Dogme in Practice

1

SCAFFOLDING THE UNDER-30 BUCKET LIST

BRUNO ALBUQUERQUE

BRAZIL | ADULTS | A1

This was a small class of only two A1, Brazilian students, friends and workmates, who decided they needed English lessons to progress in their careers here in Brazil and, in the future, abroad. They were in their early twenties and work in an architecture office. We had been studying together for two months, meeting weekly for 45 minutes. The students were often encouraged to do extra activities between classes, such as working in the coursebook, watching TV shows in English and writing down interesting words, and communicating through a messaging app for conversation practice.

I acted as teacher, course designer, and manager all together as a one-teacher school/company. I began teaching private students shortly after taking the CELTA, and now after DELTA, I feel more confident to experiment in class and have adopted a more flexible, back-to-the-roots approach to ELT. I feel that my initial qualification gave me the necessary tools for the craft and that the diploma taught me to use those tools to make it an art. This is where Dogme ELT comes in.

I always began the classes with a chat, asking them what they did on the weekend and their plans for the week ahead. We usually had a light conversation to set the tone and flip the switch from Portuguese to English. This time, they told me that together they had ticked one of the items from their before-30 bucket list. I could not let that slide.

The students explained that the bucket list was made up of things you had to do before you turned 30. I mentioned that it was unfortunate I was 32 and must have missed out on many of the items. I asked them to write down their top 5 items from their list and prepare to share them. I told them that, for that moment, I wasn’t going to participate in the interaction in order to focus on my notes. After a minute, they were done with their notes and ready to share.

I asked them to share their lists and write down their friend’s list to comment on it later. I thought that taking notes would foster more active and intensive listening and be an interesting way of developing listening and note-taking skills. The students shared their lists, negotiated meaning, and used the language they had at hand to talk about their bucket lists.

At some point, one of them asked, Teacher, I like visit all capitals in Brazil?, clearly hinting at whether I would like to talk about my plans or desires for the future. I replied, Try, I’d like to visit all the capitals in Brazil". She rephrased and kept going.

Both students were then using I’d like to… or I would like to talk about my bucket list. After they were done, I gave them feedback based on my notes. Mostly, I praised their use of these structures and attempts at some more interesting vocabulary such as do an extreme sport, go on a cruise, and ride an off-road motorcycle. They were excited with each other’s lists so I asked them to report what their friend had on their list. The idea was to allow them another shot at using the emergent language we looked into during the first feedback phase and work on fluency, as the message had already been conveyed.

Students then reported what their friends shared and I wrote their information on the board. I commented and asked some follow-up questions to expand the conversation in a scaffolded way to try and get more emergent language from them. After this wrap-up moment, I told them I had five items on my list that I would talk about for a minute or so and that they should take notes the same way they did before. I got my cellphone, set it on voice recorder, and talked into it like a microphone while students listened and took their notes.

When I was done, students checked their answers in pairs and then I sent them the audio file in our message app so they could listen to it again and check their answers. After checking, students asked me a couple of questions about my list, I answered them and we had a final feedback session before the end of the lesson.

The students seemed to enjoy these spur-of-the-moment lessons the most. It’s not that they didn’t enjoy our coursebook-based lessons, but they seemed much more into it when the lesson happened more organically as this one did. The students were eager to share their bucket lists and were also excited to learn about mine. They learned how to talk about their dreams and aspirations with language deeply connected to their immediate needs and that naturally emerged in the given context. There was work on vocabulary, grammar, speaking, listening, and note-taking skills in a well-rounded, skills-integrated lesson and all of that happened naturally because I did not shy away from improvising based on student input and my experience as a teacher.

This kind of teaching and learning experience fosters more learner and teacher agency. Learners feel that the teaching is done taking their needs and wants into account as well as who they are into account. Dogme ELT and this level of reactive teaching deeply values students’ and teachers’ contributions in class, creating a more democratic and less authoritarian space for learning to take place. It also deals with language from a holistic perspective, focusing on learning the language at the point of need through a conversational manner. I believe this is the kind of teaching that would make Paulo Freire and bell hooks proud.

A note from Scott:

In his book on classroom interaction, Steve Walsh writes: The role of the teacher is central to co-constructing a dialogue in which learning opportunities are maximised through the use of specific interactional strategies to scaffold, shape and clarify learner contributions.⁠ ¹

Bruno’s lesson is a good example of how this is done. But it’s worth revisiting the original literature about scaffolding, and noticing that it’s not just about ‘tidying up’ emergent language: there is a strong motivational and affective element involved too.

