Development - The “Robinson Crusoe” Method | Delta Publishing

The “Robinson Crusoe” Method

Sunday 24 May 2009

There is nothing new about Dogme: teaching without materials has a long history. In fact, you could say that teaching without materials is the archetypical or default method of teaching languages. We have no records of how second languages were first taught, of course, but it doesn’t take a lot of imagination to reconstruct how, in the contact between speakers of two different languages, mutual teaching and joint construction of learning might have taken place. It is a situation that Daniel Defoe, in Robinson Crusoe, re-creates. If you recall, Crusoe meets and befriends the “savage” Friday on his island:

I was greatly delighted with him, and made it my Business to teach him every Thing, that was proper to make him useful, handy, and helpful; but especially to make him speak, and under stand me when I spake, and he was the aptest Schollar that ever was, and particularly was so merry, so constantly diligent, and so pleased, when he cou’d but understand me, or make me understand him, that it was very pleasant to me to talk to him; […] Friday began to talk pretty well, and understand the Names of almost every Thing I had occasion to call for, and of every Place I had to send him to, and talk’d a great deal to me.

Unfortunately, Defoe does not go into the details of what he did “to make him speak”, but it is not difficult to imagine how it evolved. As the two went about their daily chores, Crusoe would have drawn attention to certain objects, no doubt using simplified “foreigner talk”, and perhaps encouraging Friday to repeat or at least confirm his understanding. No special teaching skills or linguistic knowledge would be necessary – only the ability to exploit the learning affordances available in the immediate environment. Conversations would start to develop, with Crusoe playing the leading part, initially. At first these conversations would tend to focus on the “here-and-now” and hence be both comprehensible and syntactically simple. The relatively narrow context in which they lived would mean that recycling of vocabulary and particular speech acts would happen frequently. The almost continuous contact between “teacher” and “learner” would ensure optimal opportunities for interaction, as well as the sorting out of communication breakdowns. Moreover, their lack of a shared language combined with their mutual dependence in order to survive, would suggest a strong motivation, on the part of Friday, to acquire English (English for Survival Purposes!), and, on the part of Crusoe, to teach it.

All in all, the “Robinson Crusoe method”, with its reliance on co-constructed, contextually relevant, interactive talk, was an early manifestation of a dogme approach. It was also an approach that was anticipated by one of Defoe’s contemporaries, the enlightenment philosopher John Locke, who, in Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1693), had written: “Men learn languages for the ordinary intercourse of Society and Communication of thoughts in common Life without any further design in their use of them. And for this purpose, the Original way of Learning a language by Conversation, not only serves well enough, but is to be prefer’d as the most Expedite, Proper, and Natural”. It was a sentiment echoed by a another contemporary, the philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716), who said: “A language is acquired through practice; it is merely perfected through grammar”.

This progressive tradition was to weave its way through the philosophy of education for the next two centuries. It re-surfaced in Germany in the nineteenth century where the German scholar, linguist and educational reformer, Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767-1835) famously said: “You cannot teach a language: you can only create the right conditions for learning it”. Subsequently Gustav Langenscheidt (1832 – 1895) developed a teaching method based on the principle that “die Grammatik kommt aus der Sprache, nicht die Sprache aus der Grammatik” (Grammar comes from speaking, not speaking from grammar). This is an early statement of the principle of language emergence and was fundamental to the development of what became known as the Direct Method. One of the prototypical Direct Method courses (in French) was called Causeries avec mes élèves (Conversations with my students, 1874). Its author, Lambert Sauveur, describes the first lesson: “It is a conversation during two hours in the French language with twenty persons who know nothing of this language. After five minutes only, I am carrying on a dialogue with them, and this dialogue does not cease.” This is the Robinson Cruse method par excellence!

Comments

Sara Hannam

25 May 2009 10:55

Scott Hi,

Thanks for your post.

I get your point, but am a little disturbed by the metaphor of Crusoe/Friday being used without any reference to its deeply problematic nature in terms of relationship between “Teacher” and “Student” here which is also in terms of colonizer and colonized. I wonder why you haven’t mentioned this at all in your blog other than putting the word “savages” in speech marks presumably to demarcate your disagreement with it as a term.

