ESL Teaching Methods

If you begin to do any research on the topic of English Language Teaching, you are sure to come across Scott Thornbury.

One of Scott Thornbury's major contributions to English Language Teaching is the concept of Dogme.  Dogme is characterized as the

belief that language learning is both socially motivated and socially constructed...We are looking for ways of exploiting the learning opportunities offered by the raw material of the classroom, that is the language that emerges from the need, interests, concerns and desires of the people in the room.  

More can be read about Scott Thornbury and the concept of Dogme on his blog here.

At PLC school, our individual tutoring classes mirror this method very closely.  When working with a single student, the classes are always conversation centered and always centered around the interests of the student.  For a two hour tutoring session, I will often prepare five or six pages of conversation questions.  Some of the conversation questions are simply basic small talk questions.  Others are more in depth questions about the student's life, thoughts, and opinions.  Generally, we fly through pages of questions while we fine tune English grammar and pronunciation.  The hope is that along the way some of my questions will connect and hit on the students interests.  This will create a conversational flow that becomes more in depth and also pulls in new vocabulary, and pronunciation improvement.

One of the great benefits of using this method of allowing the class to be guided by the flow of the conversation is that it naturally pulls in different grammar structures and new vocabulary.  Nothing needs to be forced.  The act of talking about an interesting topic in depth will almost always pull the student toward more complex grammar and topic related vocabulary.

Thornbury's concept of Dogme builds on the ideas and theories of language acquisition proposed by Stephen Krashen and discussed here on June 12.  Some of the major concepts suggested by Krashen are that language acquisition takes place when there is a great deal of "comprehensible input", while anxiety is low and motivation is high, and when the topic is interesting and engaging to the student.  Using Thornbury's Dogme method of teaching, you can be certain that the subject matter will be interesting to the student since the student(s) is guiding the topic of the conversation.  As a teacher, it is my responsibility to ensure that the content is comprehensible and that I am creating a comfortable tutoring environment where the student is not anxious about potential (inevitable) mistakes.

The Dogme method works very well for more advanced students and for individual conversation classes.  However, we use this method much less for group lessons.  Group lessons at PLC often include students of very different ages and skill levels.  I have found that with this type of class, the Rosetta Stone program does a good job of allowing each student to practice and learn at their own pace and at their own level in the program.  However, we always supplement this program with individual instruction that will typically include reading and conversation practice when the student is ready.  Some students are ready and excited to practice English conversation almost immediately after learning some basic words and phrases.  Other students prefer to move a little more slowly when it comes to conversation.

At PLC, we work very hard to customize our programs to the needs of each individual student.  Even in group lessons, individual instruction takes place and it is tailored to the needs, skills, and interests of each student.  As each student achieves higher levels of English mastery, the percentage of conversation driven (Dogme method) instruction is progressively increased.