These are what Wood, Bruner, and Ross considered to be the elements of scaffolding: recruiting interest in the task; simplifying the task; maintaining pursuit of the goal; marking critical features and discrepancies between what has been produced and the ideal solution; controlling frustration during problem-solving; demonstrating an idealized version of the act to be performed.⁠ ²

On this last point, Bruno’s use of his phone to record an ‘idealized version’ of the task is inspired.

1 Walsh, S. (2006) Investigating classroom discourse. Routledge.

2 Wood, D., Bruner, J. S., & Ross, G. (1976). The role of tutoring in problem solving. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 17 (2), 89–100.

2

A RAINY DAY IN JEDDAH

ZARAFSHAN ASLAM, SYEDA

SAUDI ARABIA | ADULTS | A1 – A2

Iled a session for foundation year students at the English Language Institute of King Abdulaziz University, located in Jeddah, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The attendees were young women in their late teens. The course was designed for beginners, aligning with the A1 CEFR level, and catered to a diverse group of 30 students with mostly lower levels of proficiency. English, not being their subject of choice, was a requisite for them to fulfill their academic requirements and contribute to their GPA. On this particular day, the classroom was unusually quiet with only half of the enrolled students present—15 in total.

The reduced number of attendees created a more intimate setting, allowing for a personalized teaching approach. Despite their initial lack of enthusiasm for the subject, the smaller class size provided an opportunity to engage the students more deeply and address individual learning needs. This particular session became an unexpected chance to spark an interest in the English language through interactive and student-centered teaching methods. The day’s unique circumstances paved the way for an enriching educational experience for both the students and myself.

At the time, the English Language Institute (ELI) operated on a modular system, with each module spanning 5 to 6 weeks. We were using the New Headway Plus series, special edition. Adhering to a weekly pacing guide was crucial, as student assessments were based on this schedule. The class began at 8:00 AM in early October. Typically, Jeddah experiences a predominantly summer climate with little to no rain. Yet, on this day, the sky was overcast from the early hours with thunder and lightning preceding the rain, which likely contributed to the low attendance. In this region, residents can have apprehension about rain due to past flooding incidents. Understandably, the students showed little interest in the lesson and wished for the class to be dismissed. However, seizing the moment, I decided to introduce Dogme teaching, assuring them that we would not have a ‘textbook lesson’ and wouldn’t even open our textbooks, which lifted their spirits.

Having been a teacher and mentor for some time, I relish experimentation. However, the strict pacing schedule often limited such opportunities. This situation presented a perfect chance to try something new.

I invited the students to share words that described the weather, their emotions, or their thoughts about the day. As they spoke, I wrote their words on the board, and soon we had a rich vocabulary chart. Admittedly, the words varied, describing the weather, emotions, and even food and drinks.

Afraid, loud, rain, thunder, bed, coffee, hot drinks, blanket, jacket, lightening, shower, dark, bright, happy, scared, ice cream, walk, watch TV, listen to music, read a book, go home

With a student-generated vocabulary list at hand, I divided the class into three groups of five. Their task was to create sentences using these words, reflecting their personal truths. The results were a mix of fragmented phrases and some well-constructed sentences appropriate for their level.

I like to eat ice cream in the rain.

I am afraid of thunder

We want to listen to music.

I want to stay in my blanket.

We want to go home.

I like to drink coffee now

I like walking in the rain

It is so dark

We are wearing jackets

It is not bright

We can hear thunder

Instead of having them read their sentences aloud to the class, I circulated the room to review their work. Remembering my promise that they wouldn’t need to open their bags or textbooks, I distributed A4 sheets and pencils to each group.

Thirty minutes later, I introduced a new activity. I gave each group sticky notes of different colors and instructed them to write one word from their sentences on each note. After placing their notes on the wall, they stepped back, allowing other groups to rearrange the words into coherent sentences. This competitive element spurred enthusiasm and participation, even among the less active students. It was interesting to note that the kind of sentences that came out of this activity were sometimes different from the original sentences. Once completed, each group presented their sentences, and we collectively evaluated their grammatical accuracy. The group with the most correct sentences earned a point.

After the activity, the students returned to their seats. I prompted them to describe the day’s lesson in a single word. The responses were overwhelmingly positive: ‘interesting,’ ‘fun,’ ‘good,’ ‘happy,’ ‘nice,’ ‘lovely.’ Aiming at fluency, I then asked them to express their current feelings, and solely for the purpose of differentiation I added that they could do so using simple words, phrases, or sentences. This activity aimed to help them distinguish between descriptive words for objects, weather, and emotions. At the same time, I got some very positive responses reflecting their engagement with the Dogme approach on this rainy day in Jeddah. We concluded the lesson there, and the students left with positive sentiments, while I felt a sense of accomplishment for trying something new.