It has been well documented in ELT that this motif is something a sensitised practitioner needs to aware of as so much of our contemporary field has been constructed around historical patterns that were born into that era of colonialism where it was normal practice for the Crusoe figure to define the very humanness of the Friday figure which is clearly seen in the quotation you use from the novel. Am I the only person who feels disturbed (and thinks it worth a mention) by the matter of fact way that Crusoe (Defoe) sees it as his role to ‘teach’ Friday how to be a efficient and “diligent”? Language teaching here is a representation of much more sinister power exchanges as well as assumptions about superior systems of thought.

You allude to quite a few philosophical developments in your blog which were key during this period – this demonstrates a commitment to thought beyond language teaching and language teaching as a historical process, but what is missing are those voices which then and now see the fault in the method as laying as much in the inequality in the position of the subjects as it did in the practical approach.For more on this see Pennycook 1998 who argues “it is perhaps always worth asking ourselves as English T’s to what extent we are following in Crusoe’s footsteps?” – you have done this above, but only at a methodological level. There is always more to teaching than methods right? For a rounded view of Crusoe, I can’t see how that can be an absence in the analysis. You have made your DOGME point, but I can’t help but wonder at what cost and what has been passed over in the process? You may say that wasn’t the point of your blog. But what illustrative material we use is a choice, as is the way in which we interpret it. I felt it important to share this view with you and I wonder what you think about it?

LUZ BEGOÑA TOCINO

25 May 2009 10:57

Very insightful, indeed, but I see the Robinson Crusoe method as a short-range method to provide students with a “here&now” linguistic environtment so as to engage them into conversation. It’s ideal when both speakers can’t understand each other any other way but in English. When it comes to mono-lingual students I think “scaffolding” will be a good strategy, i.e. the use of the students’ mother tongue as a diving-board to boost conversation in English. In a way, it reminds me of what I actually do with my 6-year-old daughter, which is to engage her into English when she comes out of school by asking her questions like: “How was school today?”, “What did you have for lunch?” “Did you play with Clara and Lucía?” “Did you like school today” etc. She gets going by my own feedback when she answers me in Spanish. Somehow, she’s little by little getting more understanding without having to understand all the words.

Scott Thornbury

25 May 2009 11:24

Thanks Sara, for your well argued and critical (in at least two senses of the word) response. Yes, I’m aware of the use that Pennycook (and also Phillipson and Prodromou among others) has made of the Crusoe story (Phllipson makes the interesting observation that the first title in the Longman New Method series fo graded readers, published in 1926, was ‘Robinson Crusoe’!), and it was short-sighted of me not to reference this. (The scare quotes around ’savage’ are about as far as I go!). But, you’re right – all sorts of issues about power, colonialism, linguicide, “othering” etc can be unpacked from this story – not least the question, why did Crusoe assume that Friday should learn English, rather that he learn Friday’s language? It also raises interesting questions about what Holliday calls “native speakerism” – since who is the native speaker in this instance?

And yes, there is always more to methods than methodology. Again, to cite Pennycook, methods are never “disinterested”, but serve the dominant power structures in society. If Dogme is an attempt to subvert these power structures, perhaps the analogy with Robinson Crusoe is not apt, even inept!

Sara Hannam

25 May 2009 12:08

Thanks Scott for this reply and for continuing the discussion. Can you outline more clearly how you think DOGME does subvert these power structures with specific reference to the disourses of colonialism that are talked about by Pennycook and the other ELTers you mention i,e, in relation to issues such as linguicide,othering or the assumption it should be English rather than another language. How do you feel that DOGME moves away from, as you put it “serv(ing) the dominant power structures in society”. I would be really interested in hearing your thoughts about this if you have time.

Scott Thornbury

25 May 2009 12:30

Sara, I’m going to pass on this one, not because it’s not a good question (it is!), but (a) because there are others on the Dogme list who are more articulate on this subject (I urge them to respond!) and (b) because I’ve written something on this very subject for another blog that I am “guesting on”, over the road on the British Council Teaching English website. The piece (Is Dogme Critical?) will go up in a week or two. I’ll let you know via Twitter.

