Where You Come From - An Inexhaustible Lesson Topic

I come from Kansas City, well better said I grew up in the suburb of Overland Park, Kansas.  When I meet most people in Europe, neither ring many bells.  Kansas City is one of the non-descript cities of a few million people which litter the middle two-thirds of the country.  In fact, if you landed in KC, Cincinatti, Minneapolis, Dallas, or Pittsburgh you could forget where you are because they are all the same.  This is 'fly-over' country which many people only see from 36,000 feet.

Of course, the residents of these place would deeply disagree with this statement and could talk at length about the unique features, culture, and legends of their hometown.  I distinctly remember a taxi ride in Springfield, Missouri in which the cabbie insisted on giving me 100 years of the city's history in 10 minutes.  He even stopped the meter to take me past the next performing arts center.  It would not be any different in Omaha or Louisville.  I found the same in Glasgow and Liverpool.

But with the invention of the internet and the flattening of the world, these places have generally lost their uniqueness and developed into carbon copy cities with nearly identical cultural traits.  I bring up this point because much the same has happened here in Germany as well.  Local variety has been diminished by global sameness.  But superstores and chain restaurants are boring.  Because they must attract the global masses, they avoid risks and anything which might offend the local consumers.

I find that local flavor, local traditions, and local culture make for highly interesting lessons.  I like discussing the exceptionalism of our region.  The students are proud of their perceived uniqueness.  I believe this also has a distinct business function.  Many business small talk conversations revolve around such topics.  They are useful in business.  It gives the parties the chance to talk about something they know and like.  But it also allows them to get a sense of the values, motives and background of the interlocutor.  These topics leave space for stories and humor, but also provide a certain distance from dangerous personal opinions.

It is interesting to see, for example, how foreign trips are arranged.  Guests are often hosted in a hotel or neighborhood which has retained traces of the local culture.  Guided tour events are arranged to give guests a short journey through the traditions and legends of the region.  There is always the desire to give the guest the 'authentic' experience.

With this in mind, here are a few discussion topics which I often use in training.

• How did your hometown get its name?
• Who is the most famous person from your hometown?
• Is there anything from your home which is 'world famous'?
• Tell me about the special food from your home region.
• What unique traditions does it have?
• Does your hometown have any 'rival' cities?  Why?
• What are the most famous buildings in your town?  What happened there?
• Tell me about a festival you have every year.  Why should I go?

Google maps and street view are great resources for this.  I also find that these topics can often be captured and turned into skills training.  The simplest is something around tourism but I try not to use this too often and instead look for something more creative.  For example, I once had a student from Herzogenauerach here in Germany.  The most famous story about this town is of Adolph and Rudolph Dassler who founded Adidas and Puma respectively.  The two brothers fell out and never spoke to each other again.  But this little town is still the headquarters of these two sportswear giants.  I took the story (which all are familiar with) and set the task of negotiating a merger between the two firms.  Their goal was to 'heal the wounds' of the past.  The students did some internet research (due diligence) to gather some financial data, worked in teams to prepare for the negotiation, and then held the meeting.

This is just one example of how these lessons can turn out.  I will be heading to Kansas City next week for a short trip to say hello to friends and family, but at the same time I will be sniffing the winds of cultural change in my hometown.  Perhaps I will find a few lesson ideas along the way.

So, I encourage you to look into where the students come from and capture these topics to develop engaging and personal lessons.  It works for me.  But sadly, we never did get Adidas and Puma back together... the loyalties simply run too deep.

Dogme in the BE Classroom. Really?

Returning from Glasgow I realized that the conversations I had in the corridors and over dinner were truly eye-opening and the real take away from the conference.  Definitely, the presentations were good and insightful, but the chance to speak with the most experienced and talented trainers in the industry has caused more reflection.

Of course, one of the issues on my mind was the Dogme trend in ELT.  It has appeared so often in blogs and online discussions, it is difficult to miss.  As a Business English Trainer, I am fascinated by the approach and how it could be implemented in the classroom.  My goal in this post to share my persecptions on Dogme and offer some solutions for how we can incorporate the best parts into our training.

I have had several problems with what I have read, even pinning down what exactly it is.  In my reading I have boiled it down to several what it is and what it isn't (but I could be wrong):

IS...

• Extremly learner-centered.  Trainers should remove many (if not all) external materials and resources from the classroom which impose ideas, emotions, roles, and pre-formed learning paths.  As drivers of the content, the participants create the class and lessons through collaboration with the trainer and each other.
• Focused on binding language to pre-existing concepts within the learner.  Through the self-expression created in the Dogme classroom, the students are more receptive to language input which helps to refine, clarify, and give meaning to their ideas.  Thus, the theory is that students will learn faster because we are not asking them to communicate through a pre-determined language structure, rather giving language to the communication goal.
• Flexible.  Because learner self-expression is unpredictable, trainers must remain flexible to harness, highlight, and build upon emerging language.  Formal materials limit this flexibility.
• Focused on emerging language.  Emerging language could be expressed language forms which should be spread across the class or could be when the expressed meaning is clear, but a language gap impairs clear transmission.  One example of the second case is when students are faced with trying to express regret without knowing past modal verb forms.  Even a quite fluent learner will hesitate, realize they don't know how to express it, try to translate it from L1, and find the best possible work-around.  It is the trainer's job to afford these opportunities, recognize them, and fill these gaps with a lasting learning point.