Reflecting on the day, I realized it was the first time I conducted a class without a lesson plan, textbooks, or materials—aside from plain A4 sheets, sticky notes, and pencils. Notably, I hadn’t written any lesson objectives on the board at the start, as I typically would. The language used was entirely student-generated, with minimal guidance from me. Although we began without explicit lesson objectives as we normally do, by the end, I could confidently state that my students had learned to:

Use accurate words to describe the weather.

Use appropriate words to describe feelings.

Create meaningful sentences using these words to articulate feelings, describe objects, and depict weather conditions.

This approach marked a departure from my usual structured lessons, yet it proved to be an enriching experience for both the students and myself.

A note from Luke:

This lesson exhibits an impressive fluidity in terms of strategies and outcomes.

Zarafshan reflects at the end on a personal ‘first’, having taught a lesson without a plan, and where the language was wholly generated by the students.

Her flexibility in seizing the opportunity – at a moment when students were anxious about the weather and asking to go home – is an object lesson in personal development: it’s only by experimenting that we learn new things.

Then there are the outcomes. Tasked to share words describing the weather or their feelings about it, the students – and this always happens, because human thought is liquid and overflows – came up with words around the target areas and more: weather and emotions for sure, but also clothing, food, and activities.

The teacher embraces this and has the students create sentences with these words. But what happens next is magical: Zarafshan has the students deconstruct their own sentences and make new ones – ‘sometimes different from the original’ ones. Here is language, like thought, flowing into new shapes.

3

TEETH

BRAD BARKER

JAPAN | ADULTS | B1 – C2

This group of 12 were 2nd, 3rd, and 4th-year university students enrolled in the elective course English Communication 1 at Rikkyo University in Tokyo, Japan. The majority were from Japan, but there was one regular student from China. There were also three special international students studying abroad for a semester or year at the university. These class members were from China, Canada, and the United States. English proficiencies ranged from approximately CEFR B1 to a first-language English speaker. Students' majors and interests were wide-ranging. Classroom culture was centered on lively communication and intercultural exchange.

For the elective course English Communication 1, the class met twice a week during a 14-week spring semester in 2023. This was a dream-like class to teach. Although there were challenges, such as working with a wide range of language proficiencies, students were motivated, cooperative, and had chosen to be there. I was fortunate to find myself teaching a course that allows for a high degree of teacher agency and the option to not choose a coursebook. This amount of freedom has been quite rare during my teaching career as a whole. Much of my past teaching has been within relatively tightly controlled courses with required coursebooks.

I would suggest that using a general language coursebook would not be the best way to hold this particular group’s attention. To give students greater control of the course, I decided to implement a process syllabus (also known as a negotiated syllabus; e.g., see Breen & Littlejohn, 2000⁠ ¹). Basically all of my classroom decisions were inspired by Dogme ELT.

Due to the course guidelines and syllabus, some aspects of the course could not be changed, such as the type of assessment (discussion tests) and weighted grades, however, there was a lot of room for teacher and student agency. Many aspects of the course emerged through negotiation. The university guidelines stated that the main course objective was to develop students’ abilities to produce and respond to language on everyday social topics. In the first few lessons, six main topics were decided after negotiation with students: Social Media, Age, Sustainability, Culture, Beauty, and Rights.

Students were starting the new topic of Beauty. At this point in week 10 of the semester, all I had to do was instruct students to begin discussing Beauty in small groups. I asked them what questions and ideas they had about the topic and directed them to a shared Google Doc in which all students could add notes, pictures or memes. The Google Doc was entitled Beauty, but was blank, to begin with.

After about twenty minutes of student discussion, I sat down next to one of the groups.⁠ ²

Teacher: So, what ideas have you talked about so far for Beauty?

Student 1: [softly] Teeth.

T: Say it again.

S1: Teeth.

T: Teeth! [students laugh] Nice! Okay, tell me more about teeth.

S2: Maybe Americans and some other cultures care about teeth, but maybe Japanese, not so much. 

T: Really? So, you’re saying that Japanese people don’t care about their teeth?

S2: Compared to other countries.

T: That’s really interesting. This is something that I would have never thought about to discuss, but I like it. Can you talk more about that? Why is that the case? Because I think it’s somewhat true. 

S2: Eh?

S1: Costs a lot.

T: It costs a lot. To do what? What…toothpaste? [students laugh]

S1: Whitening.

T: Whitening. Okay, yeah. So there’s whitening toothpaste but there’s also whitening treatments. […] I don’t even know, but it can be very expensive. What else? [pause] What do you call the things that you put on your teeth to make them straight?

