I've been interested in the Teaching
Unplugged “movement” for about 6 months, now. I first read about
it on Martin Sketchley's
ELT Experiences blog, when he talked about
his Dissertation research on Dogme ELT. I read as much as I could
find online about it, and I wrote a few reflections (
Dogme ELT and Teaching Unplugged). Well, I FINALLY ordered the Teaching
Unplugged book, and I've been reading it for the last two weeks,
trying out some of the activities, and giving the practice of
teaching unplugged as much of a chance in my own situation
(material-driven). Here is my review.
Review of
Teaching Unplugged: Dogme in English
Language Teaching
By Luke Meddings and Scott Thornbury
2009 Delta Publishing
Appearance, Layout, and Aesthetic
When I received this book in the mail,
I was really quite shocked at how thin it was. Most books that I've
read or referenced on teaching and language have been at least twice
as thick, However, the information inside is probably comparable to
the amount of information in a larger book. The text is on the small
side, and fills up every page almost completely. Luckily, the layout
and the organization of the book is clean, which made it fairly easy
to read, despite the large amount of tiny text on the page!
Organization and Content
The book is organized into three parts.
Part A is a brief history-philosophy with an explanation of the core
values of Unplugged Teaching. I found this section to be interesting,
but on the whole, very theoretical. It wasn't particularly founded in
(or backed up with) any objective research showing how the different
principles had been tested or what the actual effect of the teaching
on the learners had been (besides that they were more satisfied,
etc.). In that way, I was a little disappointed because this aspect
has been missing from most of the reading I've done on Dogme ELT, and
I was hoping the book would remedy that. While the theory of Teaching
Unplugged that is presented is very inspiring and easy to read, it is
basically a concise and detailed summary of what is available to read
online.
Part B is the most substantial section
in this book, and in my opinion, where the book shines. It's about 60
pages of Unplugged activities that can be done in the classroom, with
instructions and suggestions that follow it. My husband and I have
each used several of these activities in the last two weeks and have
been pretty happy with the results. More on that in my next few
posts. I don't want to go in to talking about the activities
themselves, but I will say that even if you are not convinced about
Teaching Unplugged, the ideas and activities in Part B make this book
a valuable resource for freer in-class communicative activities.
The third section, Part C, is a short
chapter that talks about the environments and situations where it may
seem that Teaching Unplugged would be problematic. I'll admit that I
didn't read the whole section because some of the subsections
(including Unplugging a School, Teaching Exam Classes, and Teaching
as a Non-Native Speaker) weren't immediately relevant to me. However,
I read the sub-sections that were relevant to me, and I found them to
be informative, especially the part about Teaching with a Coursebook.
Some people may disagree with me on this point, but the element that I felt was missing
from this book was a detailed explanation of how to work with
emergent language. True, the book had a large
sub-section in Part A, as well as a page-spread in Part B, but at
the end, I still felt that I didn't understand emergent language or how to take advantage of it with the Teaching Unplugged approach. Perhaps the authors felt that this book was not
the place for such a discussion, but it seems to me that since it is
such an important part of Teaching Unplugged, and since many teachers
are trained in the traditional grammar instruction methods, it should
have received more attention.
Overall, I think the book is a
worthwhile read for any teacher, whether or not he or she is
interested in (or convinced by) the Teaching Unplugged approach. As I
said earlier, Tim and I have both used several of the activities, and
we've been encouraged by the response from our students.
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I'll be writing soon on some of the
Unplugged activities I've done from the book, and how they turned
out.