Sean – this wordpress site is hosted, so I might be picking your brains for all that jiggery pockery. I’ll buy you a couple of beverages of your choice if you can fix it, plus the undying gratitude of the ELT masses who need my podcast ;-P

I like Scott Thornbury’s ideas. I think Dogme works really well with the right classes and his Natural Grammar book is great. But I wish there was a simpler version of it for lower level students.

But everyone I’ve asked has been so nice and forthcoming. I’ll be putting one more video interview up over the weekend, then it’s onto skype for a while. Anyone up for a chat? More to the point, anyone know how to get a podcast onto a server so I can link to a url? Driving me NUTS.

Otherwise, this was so nice to get to see Scott’s views in an interview format as I highly doubt I’ll ever meet him. I find myself more in the dogme camp all the time.

I also agree with Ken, the angle was cool.

“A language is a means, not a subject.” I love that.

For the uninitated “Sandy MacManus” is the foul-mouthed, hard-drinking internet persona of a mysterious TEFLer investigating and exposing the seemier side of the ELT industry. At the moment he is working on a story about the shady practice of school accreditation, and it’s a story worth checking out. However, on occasion he gets over-excited when tricking to prick the balloons of the luminaries… hence the “bum-bandits” remark. If you like a bit of Derek and Clive with your investigative journalism, then maybe you think it’s funny. But I don’t think Sandy would be saying quite the same things if he peeked out from behind the mask.

To address your comment, Scott didn`t “hack on” about anything, it was a question I raised based on a ten year old article as an example of the banality of coursebook materials, and he was quite clear that it would be culturally inappropriate to focus on certain lifestyles in mainstream texts. But aren’t you tired of the same old Madonna and Beckham schtick too?

Patrick – Maybe most teachers THINK they need a textbook. But worldwide, yes they probably do for reasons of their own language proficiency, class size, context, or the need to have any tools at all. That is why I asked the question about optimum “dogme” contexts. I still feel that “dogme” works best with small classes, experienced and proficient teachers and students with a high tolerance of ambiguity. But what I liked about Scott’s answer was it’s inclusivity and pragmatism. There are probably very few teachers who will be able to chuck out all the books, but we can all have “dogme moments” in the “crevices of the lesson”. The overall message is a very humanistic one – don’t be ruled by the tyranny of the classroom, the textbook, or the exam… remember to listen to each other and take the opportunities to teach and learn.

I agree with many of the points in the window dressing article as well, my thoughts tend to run on why aren’t there just normal looking people in them rather than specifically focusing on a niche and yet, perhaps within niche textbooks, only focusing on that niche.

Karenne

This post was mentioned on Twitter by livesofteachers: New blog post: an interview with scott thornbury http://bit.ly/6nfoJB...