Dogme journey - where I am now

It happened long before the pandemic hit us. I was only 5 months into EFL teaching when Teacher P walked in the staff room and recommended the book Teaching Unplugged to me.

I then read it over the summer months - I'd started out properly as an EFL teacher in March 2019. Since then, I've incorporated some Dogme elements in my lessons. Dogme, an approach proposed by Scott Thornbury, is largely based on the socio-cultural theory of learning. One of Dogme's signature characteristics is 'relevance to the learners' through the use of learner-generated, not coursebook-imposed, contexts.

While I've never taught a proper lesson in the Dogme approach, I've frequently provided personalised contexts to my language practice activities. I call this 'Dogme Lite' - a kind of soft Dogme. I've also worked with some Business English learners who came to the lesson with their immediate needs and material, from which I would try to identify any (pattern) of emergent language or language which is crucial to giving them the tools to succeed. Having taught quite a few lessons like these, I think it's time to start thinking how I can deal with emergent language in a more systematic way.

Incidentally, I was teaching a Conversation class last Saturday. It was the first conversation class of the year, and the participants started with some 'catching up' (What are you up to? - that sort of stuff). At some point, the topic of soaring energy prices came up in their conversation. Instead of detecting the participants' emergent language, I think I jumped the gun by exploiting the topic for a role play. In this role play, the participants as government minister, representative of a consumer rights group, and CEO of an energy company had the objective of reaching a mutually satisfactory agreement from their differing positions. The activity took off and the discussion went for a good 15 minutes - feedback was duly given.

With hindsight, I think the Conversation lesson looked more like a strong-end Task Based Learning one. The original idea of Dogme is that once the emergent language has been identified, there will be some sort of focus work (cognitive theories come into play here) and practice activities devised on the spot. The Dogme journey continues ...

Hybrid lessons: a laptop and a speaker

It all started with an email this morning - one of the students ('Student G') had to remain in self-isolation due to pandemic regulations, and she would join the afternoon lesson online from home.

Despite my modest knowledge of the hybrid classroom/lesson, I'd never taught one up to this point. So I spent the whole morning trying to visualise the logistics in the classroom and think through a number of key questions in my head. How would my students be working together? What would Student G need so that she could follow our lesson successfully? How could I make sure the sound was all right for all students? How would I deal with unexpected issues with technology? Where should I place my laptop?

In the end, I decided to do it like this:

 

(Note that I'm using Student G as a kind of 'hyponym' of those who join an in-person lesson synchronously from their home.)

• I put the lesson's digital material (handouts and information-gap task cards) in a shared folder on OneDrive, so that I could share the link with Student G prior to the lesson.
  (N.B. The material is numbered 1 to 4 for easy reference.)
  
  
• I place my laptop in such a way that the webcam could capture all students working in the classroom. I also projected the online meeting on the classroom's television, so that all students could see Student G.
  
  
• I connected my laptop to a stereo speaker and set the audio at a level which was audible but wasn't intrusive, so that all students could hear Student G talking and vice versa.

 

What worked well: some reflections

• Instructions - clear, succinct instructions with the usual checking questions work just as well as in any online or in-person lesson. In a hybrid lesson, however, it would be a good idea to 'chest' the material for Student G in front of the webcam (hold it for a few seconds) before moving back to the physical classroom. It also helps when eye contact is made with both Student G and other students when giving instructions.
  
  
  
• Arrangement (pairwork and groupwork) - once the laptop is set up at a stationary place, it would be easy for any student to move to the 'workstation' space for pairwork. Groupwork might be tricky depending on pandemic regulations and how many people one can fit in front of a webcam. As usual, it would work better by moving the students to a new type of arrangement before giving instructions. (In our case, it was convenient because we had worked on Can you + verb (base form)? a couple of weeks before. Student A, can you move here? Thank you.) I also asked my students to speak up when they were working with Student G, even though the laptop's microphone was able to pick up my voice from afar. (N.B. The online meeting's noise cancellation setting was put on its lowest.)
  
   
• Attention spread - I got this useful tip from one of the webinars I've attended. (A big thank you to those teachers who shared their experience of teaching hybrid lessons!) Generally speaking, there is a tendency for the teacher to focus on either Student G or other students for the extended period of time. When I was teaching this hybrid lesson, I tried eliciting answers directly from Student G (Yes, Student G?) as well as the rest of the class (with a follow-up question: Student G, do you agree?). Similarly, this technique was applied to post-task feedback giving.
  
  
  
• Listening - to avoid issues with echo, I muted the laptop's microphone while I was sharing sound with Student G in the online meeting. This worked smoothly since other students were able to listen to the audio through the stereo speaker at the same time.
  

What could have been better

• Monitoring - It felt as though I wasn't monitoring Student G sufficiently, but it was the noticeable difference between the in-person and the online modes which created this false impression. In a hybrid lesson, post-task pair check will take on greater importance since it represents the crucial moment for monitoring Student G's answers. Another useful monitoring tool is the chat in the online meeting, which I'm going to address in the post-task feedback.

