"Nonsense, exploit materials more!"
"Use teacher-focused reformulation slots to co-create learning affordances!"
"Don't be stupid, use materials to scaffold a learner-centred classroom!"
Errr...???
It's enough to make the head spin of any teacher enthusiastic enough to follow ELT's reactions to dogme over the last decade, and once more this recurrent theme stirred up some heated emotion at the recent IATEFL 2013 conference. But are all these seemingly contradictory mantras mutually exclusive after all? Or, shock-horror, could there be - whisper it - some middle-ground?
The latest ELT gurus going tete-a-tete for our academic entertainment are, in the red corner, Hugh Deller, materials proponent and author of note, versus in the blue corner, the dark destroyer of coursebooks, Luke Meddings and the shadow of the omnipresent Scott Thornbury.
Ding ding! Hugh Deller came out fighting (http://hughdellar.wordpress.com/2013/04/11/a-dogme-aproach-to-coursebooks-part-one/). He argued lucidly that the use of well-selected materials can offer exposure to texts and language, and development of communicative competences that would otherwise be impossible to co-create in the classroom, such as transactions described by lower-level CEFR Can-Do statements. In addition, materials provide a rich source of what he calls 'ambient' language (the stuff in the background, like ambient music), which can be highlighted by teachers to encourage student noticing. Materials can also supply the tasks through which meanings, communicative needs and language can emerge.
Now, I would hazard that, to all but the most militant of dogme recruits, this sounds eminently sensible so far. But it's the next step that adds the dash of controversy: since you can deal with emergent language through materials, dogme should therefore be held up to ridicule and disappear whence it came!
But even if you agree that "discussing, say, a sugar lump found on a chair" is not the most authentic of tasks, you may still have detected a bit of a leap in getting from that premise to its conclusion, and you're not alone.
If there are some texts and language that could never emerge in a dogme classroom, by implication there are also some that can, to which the many teachers who have found dogme liberating will attest. Moreover, Thornbury et al have distanced themselves from an outright ban on materials, many being materials authors themselves, with Luke Meddings embracing the use of technology to access student-selected websites, a.k.a. 'materials' (http://iatefl.britishcouncil.org/2013/sessions/2013-04-10/unplugged-and-connected-where-ideas-meet).
So why, in this ongoing argument about dogme v materials, is it demanded of us that we choose one over the other? Why can't we use, as we see fit, one approach one lesson, another the next, or more probably a combination of both? If dogmeticians misrepresent the use of materials as "shut up and complete that gapfill", and materials authors set up dogme as a straw-man barring all materials from beyond the here-and-now, are we not in danger of missing the middle-ground compromise, the best of both worlds, that many teachers, including Rachael Roberts, have rationally arrived at? (http://elt-resourceful.com)
Although the one-size-fits-all nature of conference sessions and journal articles lends itself to bold divisive slogans, I suspect that, if Messieurs Deller and Thornbury observed the same lesson, they would actually agree on most things. As such, it's impossible to issue any generalised diktats to do more teaching unplugged, or less, until it is established how a particular teacher uses materials in the first place. To do so would be like having a permanent motorway road sign reading 'slow down', regardless of whether passing motorists were doing 40 mph or a hundred.
But maybe the world of ELT is better and more entertaining as a result of this ongoing friction - who hasn't enjoyed the sparring down the years of esteemed academics such as Widdowson against Swan on grammar, and more recently Anthony Bruton taking on the TBL of Dave and Jane Willis at IATEL 2010? However, it occurs to me this whole dogme v materials spat might just be a carefully stage-managed publicity stunt, like those between X-factor judges, and that they're all in on it together, secretly on the same side but defining terms differently for continued conflict.
And so maybe, as Herbert Puchta called it, "such a black and white view" might be better replaced by a more inclusive approach, in which our warring pugilists would kiss and make up (OK, he didn't actually use those words!). By so doing, we could reframe the non-argument of dogmE v materials, as dogmA v informed eclectic pragmatism, and all get behind the latter.
So I, for one, won't miss it when the oft-heard conference badge of honour "I teach unplugged!" falls from favour. Not because I don't, but because I also believe in using all those great teaching ideas, techniques and, yes, materials that all the talented writers, trainers and teachers on both sides of this debate have contributed to the world of ELT.
