Materials Evaluation and Design - Week 2 - Materials, Courses, Teachers 

Introduction: Hello and welcome to Week 2 of the course Materials Evaluation and Design. In this class we will answer the question are materials even necessary? and we will explore the Dogme movement for a materials-light approach to ELT and explore the importance of aligning one's personal beliefs with classroom decisions. Additionally, we will discuss the often complex teacher-textbook relationship.

Today's Goals:

• *Review the course content, evaluation structure, and important dates from the syllabus.
• Consider arguments in favor of a materials-light approach to ELT and give your opinions.
• Discuss key concepts from the chapter Materials, Courses, Teachers.

Guiding Questions:

• What are the arguments against the heavy use of materials in ELT?
• How do I feel about these arguments?
• How can materials be classified?
• What are the advantages to a cyclical approach to materials selection?

Community Builder: How Much is Just Right? How Much is Too Much?

Tell your partners about the perfect amount of the following items.

Task 1: Reading Reactions

Discuss the questions below about Chapter 1 in McGrath (2016). Feel free to refer to your study guide if you need to. 

• What are ways that materials can be used in the language class? Tomlinson describes four functions of materials.

• What do they mean?
• Can a single material serve more than one of these functions? If so, provide an example.
• Which function do your materials serve the most? Why do you think that is?
• Which function is addressed less often by your class materials? Why might that be? 

• For better or worse, coursebooks have become the dominant form of materials in most ELT contexts over the last decades. Why do you think that is?

• How would you describe your relationship with the coursebook you use now or have used in the past? Read and react to these statements. Do they match your feelings about coursebooks?

• The coursebook is my boss. It tells me what to do.
• The coursebook is my helpful companion. It gives me good ideas.
• The coursebook is just there. It adds nothing of value to my teaching.
• The coursebook is my enemy. It brings negativity to my life.
• The coursebook is my "frenemy". We have a complicated relationship.
• The coursebook is ... (add your own ideas)
• The coursebook is ... (add your own ideas)

• What is the difference between coursebook-.ed teaching and coursebook-based teaching? Which discribes your current use of coursebooks? Did you use coursebooks differently in the past? 

DOGME: A Noble Experiment

Introduction: Is there an argument for a materials-light approach to language teaching? Well, a group of English teachers in 2001 were disillusioned with the current state of ELT and they got together in an online community (a new concept at the time) and created a radical approach to teaching foreign languages. The named their approach DOGME in honor of an experimental movement in cinema of the same name that had been popularized a few years earlier. Through DOGME, these teachers hoped to put the learners and their needs at the center of the teaching-learning process. 

Scott Thornbury, the group's unofficial leader, stated in his 2006 book An A-Z of ELT, "Dogme ELT argues for a pedagogoy of bare essentials, that is, a pedagogy unburdened by an excess of materials and technology, a pedagogy grounded in the local and relevant concerns of the people in the room (p. 70)"

Task 2: Dogme Manifesto

The DOGME group outlined their core beliefs in the following manifesto. Read each declaration carefully and answer the following questions.

• What does it mean? Do understand what it is trying to say?
• What do I think about it?
• To what degree does it match my own views about language teaching-learning?

The DOGME Manifesto: 2001

Task 3: Group Discussion

• Which of the statements from the manifesto stand out to you? Why?
• What could be the authors' rationale for expressing these statements?
• Which statements have some connection with the topic of didactic materials?
• DOGME was created in reaction to what these teachers saw as a decline in the effectiveness of ELT. What might these statements suggest about the reality of the teaching contexts in which these teachers were working?
• DOGME was created before our current online pandemic teaching paradigm. Which of their beliefs might still be applicable in our current context? Are of the beliefs more applicable now?
• For many reasons, DOGME is too radical to be a practical approach to language teaching in a formal context. However, what can we rescue from this nobel experiment? 
• How can some of these ideas influence your own approach to materials evaluation, design, and use?

Bibliography

McGrath, I. (2016). Materials Evaluation and Design for Language Teaching (2nd ed.). Edinburgh University Press.

Thornbury, S. (2017, June 26). M is for Manifesto. An A-Z of ELT. https://scottthornbury.wordpress.com/2017/06/25/m-is-for-manifesto/

Thornbury, S. (2006). An A-Z of ELT. Macmillan Education.