Dogblog

2006-04-07T01:31:00.000-07:00

My attention has been drawn to the namechecks I’m getting on other blogs and other lists. Shucks guys! I never knew I had such an ardent readership. I could still get a blooker prize for this! I’ll remember you all in my acceptance speech.

Having read my critics, I was saddened to read so much negativity towards my humble little efforts, but chastened to read that one of the main features of my dogme lessons is that I admit that they aren’t dogme. So, asks one of my readers, isn’t this just another example of how smoke and mirrors dogme is? The question, based on the premise that my lessons are supposed to be dogme lessons, is a very valid one and makes a point that I have to concede.

The lessons I have described can’t really be called dogme as, for the most part, they don’t arise from the needs and interests of the people in the classroom. The Create a New Society Lesson being a case in point. I see, however, that another of my readers thinks that I was blaming my students for the failure of the lesson. Not so. In fact, if we have to apportion blame (do we?), a large part of it must land on my doorstep for choosing an activity that was more solidly grounded in my interests than those of the learners. Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.

So is dogme smoke and mirrors? I don’t think so. I have had classes where Pure Dogme (TM) has worked a dream. I have had – and currently have – classes where dogme just doesn’t seem to be as apllicable, although the ideals that underpin it continue to inform my teaching.

Currently, I have a class of students who range from a bilingual speaker who can’t write and a bilingual writer who struggles to speak mixed in among typical FCE level students who beat themselves up over their perceived inability to use English and those who are blissfully unaware of their levels of English. The bilingual speaker just wants to speak over everybody; the bilingual writer is reluctant to speak, preferring to let others have the opportunity; the self-haters are too intimidated by the bilingual speaker and the Holy Innocents are loud and keen to fill the silences. Added to that is the fact that the class changes every week. For some reasons, dogme doesn’t work well in this class. Some people rarely speak; some people speak too much; some people are interested in listening; some people are bored to tears with what they perceive as other people’s extroverted behaviour. Some people dare not participate unless they are chosen by me to speak.

What have been labelled dogme moments are possible and fruitful. What I have tried to do is describe lessons in the hope that some examples of these might become clear. An example of the ill-fated (as opposed to feted) New Society Lesson might be how the students participated with vigour in questioning me about my society and then wrote about its many flaws. By doing this, they took ownership of the lesson. I hadn’t planned to answer any more than a couple of questions. As it was, they had plenty. They were able to be critical and a large number – perhaps all of them, my memory is (some might say, conveniently) cloudy - participated.

The class has no coursebook. There are no fixed grammar points that have to be covered. Areas of language focus are determined by what gets asked about in the class or what I think could be beneficial. Where students show a willingness to speak (usually prooked by the absence of another), we run with that. I go into class with a single starting activity and a preparedness to see where it will lead to or – in worst case scenarios- where it can be directed to.

Is this dogme? Or, in the words of one of dogme’s critics, isn’t this just normal teaching? If this is what normal teaching is, perhaps normal teaching is dogme and dogme is normal teaching. However, there are features of dogme that normal teaching, as espoused in normal teacher-training never taught me about.

And, hoping that I have guaranteed that you will return to this blog to discover the elusive features, I will now go and prepare myself to teach.

2006-04-04T08:52:00.000-07:00

Feedback from the poll mentioned earlier about the activity in the class. Fifty percent of the class answered the poll. Two of them said that they didn't like the activity very much. Three of them said that they liked it. Other choices were "hated/didn't mind/loved".

Two of them said that the activity was quite useful, but not too much. Three of them said that the activity was useful. Other choices were "not useful at all/ not very useful/ very useful".

2006-03-20T07:22:00.000-08:00

P Adv 1pm-3pm

Not always easy to do the Dog. This class is a case in point. Due to institutional requirements and other such things, this class still stumbles along without having gelled particularly well. Consequently, at the start of the class, there's still a palpable absence of any desire to get on with it.

So, lucky I had an activity up my sleeve. Nothing original, I'm afraid. Just painted a vision of a post-apocalyptic world and asked them to set about reconstructing society. Gave them areas that they might wish to consider (religion, taboos, government blah) and asked them to work in groups to come up with a description of their proposed society. Half an hour later, asked them to get into new groups to share ideas/ ask questions/ criticise and choose.

Gave an example of my society. Answered tons of questions. Took around thirty minutes (maybe ten minutes explaining; 20 answering Qs). Got Ss to work in groups of 3 to do the same. Took them 5 minutes. In total. Class ended.

Follow-up? Probably best not to, considering the personal investment they'd decided to withhold. Will send them a message to their Yahoogroup asking why/how they finished so quickly. Will also do a poll of Ss to find out if they enjoyed the activity.

DQ [dogme quotient]: Paper 0; Preparation: 0; Student Autonomy: 7; Success: 4; Language Questions generated: Average to Poor; Lesson generated from teacher's activity. Tut tut.

