Hello, there!

Ontem tivemos a primeira parte da entrevista com o autor inglês Luke Meddings, feita pelo Henrick Oprea, diretor do Atlantic Idiomas de Brasilia. Hoje temos a segunda parte, check it out!

What is the role of the teacher in English language teaching?
Good question. I would say, to provide opportunities 
- opportunities for learners to use language in meaningful ways, and opportunities to notice how it fits together. To smile? To remember – and to remind the learners – that learning a language is an amazing thing to attempt, experience and achieve. I’d love to hear your answer to this question!

I like the “smile” part in your answer. I can say we see eye to eye on this matter. I believe that the role of the teacher is not simply to transfer knowledge about the language, but to encourage the use of the language by the learner, and pay attention to the learning opportunities that arise in the classroom. As you said, education is a complex issue, and we can’t reduce the role of the teacher to that of being the transmitter 
of knowledge only. In your book – Teaching Unplugged – you mention scaffolding. I think this is one of the main things teachers should aim to do in a language classroom. Do you think you could illustrate what scaffolding is?

Scaffolding is an idea introduced by the psychologist Jerome Bruner, and which is related to Vygotsky’s socio-cultural theory. To take the analogy literally – which is no bad thing! – it’s a kind of temporary support. It involves helping the learner to do something that they can’t quite do for themselves until they achieve independence. In practical, ELT terms, I think it means listening very carefully to what the learner is saying and choosing where to provide support. This support can be very non-intrusive – for example when we echo or recast learner language without stopping the flow of conversation – or more explicit, for example when we highlight a particular language point for a focus on form. If we are setting up classroom interaction where the communication is real, this support really will be ‘at the point of need’. We’ll be helping learners to say what they mean!

How important is conversation in a language classroom?

I think it’s very important. As someone who has spent a lot of time teaching in schools in the UK, I know that learners often come here because they think they are going to get the chance to do a lot of speaking in class. This doesn’t always happen – which can be very disappointing. Frank Smith, who is associated with the whole language movement in the States, says: ‘We learn to read by reading.’ And I believe we learn to speak by speaking. It’s only by encountering different forms as they connect and even bump into each other, that we learn how they work in use. After all, no one learns how to drive in a parked car. You can learn what all the controls do, but until you take it out on the road…

In the context of foreign language teaching, it’s common that students and teachers are locked 
in the syllabus presented by the coursebook. Sometimes, if teachers opt not to do one activity in the coursebook, there are complaints on account of the fact that books are expensive and have got to be used from beginning to end. What would you say to people who think like that?
I think it reflects a misunderstanding about the
 role of the coursebook – unfortunately, one that is widespread, and one that certainly does coursebook publishers no harm at all! This is the idea that 
the coursebook is the source of learning, rather 
than stimulus for learning. We should think of the coursebook as being less like a strict and rather inflexible boss, and more like a knowledgeable colleague – someone we can turn to for advice, someone who has interesting ideas, but someone who isn’t always right about everything!

Could you briefly explain what Dogme ELT is? What are its benefits for learning?
Dogme ELT is a humanistic approach to language teaching. Dogme lessons are based on the lives and language of the people in the room – their lives provide much of the content, while the language they use generates the ‘focus on form’. It’s very much
 a bottom-up approach: we talk to the learners, we listen, we set up task-light activities that give shape to the interaction, and we introduce short texts from a variety of sources to ensure a range of language 
is explored. In ELT terms it’s related to strong-form communicative language teaching and the lexical approach, and it has roots beyond ELT in the work of educators like John Dewey and Paulo Freire. It’s a kind of dialogic teaching for the language classroom.

How important is it for students to be trained to become autonomous learners? How could a teacher, or a school, foster independence? 

I think a bottom-up approach like Dogme does foster independence. For example, the process of ‘noticing’ learning opportunities is central to classroom life: the idea that even small units of language – I call them ‘scraps’ – can be used to build on learners’ existing resources. Once you have a word, you can make a collocation, and, then two collocations, and so on. Once you have a short text, whether it has been generated
in class or sourced from outside the classroom, you can look for synonyms, opposite ways of saying the same thing, more or less formal expressions of the same basic meaning. And making notes is very important in the Dogme classroom. We’re not relying on the coursebook to shape our lessons and dictate our language study – so we all have to be active participants in the process! There are also lots of ways to use technology to keep learners engaged with English outside school, whether they are capturing stuff on their mobile phones to talk about in class, or interacting online in a shared space such as a wiki, or just looking for real-life English language use online.

Thank you so much for this interview, Luke.
It’s been an absolute pleasure, Henrick!

Henrick Oprea is the Director of Studies at Atlantic Idiomas. His passion for education is what drives him on a daily basis. His major interest these days is teacher professional development. He believes teachers are the ones who make the difference in any learning environment, which is one of the driving forces at Atlantic Idiomas. He blogs about education at http://hoprea.wordpress.com, and you can follow him on twitter @hoprea.