IS NOT...

• Superfulous conversation.  Goals do exists and it is the trainer's duty to guide topics and discussions which will lead to these objectives.  A focus on progress is built into every lesson, and learning points should be recycled to reinforce learning and demonstrate improved performance.  To this point, a lesson log is crucial for the trainer to record and prepare for the next lesson.  Otherwise, training points could easily be lost and forgotten.
• All touchy feely.  While yes it is based on self-expression and interaction within the student group, it is not a group of people coming together and talking about their feelings and emotions.  That can happen, but it isn't Oprah's book club.  Learners are expected to learn and teachers are expected to teach (or rather facilitate learning).
• Materials and technology free.  From my reading it seems that these two items are both welcome in the classroom, but we should be very selective about why they are included.  Do they afford and reinforce the process of self-reflection and communication?  Do they enable the learners to express what they want and need to express?  Or are we simply bringing in a listening because it is the next step in our off-the-shelf learning plan?

Now, I have several problems with this approach in the BE classroom.  And honestly, if done correctly, I feel task-based activities may be better suited to the needs of our learners.  But I think many of the elements of Dogme are already present in some BE classrooms.  First, our clients expect a personalized training plan.  They also expect us to help them refine what they are already using in their job.  In fact, I think it is difficult as a BE Trainer in the one-to-one or small group setting to ignore the Dogme approach.

But here are the challenges I see for Dogme...

1. The Messi Analogy  There are many outstanding footballers, but there is only one Messi.  He seems to be able to do things on the field which defy explanation.  He can see moves before they are made, he is unbeliably quick, always calm, and gives every motion a flurish of creativity.  I tend to think that in order to pull off Dogme and make it effective, a trainer would have to be as talented as Messi.  The trainer would have to have the experience to see the dialog before it happens, guide this discourse through the students themselves, recoginze the emerging language and then have the supreme flexibility and creativity to set an activity to utilize the training point.  Wow.
2. Too many levels of listening  As a trainer, I am quite adept at listening to my students at various levels.  What are they saying (content)?  How are they saying it (accuracy)?  What are they not saying (language gap)?  What emergent language are they using?  I know I can do all four levels of listening sometimes, but I have to be 100% in the moment.  Of course, I cannot be 'on' in every minute of every lesson .  The risk of Dogme is that if I drop one of these levels of listening because I am distracted, tired, or unmotivated, the progress aspect of the lesson deteriorates.
3. It can't be taught  I am not sure how new trainers could learn such flexibility and language awareness.  I have digested massive amounts of activities ideas, approaches, tasks, and language features in my first three years of training.  I dove into the field with passion and enthusiasm.  I am still far from having the flexibility needed to make it work.  I am not sure how this could be taught in a course less than 6 months.
4. How to create affordances which replicate BE situations?  I am struggling with the idea of creating a environment in which we can really practice the skills needed in the learners' jobs.  One of the benefits of TBL is that we can model what right looks like and work from there.  In Dogme, we are working together to develop a suitable task situation.  In some BE classrooms the desire to improve their job performance is less motivating than other factors.  I could see conflict here between the Dogme approach and what companies expect from the training.

So, these are the challenges I see.  I think they can be overcome.  For example, I think we can train the different levels of listening by using authentic learner discussions in the trainer development setting.  I think the internet provides a great opportunity for us to develop the flexibility to respond to emergent language.

Also, I think the approach is perfectly suited to BE, specifically in-company courses in which we are faced with the challenge of adapting training to meet a variety of specific needs.  And I would like to think that many of us in BE are using this approach well, particularly in coaching.  Therefore, we should add it to our training toolbox, but understand that until it is more-fully developed it has a certain place and certain time.


Dogme Resources:

Scott Thornbury http://www.thornburyscott.com/  check out his articles under "Works"
His blog http://scottthornbury.wordpress.com/

Blog from Emi Slater, Phil Wade, and Dale Coulter http://languagemoments.wordpress.com/

Outstanding paper from Martin Sketchley "Incorporating Dogme ELT in the Classroom"  http://www.scribd.com/doc/85100701/Incorporating-Dogme-ELT-in-the-Classroom-Handout-Version

Teaching Unpluggled co-author Luke Meddings http://lukemeddings.posterous.com/

Chia Suan Chong, a highly skilled and innovative Dogmetician http://chiasuanchong.wordpress.com/