2006-03-15T08:39:00.000-08:00

P Adv 2-4pm
Plenty of non-dogme today. Followed up yesterday's query about present perfect and present perfect continuous by handing out exercises that required distinctions being made. Asked Ss to work in groups to answer questions. Fedback by asking if anyone had problems with Section 1/2/3/4.

Asked Ss to work in pairs. Gave each pair a paragraph from yesterday's review to work with. Task: find at least five vocab items you want to know more about and write your own model sentences. Gap the sentences and write them up onto an OHT. Flashed each OHT up on the WB with time limit for pairs to find answers in relevant paragraph and write them down (about two mins, giving them the safety net of being able to complain about the ridiculously short time rather than lose face). Set this up in the guise of a pub quiz. Went through answers at the end. Winner got kissed by S. the "bubbly" Iranian fashion designer - he insisted.

End of class

Also answered phone in staff room today. "Hello," says I. Silence. Folllowed by, "Do you know my name?"
"No," says I.
Silence
Silence
Silence
"Are you going to tell me your name?" I wondered.

Strange days.

Went through Literature Review with S. Pointed out that descriptions weren't really appropriate. Needed to...errr...review the literature, as discussed.
"I did," he protests.
"Yes, you did here," I concur, "but not here. This is a description, you should be writing a summary of the articles you've read and, where possible, criticising them."
"I did," he repeats, pointing once again to the part where he did.
"Yes, but not here," I say, pointing to the part where he didn't. "In the literature review, you are only expected to provide a review and a critique of the literature."
"ONLY?" A penny drops. In fact, a couple of them do - in different receptacles.

Strange days, indeed.

2006-03-14T03:01:00.000-08:00

Pre Advanced class 9-11am
Began the class by talking with the people who had arrived about the word "ubiquitous" and things that were ubiquitous in the people's Republic of China (Deng Xiao Ping, apparently). Distracted by a Securitas van's ominous alarm: "Help! Help! Securitas is being attacked! Please call the police!" Due to the repetitive nature of the alarm, students were trying to understand exactly what was being said - no mean feat when you consider that we were three floors up and behind double-glazing. Errr...I rang the police too! Disappointingly, it was only a false alarm. Think of the mileage we could have got from it...

I asked the students if they'd identified any errors in a film review they'd read the previous day. They put forward a number of suggestions, none of which were the correct one. We talked around each "error" that they suggested. One of them was about "with whom". One of the students was prompted to say that "whom" is most frequently used after a preposition, but was regarded as very formal or belonging to set phrases. Looked at how to rewrite the sentence without "whom". Pointed out that many students don't like to finish sentences with a preposition - bringing to mind the story about Churchill.

The focus on prepositions had one student asking about how to deal with prepositions and the difficulty they caused her. I asked why people had problems with prepositions in L2s and what techniques people used to overcome these problems. Answers came and went.

Somebody asked what a stagecoach was. We looked at how words can put images in people's heads and how one of the differences between an L1 speaker and an L2 speaker is that the former tends to have a similar image to that of other L1 speakers. Referred back to nuances from a previous class. Looked at how stagecoach was a composite noun. Talked about the differences between a coach and a bus. Then a coach and a manager. Then "being robbed" and "being held up". Then being held up by a traffic jam and being held up by an gun-toting bandit. Pointed out that stagecoaches were no longer in use, but asked where people might still be held up. Got the answer I was looking for.

Somebody asked about difficulties with present perfect continuous. Pushed them to clarify that they had problems distinguishing between PPC and PP Simple. Asked if anybody knew possible answers. Told them that the best thing to do was to look at contrastive pairs (not in those words!). Wrote two sets up:

He's been studying English for ten years.
He's studied English for ten years.
I've played football.
I've been playing football.

Asked them to come up with a realistic situation where such sentences might be heard. Then to try and differentiate between them. Guided them towards answers.

Had a break. Printed off concordancer results for have+been+VBG. Gave one to each student. Asked them to identify whether the sentences were As or Bs, using the above examples. Also to see if any were Cs ("Neither A nor B"). Left them to it. Checked answers by giving my suggested answers. Looked at the Cs. Noted that "have" is also used with modals to refer to past time. Looked at how "The pastient will have been passing huge quantities of urine," is not a future reference. Came up with more examples of this structure.

Referred back to the original question: "Can you find the error in the review of the film that we watched?" Quickly examined

The real strengths of Sideways are the characters it develops,
the road trip it takes us on, and the laughs with which it provides along the
way

Talked about other verbs with two objects and called it a day.

2006-03-14T00:37:00.000-08:00

Welcome to Dogblog, an offshoot of Dogme. The idea is to try and be disciplioned enough to remember to describe classes that I consider to be in keeping with the Dogme principles. I'll try to keep it up, but promise nothing.