to` into the correct gap, and then give them sentences like: `Tonight I ________ go home by 7pm.` In the key there would be just one correct answer but in real life all of them are applicable, depending upon circumstance and opinion, so to me such artificial exercises are restrictive and I`m delighted that the whole group has now woken up to that and grown to enjoy it.
Another point to make, for anyone who has doubts about student designed/marked tests, is that once students see you respect their opinions, and that making mistakes is part of the learning process and not something to be scolded for, they don`t cheat or create stupidly easy tests - on the contrary they tend to make the tests more difficult and mark themselves more harshly.
In keeping with Scott`s and David`s comments on dogme, the strength of our discussion group is indeed that we are speaking from first-hand experience from the classroom and we are not theorists or teachers who comment `with authority` on things they have never tried.
Hope you all enjoy your exams too.
(Richard B.) back to top
young learners
zone