There has been some talk in the Blogosphere of IATEFL 2010 being marked by a huge presence of pro-technology participation, with many sessions on Twitter, IWBs and Web 2.0. Lindsey Clandfield just came up with this brilliant mashup of the film Avatar and the curious counterpoint of pro-tech and Teaching Unplugged at the conference: (source: […]
Teacher Training Unplugged Hits Harrogate
Izzy and I have just returned from the IATEFL conference in Harrogate, UK – a 4-day whirlwind of ideas and experiences. One reason for going was to hold a workshop on our recent attempts to approach CELTA teacher Training in a Dogme-like fashion, and to help beginning teachers learn to teach this way from scratch. […]
How Dogme Are We? – Part 2
You can be Dogme in many different ways, depending on which aspect of its philosophy you value. For example, the teacher who values a shared teaching and learning space uncluttered with unneeded materials will try to reduce to the required minimum what resources from outside the classroom they import into it. The teacher who values […]
Unplugging Day Two
So what does day two look like? Just to recap: on day one, the teachers have observed, listened and reflected; they have observed their tutors giving them feedback on the language they used when getting to know their colleagues, they have experienced being an absolute beginner (perhaps had their first Old English lesson) and they […]
No Sleep ’til Harrogate…
As some of you might know already, we will be running a workshop entitled Teacher Training Unplugged: simplifying initial teacher education at the IATEFL Conference in Harrogate, UK, on Thursday 8th April, 16:05-17:05 hrs (Conference Room). The talk is part of the Teacher Training & Education Special Interest Group Special Programme on that day and […]
Our position on Dogme and elitism
Recently, Dogme as an approach to teaching has been criticised for giving status to teachers who have high language awareness and confidence in working with emergent language. There are many teachers out there, the critics point out, who do not fall into this group, and many of them are non-natice speakers who, because they are […]
Our position on technology
The short version: we love it. Hence this blog!
Our position on language focus
We believe the language that learners produce during their conversations with each other is the richest source of potential learning available. This is because whatever learners say reveals where they are in the linguistic development and also indicates where they would like to move next – assuming, of course, that they have freedom to choose […]
Our position on texts
We do not believe it is inconsistent with Dogme principles for beginning teachers to plan a lesson around a live listening with traditional questions to check understanding, leading on to a structured conversation of some kind between the students, followed by language feedback. Lessons like this may have many similarities with listening lessons extracted from […]
Our position on lesson planning
We believe that teachers should be thoroughly prepared to teach before they enter a classroom; this does not mean that they need a formal lesson plan under their arm. Instead, it means that they need to be prepared to respond to circumstances for their learners’ benefit.