Renewing Our ‘Vows of EFL Chastity’

By Martin Sketchley

It has been 15 years since I completed my MA research into Dogme ELT. At that time, technology in the classroom was merely a computer connected to an overhead projector; there was no guarantee of an internet connection. While researching teacher and student attitudes towards the key tenets of Dogme ELT, it was clear that the most important element of any lesson was neither the material nor the teacher, but the students in the classroom.

Dogme ELT, and the publication ‘Teaching Unplugged’ (Meddings and Thornbury, 2009), was inspired by the Dogme 95 filmmaking movement, spearheaded by Lars von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg. There were 10 key rules that aspiring Dogme filmmakers had to follow, including always shooting on location and avoiding superficial action. This was raw filmmaking stripped of any artifice; it would only be five years before Scott Thornbury would publish the EFL equivalent. In IATEFL Issues (2000), Thornbury took ‘a vow of EFL chastity’, highlighting the Dogme 95 components that could be applied to English language teaching.

In 2009, Meddings and Thornbury suggested ten key principles for ELT practitioners wishing to incorporate Dogme ELT in their teaching. The tenets at the heart of the list are that Dogme ELT is conversation-driven, focuses on emergent language, and is materials light (ibid., pp.7-8).

Just as Dogme 95 was not the abandonment of film-making but rather film-making in its most essential guise, so too was Dogme ELT a philosophy of teaching that stripped away what might be considered inessential – coursebooks, grammar exercises, vocabulary, inauthentic listening exercises – so that the focus might return to the most important element in the classroom: the students.

Dogme 95 could be seen as a reaction to the trend in Hollywood that favoured big-budget special-effects spectacle over films of a more human nature. With AI now making its presence felt in the world of movies, last year Dogme returned, with five filmmakers signing a renewed ‘vow of chastity’ with ten updated principles under the name of Dogme 25.

The time thus seems right for those of us who subscribed to the tenets of Dogme ELT to renew our vows in the face of the AI invasion into teaching. There may well be justifications for the use of generative AI in ELT, but so too are there justifications for us to remain loyal to the purity of the craft.

This article will consider ELT in light of Dogme 25.

The first key principle of Dogme 25 is:

The script must be original and handwritten by the director. We compel ourselves to write the script by hand in order to nurture the kind of intuition that flows most freely from the dream, channelled through the hand onto the paper.

The ELT equivalent of the script is surely the lesson plan. ChatGPT is capable of generating lesson plans, but AI will never know your students, and we may ask if it is right to outsource one of the most important parts of our teaching. As teachers, we should attempt to nurture the skill of lesson planning, so that we are able to offer something in our lessons that is unique for our learners. With more practice and development, we are able to hone our craft as English language teachers. When planning lessons, I would urge a return to pen and paper. It is slower, but it is more deliberate; you give yourself a chance to pause and consider what you are doing, and when you take that handwritten plan into the classroom, you will feel that it is your lesson that you are teaching. Reflecting on the lesson afterwards may also be easier if you have a physical copy of the plan rather than something stored in your ChatGPT history.

The third principle of Dogme 25 suggests the following:

The internet is off limits in all creative processes. We commit to produce the films relying on real people within our physical reality – rather than in a digital one infused with algorithms.

Applied to the English language classroom, it could be suggested that all technological and smart devices connected to the internet should be ‘off limits’, with both learners and teachers committing to such an agreement. Personally, I have witnessed my students in higher education hiding behind their laptop, tablet, or smartphone, not really engaging with what is happening in the classroom. Many of the students are not really learning or engaging with what is happening in the classroom, with students asking the same question one after the other and not really hearing what other people are saying. I would even suggest that this is one of the most important principles that teachers should adopt for their classrooms: your lesson should revolve around ‘real people within our physical reality’.

The fifth principle for the Dogme 25 states:

No more than 10 people behind the camera. We commit to working in close collaborations to build trust and strengthen our shared vision.

Anyone who has sat through the credits for movies like The Lord of the Rings will see how many people were involved in the production of the film, and while this example is a beloved classic, we should also remember that Madame Web lists almost as many credits – and for much worse returns. While we may not be able to control how many students attend our lessons, we should push our institutions to limit the figure to ten or fewer. We should also consider the idea at the heart of this figure – Dogme 25 is stressing the importance and value of close collaboration, and that should be true in the classroom as well. Furthermore, we should resist any movement that leads to us considering our students as no more than numbers in a room – we should aim to establish community spirit wherever possible.

The eighth principle for Dogme 25 is:

Everything relating to the film’s production must be rented, borrowed, found, or used. We commit to making films using objects that already exist and renounce the ahistorical and self-destructive culture of consumerism.

When considering the resources we use for English language teaching, we should look for that which is readily available either within the classroom or in our immediate environment. Anything that the teacher wishes to use, such as a reading task, should be drawn from existing sources. Going further, the temptation to use AI to adapt authentic material to a given level should be resisted – the task should be adapted, not the text. In the same vein, teachers or students could bring objects into the classroom to encourage richer discussions and a deeper level of interaction. Use the real world to encourage the emergence of real language in the classroom.

The final principle for Dogme 25 is perhaps the most profound:

Create the film as if it were your last.

If we rely on generative AI to plan our lessons and create our materials, the time will one day come when AI will also teach our lessons. I would suggest that for English language teachers, we need to create lessons that we can be proud of. We must unshackle ourselves from technology to make something beautiful and unique for the benefit of our learners as well as for our sanity as educators. Focus on crafting a lesson that truly meets your learners’ needs rather than delivering a lesson that merely covers the grammatical points that you are expected to cover.

Conclusion

If we consider what happens in a successful Dogme-esque lesson, the teacher is able to foster a learning environment which is conducive to natural interaction while scaffolding language to make student-led communication more appropriate. Yet, as AI becomes more invasive in the language learning process, we should consider reviewing and updating the key tenets of Dogme ELT.

With so much material at our fingertips, both students and teachers could lose sight of what truly matters in the English language classroom. Am I suggesting that we throw out all coursebooks or AI-generated material? Of course not.

However, I would like to remind English language teachers of the important components of any classroom. I am someone who yearns for a return to what matters. All we need is a room, some chairs and desks, a board, a teacher – and students. The rest runs the risk of being a distraction, and for many of us, the distraction is beginning to oppress.

We need to truly unplug our learners, unplug our lesson planning, as well as unplug our teaching from AI and technology. So, who will join me in pursuing a renewed Vow of EFL Chastity in 2026 and beyond? And what would make your ten key principles of Dogme ELT a success in 2026?

Bibliography

Dogma 25 (2025): https://dogma25.dk/ [accessed 10 May 2026]

Meddings, L. and Thornbury, S. (2009), ‘Teaching Unplugged: Dogme in English Language Teaching’. Surrey: DELTA Publishing.

Thornbury, S. (2000), ‘A Dogma for EFL: Scott Thornbury takes a vow of EFL chastity’, IATEFL Issues 153, February – March 2000.

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