Scott Thornbury

[Heike Philp]

The following discussion is reposted from the original wiki http://vrtod-scottthornbury.pbwiki.com

[Heike Philp]

Orlando Mata from Mexico asks:

Scott, when I started teaching I used to plan and prepare my classes very carefully, following my lesson plans to the very letter; and even when I had to adapt my "moves" to the learners´response, I had already prepared for that! However, during my Delta course, I had the chance to experiment with the Dogme approach, and also did some research on it as part of my Professional Development Assignment. This really was an eye-opener, and as of then I have taken on this approach every time I can with every single class I teach, and most of the times with very good results. Now I´m going to become a CELTA trainer and ICELT trainer, and I wonder if this approach could some day be part of a formal teacher training programme, and whether teacher trainers could touch on this approach when giving either pre-service or in-service training. What do you think?

[Heike Philp]

Vero from Mexico asks:

1. why is it important for the teachers to know 'about language'?

2. why should we, teachers, go 'beyond the sentence'?

[Heike Philp]

Simon Bourn, English on the Net, France asks:

Could you please explain what is meant by "slow release grammar" and how you would approach "storing high frequency vocabulary and phrases holistically"?

[Heike Philp]

Karenne Sylvester, Kalingo English asks:

1.In your book, How to teach Speaking, you say "a separate speaking syllabus might give the impression that speaking exists in isolation...few speech events in the real world exist independent of other language skills and, of course, speaking always assumes a listener... Speaking, therefore needs to be practiced in conjunction with other skils (in) an integrated skills approach."
page 118.

While I agree with you partially, too often the very focus in the language classroom is based on the development of these other skills. From we know that in the real world, listening and speaking accounts for 75% of the communication we do. In your opinion, how much time should be spent in developing listening, reading and writing skills in situations where the learners' focus is on becoming fluent communicators?

2. Would you like to tell us a little history on how you came up with the idea for dogme teaching? Could you share your thoughts today about its role and function, the pedagogical implications and have these changed at all from when you first came up with the concept?

3. You recently joined Twitter(!), what prompted this technological leap LOL and have you had any thoughts so far about how this platform may serve language teaching?

Edit: * From Rivers in Teaching foreign language skills, 1981: adults spend 40-50% listening, 25-30% speaking, 11-16% reading and 9% writing.

[Heike Philp]

Dennis Newson, www.dennisnewson.de asks:

Can you imagine yourself making a presentation or giving a lesson in Second Life?