“Dogmetising” Exam Classes

@natibrandi, IH Buenos Aires

Conversation Driven (Meddings & Thornbury: 2009) Text Driven (Thornbury: 2013)Materials lightFocus on Emergent Language

DOGME

Standardised exams Different papers: Reading, Writing, Listening, Grammar and Vocabulary, SpeakingCambridge English ExaminationsIELTSMichigan Exams

International Exams

1) Little room for creativity. 2) Backwash. 3) “Teachers have little flexibility in determining the course content”.4) Overdoing exam practice. 5) Exam tasks can be very artificial. 6) Frustration. 7) Anything else .

Disadvantages

Advantages?

1)”Passport to an English teaching job in some European countries”.2) Valid evidence of the learner´s level. 3) Although some tasks are rather artificial, the skills involvedin completing such tasks can betransferred to the real world.

“Chatting has the beneficial effect of relaxing the group , and helping forge a group dynamic that is

conducive to learning.” (Meddings & Thornbury:2009:10)

Conversation Driven: Activity 1 Intro

Conversation Driven: Activity 1: Procedure

Visualisation: My ideal English SelfObjective: By the end of the activity learners will have discussed what motivates them to study English. Procedure:1) Selling?2)“Imagine yourself in two years’ time, you´re using the English language, where are you? What are you doing? Why are you using English?”3) Share with partner. 4) Group discussion.Follow up: Chatbox?

Conversation Driven:

Conversation Driven: Scaffolding

“The metaphor of conversation, as a supportive, but temporary, scaffold for language development, is central to the dogme approach… the learning of any skill is co-constructed”

Conversation Driven: Activity

1) Get learners to read a text. Such text comes with an exam task with 7 multiple-choice questions. 2) Don´t get learners to do the task, instead do it yourself explaining why you would do it as such, or,

even better, make a recording of you and a colleague discussing the exercise.

But why do we do this?

Poll

Would you ever get learners to do the exact same activity three times or more?

Materials light:

Imagine that while doing a word formation activity you find students have problems with adjectives ending in -ed and -ing. What would you do to help them improve?

Materials Light:

I´ve been……………….. (interest) in education since I was a kid. I decided to move to Buenos Aires because I thought Montevideo was a bit……………… (bore) I think Reality Shows are absolutely……….. (fascinate).

But why repeat the same activity?

Demand High 3PsOnce is never enough.

Back to Slide 1

Conversation driven. How can we foster conversation in class to establish good St-St T-Ss relations? How can we use teacher talk / student talk to scaffold learning? Materials light – How can we use less materials so that lesson can be more conducive to learning? Focus on emergent Language: OR Emergent learner needs. How can we tackle our students´needs?

@natibrandinatibrandi@gmail.com