• Post-task feedback - I had to rely on whoever was working with Student G to make sure she had the correct answers. I've also thought about other means of giving Student G feedback: chat, virtual board, screen sharing the answer key, showing the whiteboard through the webcam or Teacher Talk. Given its bad reputation, Teacher Talk may sound less desirable, but it is actually less time-consuming than other means of giving feedback on a shorter lesson task - and it is purposeful Teacher Talk. Screen sharing the answer key would be useful if the lesson task is longer or the answers more complex. The reason why I decided not to use the chat was that it would have effectively meant I needed to give the same feedback twice (physical whiteboard and chat), but I'm open to different opinions.
  
  
• Technology - my students and I did with bare essentials - a laptop and a stereo speaker. What would have been better was a second camera/webcam facing the physical whiteboard directly, but it wasn't too time-consuming to rotate my laptop.
  

Teaching grammar: reverse order (interrogative and then affirmative/negative)

It was an interesting lesson yesterday in a positive way. The students were learning the present perfect simple in the context of single past actions/events (unspecific time). Since all of them are L1- and L2-speakers of Italian, there is no doubt that translation has played a certain role in their acquisition of this grammatical structure in English.

We started off with the topic of continents and countries. The students made a list of A-Z countries, A for Argentina, B for Brazil, C for Canada, and so on. This was an engaging activity for them.

The students were then shown a short dialogue:

Person A: I went to France two years ago.

Person B: Have you been to France?
Person A: Yes, I have.

The language clarification work then centred itself on the difference between a specific past time (past simple) and 'time not known' (present perfect simple).

After that, the students used their list of countries and practised the closed interrogative form along with the short answers.

In the next lesson stage, the students practised doing KEY Reading Part 2 to focus on the affirmative and the negative forms.

It was at this stage that the focus on -ve (pronunciation) and the form took place. This has made me wonder if some coursebook writers suggest a similar approach:

meaning - practice activity (focus on meaning, e.g. alternate responses) - pronunciation work - inferring the form - practice activity (gap-fill)

...

Fast forward to the language practice stages:

15 minutes left - at this point, the students had just finished doing a guess true or false sentence construction activity with a deck of paper cards (verbs). They were all making excellent progress. (Student A's current language level was very strong.)

Student A: Let's play a game.
Me: All right then. What would you like to play?
(various ideas from the class)
Student B: A-Z list of cities this time?
Student C: Simon Says?
Me: Right, let's have a vote. Who would like to play ...?

Then we played Simon Says for 5 minutes. (I joined in the game too.)

...

7 minutes left - the students wrote three questions with 'Have you + verb (past participle) ...?' which they would like to ask each other. We finished the lesson with another practice.

Note: This is a Teens KEY preparation class at Pre-Intermediate (A2) level.

Reflections on Synchronous and Asynchronous Learning

Teaching and learning have undergone a period of sweeping changes which was almost unthinkable in the last decade. As we are standing at the crossroads where learning can take place both synchronously and asynchronously, how can teachers best use lesson time to maximise language learning? In search of answers, I shall reflect on my personal observations and explore some implications for lesson planning and choice of activities.

This is a talk which I delivered at the 2021 annual conference of International House (IH) Milan and San Donato.

Exploiting reading texts for communication

I started off feeling slightly dissatisfied with some traditional reading tasks in the EFL classroom. (Don't get me wrong, I'm perfectly happy with most coursebook tasks!) But what I've started noticing is that not only do my students' reading speeds vary considerably, but most classroom reading tasks also represent mere exercise for their own sake or they are there on the page to present contextualised language. If used at their face value, most tasks would barely reflect our purposes of reading in real life. So, instead of coming up with an extra task for the fast finishers, I've started exploring other ways of using reading texts:

Scanning for information: jigsaw reading for collaborative exchange of information

I was teaching a demo lesson in July 2021 for my school's professional development course - IH Certificate in Teaching Young Learners and Teenagers (CYLT). On this occasion, there were 4 students who were young teens at Pre-Intermediate level.

The course tutor, Kate, gave me two Wikipedia dossiers of Harry Kane and Giorgio Chiellini. (Let's not mention that England lost to Italy on penalty!) The reading task required my students to scan for specific information about the footballers, such as their age and place of birth. While I was preparing this lesson, I thought it would be a good idea to make this task a bit more communicative. We often look up factual information on the Internet in order to relay it to others, don't we? So, I adapted the given dossiers for a jigsaw task, in which my students had to work in pairs and relay information about Harry or Giorgio to each other.

Role play: another route to achieving detailed comprehension(?)

I'm teaching a class of KEY Preparation (A2) this year. We had a lesson on Reading skills two weeks ago, and the coursebook task was based on a short text about a teenage sports coach recounting his experience. Instead of running it as a traditional 'detailed comprehension' task, I asked my students to read the text and think of three questions to ask the teenage coach. After that, one of them in each pair/group would assume the role of the teenage coach. My students interviewed each other and answered questions from their peers using the information from the text. I was glad to see this role play injected a bit of life into the classroom.

Gist: collaborative matching texts to their headings/titles

I tried this one with a pair of Upper-Intermediate (B2) adult learners last week. For this 'gist' reading task, I divided the text into two equal halves. The students had to summarise the texts to each other and work together to match their texts to the respective headings/titles. This collaborative task mirrors our acts of sharing what we've read with others while our conversation partners often capture the 'gist' of it.

An afterthought: are these adapted Reading skills tasks pointing to Widdecombe's idea of 'authenticising' an 'inauthentic' text? (Thinking ...)