Marisa Constantinides

25 May 2009 14:14

I think the metaphor of Robinson Crusoe and his man Friday was a well-conceived one insofar as it supports the view that learning a language without materials is possible. Any further readings into it, such as colonial vs colonized attitudes, may be part of a completely different discussion.

I also liked Luz’s comment about the “here and nowness” of the method, as indeed this would be true about any mother teaching her child to speak as mothers/parents/caretakers naturally do.

But for education, literacy and numeracy to take place, the child has to go to school and learn facts and use books and materials. Or not?

How does dogme take the learner into the advanced level; how are advanced reading skills introduced without materials, are questions many teachers may be asking.

If materials is equal to coursebooks in this equation, how many readers believe that it is possible for a novice teacher with few resources to go the dogme way…

Good teachers are not made overnight – some people say 3 some 4 or 5 years… opinions vary.

Does dogme possibly place more demands on a teacher? Does it make it a utopia for many ELT practitioners in the field who are badly paid and overworked?

And what about the level of linguistic confidence required? Does this make it the exclusive domain of some but not other teachers? These are questions, not answers…though it just dawned on me they do look like answers.

My own very basic tendency and instinct drives me away from coursebooks.

Despite what my questions may suggest, I have never really seen any single coursebook that I have ever wanted to commit to.

But my young trainees do and so do many of their students.

So to my final question: Is the dogme way something we develop or graduate into as teachers?

Sara Hannam

25 May 2009 14:34

OK Scott – hope some of the others that you refer to will contribute here (flag it up on twitter if so) and it looks like I’ll be seeing you in the BC blog when your piece on critical dogme is ready. Good luck with that.

Pete MacKichan

25 May 2009 17:16

Robinson Crusoe took it on himself to teach Friday two things – English and Christianity. I can certainly imagine how our intrepid dogme pioneer made use of the immediate environment to teach language (no eight part series of coursebooks being available that the time). I do wonder about the religion part – did this also follow a dogme approach or did he resort to a textbook for this? Which brings me to the general problem of how the lessons might have shifted from the concrete ‘coconut’ to the abstract ‘evil’.

What are the affordances in a materials free zone that can enable us to move from the ‘here and now’ to the more interesting ‘not here and not now’?

Scott Thornbury

25 May 2009 21:16

Marisa, thanks for your thoughtful comment. The questions you posed are all valid, and many are addressed in Teaching Unplugged (e.g.is it only for experienced teachers? for native-speaker teachers? for low-level classes? etc). But implicit in these questions, perhaps, is the notion that Dogme is a prescription, a method, an agreed set of practices, and so on. Something like the Natural Method, or Suggestopedia. What we have tried hard to convey is the idea that Dogme – which started life simply as an analogy, after all – is NOT a method in any strict sense, and is certainly not a prescription. At risk of being a bit wet, it’s really just a state of mind – “another way of being a teacher” as Claire Kramsch puts it. If there is anything like a coherent philosophy it can be summed up in the three principles we outline in the first part of the book. It’s about teaching that is conversation-driven, materials-light, with a focus on emergent language. That is to say, it’s teaching where learner output becomes lesson input. Now, how you adapt those principles to your own teaching situation (high levels, one-to-one, on-line, young learners, exam classes, etc) is really up to you.

As for you last question – is this something we grow into? Well, perhaps. But some teachers report growing OUT of it. I.e. they started untrained and unknowledgeable, happily doing private lessons until the day they decided to get trained. Then all the spontaneity went out of it. For those teachers, Dogme is a return to the “lost paradise” of Robinson Crusoe’s island (pace Phillipson!)

Rob

27 May 2009 05:03

An interesting discussion everyone! Sara, if you care to contact me off-list, I’d be happy to share my dissertation work with you, which, in some ways, tries to present Dogme as a critical approach to ELT. I wouldn’t expect you, or any sane person, to read through the whole thing, but some of it might relate to your questions (above). I also suggest a search of the Dogme listserv archives under a relevant heading (e.g., “critical”) if you have time. Afraid I have little time to offer more than this short comment at the moment.