In his post Dogme and Identity, Luke Meddings, one of the writers of the co-authored Delta Development Blog, points to the present excess of standardized course materials, content and technology we are exposed to in ELT. The 2007 article The Autumn of the Multitaskers in the Atlantic, while not specifically dealing with English teaching, also illustrates well the cognitive overload and haste we have to deal with presently and warns us against their dumbing down effects.

In both situations there is little room for slow conversations and the emergent language which arises from the learners’ own interests and shapes their evolving identity in the foreign language.

At Dekita, we have brought up the need for peer-centered learning and questioned the forced standardized content from the strict curriculum and the cookie-cutter model of the standard pre-packaged coursebook topics.

How can we guide our students to acquire what they need so they can express their thoughts, share them with others, and negotiate meaning in self-directed ways? How do we move from dependence towards greater independence and inter-dependence? How do we adopt a more process-oriented approach and interact in a more open and decentralized fashion which allows for self-directed participation, informal communication, inter-cultural and inter-linguistic development?

Is it possible to make time within your class to slow the pace and allow for different meaningful processing experiences, during which understanding and language are negotiated and appropriated individually or are our courses becoming devoid of meaning and as as queer as a clockwork orange?