The dogme approach :
Background :
The dogme approach emerged in 2000 in the article by Scott Thornbuy in which her
critisizes the overreliance on coursebooks and materials overuse as he believed it hindered
classroom communication. Thus the classroom instruction should be based on resources
that the teachers and students bring.
Dogme is an approach to teaching that argues that teaching should focus on the learner and
not be driven by the resources available, including course books. It is a recent movement in
ELT, started by a group of teachers who are against 'resource heavy' teaching, arguing that if
learners are not interested they will not learn and therefore all material should be generated
by the learners and the lessons directed by them, rather than the teacher.
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In the classroom :
In a Dogme lesson, the classroom as such does not exist, as there are no resources, course
books or lesson structures apart from those that learners bring. The teacher involves the
learners in deciding on their priorities each lesson, and takes the role of facilitator of their
objectives.
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Example
Learners come to class discussing something that is in the news. The teacher
encourages and facilitates discussion and provides answers to questions about
grammar and vocabulary as they arise.
Approaches integrated in dogme :
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Communicative language teaching : it puts emphasis on teacher to student and
student to students talk.
Tasl-based learning : the context of language is developed naturally.
Charactersitics :
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It is conversation-driven : conversation is necessary for learning as it allows learners
to come up with ideas and helps them through the interaction between them.
Scaffolding, interactivity…