S1: Ah, kyousei.

S2: Kyousei in Japanese. 

T: Does anybody know what that is in English? How do you say it in Japanese? Kyousei?

S2: Kyousei.

T: Kyousei. What would that be in English? [students check a dictionary]

S1: [slowly sounding the word out] Orthodontics.

T: True. That’s true, but that’s the high-level word. Most people don’t use that. 

S2: Ah, braces.

T: Braces! Braces. That’s the one! Did you have braces?

The discussion of teeth continued for about 30 more minutes in this lesson and also into the following lesson as groups exchanged ideas with other groups. Students and I added pages of emergent language, discussion questions, and memes as we discussed teeth and other beauty-related topics such as tattoos, plastic surgery, traditional clothing, beauty standards, lookism, fast fashion, cosmetics, and men with long hair.

Teeth-related emergent language included: tooth whitening, orthodontics, orthodontist, braces, ohaguro (the historic Japanese practice of blackening teeth with a mixture of iron and vinegar), yaeba (literally double tooth, referring to a fang-like snaggletooth that may be considered a sign of natural beauty or youthfulness in Japan), straight teeth, snaggletooth, gums, and tooth decay.

Teeth are such a simple, interesting, and obvious topic of discussion—but it only became apparent to me after it had emerged naturally in class. I never would have thought of it while planning a lesson or course.

Isn’t it strange that some Americans seem obsessed with unnaturally white, straight teeth? How fascinating is it that historically, Japanese society embraced ohaguro—the blackening of teeth—as a symbol of beauty and status, or that yaeba is sometimes seen as a sign of natural beauty and youthfulness in modern Japan?⁠ ³

I did not ask students to reflect on this specific activity and topic, but I did ask what they liked about the course through a Google Forms questionnaire. One comment in particular presents a good summary of the general feeling among students: I liked the people and freedom of discussion we had in this class, no topic was off limits and we were able to talk about things that would never be in a textbook.

Students are experts at introducing topics that they and their peers are interested in talking about. In many cases, introducing vocabulary when there is a communicative need for it seems superior to pre-planning it. I’m reluctant to use emergent vocabulary as a chance to go into teacher mode and teach. There’s no need to derail a good discussion. I think that in some contexts, it may be more beneficial when students and the teacher simply record emergent language in a shared Google Doc or incorporate it immediately into the classroom discussion. Maybe simply drawing attention to certain language features by underlining or using bold text is enough focus on form. If only every course could be like this one!

A note from Scott:

No topic was off limits and we were able to talk about things that would never be in a textbook, reported one student after Brad’s classes.

This ‘Dogmetic’ sense of freedom is enhanced when – as in this instance – the learners are able to choose the topics of the program themselves. Of course, not every class has the freedom to do this. But even when topics are pre-selected, e.g. because they are in the coursebook, Brad’s approach to developing them seems perfectly viable, i.e. asking the learners – even before they open the coursebook, and working in small groups – to brainstorm ideas and questions on to a blank Google document (It could, of course, be a blank whiteboard – but the blankness is important!)

This document can then become the repository for all the topic-related products that are generated over subsequent lessons, e.g. class surveys, interviews, anecdotes, news stories, poems, and so on.

One advantage of this topic-driven approach is that the vocabulary generated is likely to be frequently recycled, ensuring its memorability.

1 Breen, M. P., & Littlejohn, A. (Eds.). (2000). Classroom decision-making: Negotiation and process syllabus in practice . Cambridge University Press.

2 Transcribed with permission from students and Rikkyo University.

3 Poon, R. X. M. (2018). The perfect smile – Part 4. British Dental Journal, 225 (8), 743–746.

4

DOGME IN CRITICAL THINKING: WORKING WITH EMERGENT BELIEFS

PETER BRERETON

JAPAN | ADULTS | B1 – B2

This class consisted of 18 students who were five weeks into their first semester at a Japanese university. Their English level was around CEFR B1-B2 and they came to university with a broadly similar background of going through the Japanese school system, some with brief periods of study abroad. This Academic Reading and Writing course was part of a mandatory first-year English for Academic Purposes (EAP) program which aims to equip students with the necessary academic skills to tackle an undergraduate education in English. As the name suggests, the course had a heavy emphasis on academic reading and writing but also on developing students' logical reasoning and critical thinking skills.

My teaching philosophy has long been closely aligned with Dogme principles, particularly in prioritising student-generated content and emergent language. Until recently, I always tended to interpret emergent language as referring primarily to vocabulary (and, to a lesser extent, to grammatical structures). However, as