The Dialogue Approach
To communicate rapidly and effectively in a foreign language

The Natural Learning Environment

4. A Guided Experience

• 4.1. A Confident Climate
• 4.2. Socratic Maieutics
  To accelerate the discovery process, the Dialogue trainer—the name of the method is directly borrowed from Plato’s dialogues—turns to Socratic maieutics, in other words, the art of bringing forth ideas. The trainer is there to bring the learner’s ideas into the world. He takes the learner’s position by constantly posing questions. As Louis Not said, “the Socratic method seems to function less as a means of transmission and more as a process of discovery. There isn’t anything more to learn, simply to retain that which one knows implicitly, which the questions try to make explicit. Adapting to each situation, the Dialogue trainer looks at the wider context and develops questions that let the learner reach a state where he or she grasps the content. The guide chooses the most natural real-life path to the material.
  
  In order to deepen the level of discovery, the Dialogue trainer encourages distributed and structural linguistic skills. In only posing the questions that follow natural means of communication, the instructor doesn’t only use the syntagmatic route (Who? What? Where? How? Why?), but also the holistic route (synonyms, antonyms, paraphrases). In this way, two simple propositions are merged into one sentence. Two statements finish by forming, for example, a principal proposition plus one subordinated by cause, by consequence, etc.). The trainer’s goal is to coax out, at the learner’s level of communication, the panoply of tools he or she already uses to express ideas and feelings.
  
  The order of the questions has a specific purpose. It contributes to the progressive construction of thoughts in keeping with the student’s responses. The instructor analyzes each response and chooses the next question as a function of that response. The questioning structures, little by little, in a harmonious manner, the student’s thinking process.
  
  As did Socrates, the best response is suggested. The learner may be able to respond directly to the information given in question or may be able to relate instead to the sense (synonyms, antonyms and paraphrases), or by a sketch, a gesture, a bit of mimicry, an example of behavior , etc.
  
  Despite all efforts by the trainer, sometimes the response is not in line with what the trainer expects.
  
• 4.3. Error Management
• 4.4 Verifiable, Immediate, Tangible Progress