August ends. 10 letters that slide out of the mouth like a sigh. A sigh of exhaustion or relief–I’m not sure yet since the kids still have one day to finish their as yet uncompleted summer homework. But August is almost over and unlike in the days when I was a student in Canada, I am pretty happy to see it go. September is my best month professionally and I always look forward to it: my kids are back to school and yet I still have a few weeks before my classes begin, and the weather becomes more reasonable. It is a nice calm before the fall semester begins.

I made it to the LET 50 Conference in Yokohama this summer (see the previous post) but not to the Antwerp CALL conference in Belgium despite making several subtle and not so subtle requests at my school. The reason I wanted to go, in addition to the fact that it was in Belgium, was that the theme was motivation and one of the speakers was Ema Ushioda. Her new book, Teaching and Researching Motivation, also appeared this month (co-authored with Zoltan Dornyei) and I’ve been happily making my way through that. Luckily, the conference organizers were kind enough to make slides and handouts available for those of us on distant shores, budgetless (I know, I know, it’s not actually a word, but if other people can refudiate a mandation this summer, then I can certainly be budgetless). Ema Ushioda’s slides and handout are available from this page and are well worth a look. There are also several other presentations that look interesting so it might be a good place to spend a couple of hours.

One thing I learned about from her presentation is Dogme Language Teaching. Like the Edupunk movement (also mentioned in a previous post)、it is an anti-establishment movement of passionate educators. Reading the ten principles listed on the page warmed my heart. Take a look:

1. Interactivity: the most direct route to learning is to be found in the interactivity between teachers and students and amongst the students themselves.
2. Engagement: students are most engaged by content they have created themselves
3. Dialogic processes: learning is social and dialogic, where knowledge is co-constructed
4. Scaffolded conversations: learning takes place through conversations, where the learner and teacher co-construct the knowledge and skills
5. Emergence: language and grammar emerge from the learning process. This is seen as distinct from the ‘acquisition’ of language.
6. Affordances: the teacher’s role is to optimize language learning affordances through directing attention to emergent language.
7. Voice: the learner’s voice is given recognition along with the learner’s beliefs and knowledge.
8. Empowerment: students and teachers are empowered by freeing the classroom of published materials and textbooks.
9. Relevance: materials (eg texts, audios and videos) should have relevance for the learners
10. Critical use: teachers and students should use published materials and textbooks in a critical way that recognizes their cultural and ideological biases.

There is apparently a Yahoo group, and Scott Thornbury, the person who coined the term originally, also has a dedicated site. For anyone in Japan who would like to read a little about the challenges faced in putting these ten principles into practice, you can find it here (starting on page 15).