COMMUNITY LANGUAGE LEARNING
· CLL was developed by Charles A.Curran and his associates in Chicago,1955.
· It is sometimes described as “humanistic techniques”
· Curran’s application of psychological counseling techniques to learning is known as Counseling Learning. CLL represents the use of Counseling Learning theory to teaches languages. It also derives its primary insights from “conseling”.
· Counseling is one person giving advice, assistance, and support to another who has a problem or is in some way in need.
· The roles of the teacher are the counselor and learners, the clients.
· The counselor doesn’t automatically assist the clients but passively offers his help to them.
· CLL involves humanistic techniques which engage the whole person, including the emotions and feelings as well as linguistic knowledge and behavioral skills.
Principles
1.Learning is person: human individuals need to be understood and aided in the process of fulfilling personal values and goals; this is best done in community with others striving to attain the same goals.
v Whole-persons learning is used in a relationship of trust, support, and cooperation between teacher and students, and among students.
2.Learning is dynamic and creative: learning is a living and developmental process.
v Building a relationship with and among students is important as well as lessening their fears to a new learning situation.
v Teachers don’t remain in the front of the classroom to reduce to threat to them.
v To let students feel secure facilitates their learning such as using of L1, more cooperation in the community, understanding what will happen in each activity and so on.
· The progression is “topic based” with learners nominating things they wish to talk about and massages they wish to communicate to other learners.
· CLL combines innovative learning tasks and activities with conventional ones. They include:
§ Translation: Learners whisper a massage they want to express, the teacher translates it into the target language and the learners repeat the teacher’s translation.
§ Group work: Learners engage in various group tasks such as small group discussion of a topic, preparing a conversation etc.
§ Recording: Students record conversations in the target language.
§ Transcription: Students transcribe utterances and conversations.
§ Analysis: Students analyze and study transcriptions of target-language sentences in order to focus on lexical usage or particular grammar rules.
§ Reflection and observation: Learners reflect and report on their experience of the class. This usually consists of expressions of feelings.
§ Listening: Students listen to a monologue by the teacher involving elements they might have elicited in class interactions.
§ Free conversations: In free conversation with the teacher or with other learners, students discuss what they learned.
Characterictics
v A convestaion in a beginning class in L1 with translation of the teacher and later on transcription.
v Students sitting in a circle with a tape recorder: a dependent community to cooperate with each other rather than compete with each other.
v Teachers as counselors and students as clients: sensitive to students’ feelings and fears.
v Six elements necessary for nondefensive learning: security, aggression, attention, reflection, retention, and discrimination.
Influences
· The role of teachers as counselors who understand and assist students to help them overcome the threatening affective factors, respond calmly and nonjudgmentally in a supportive manner, help the client try to understand her problems better by applying order and analysis to them.
· They emphasize classroom interaction in cooperation, not in competition.
· They respect for students’ choice of learning content with a learner-generated conversation.
· No translation but for Ss to induce rules.
· Learner roles in CLL are well defined. They become members of a community, learn through interacting with the community.
# Learners are expected to;
· listen attentively to the knower
· freely provide meanings they wish to express
· repeat target utterances without hesitation
· support fellow members of the community
· report deep inner feelings and frustrations as well as joy and pleasure
· become counselors of other learners.
# A textbook is not considered a necessary component. It would impose a particular body of language content on the learners, thereby impeding their growth and interaction.
# CLL doesn’t use a conventional language syllabus.
Drawbacks
· The procedure doesn’t ensure that a variety of context necessary for coping in the target culture is included since the content is determined by the participants.
· Students may feel uncomfortable with the apparent lack of structure or sequence in the introduction of grammatical and lexical items; that is too much reliance on an inductive learning.
· There is no syllabus for CLL, a posteriori approach to syllabus specificatin.
· The teacher is too nondirective.
· The success of CLL depended largely on the translation expertise of the counselor.
CLL focuses on fluency rather than accuracy, which may lead to inadequate control of the grammatical system of the target language
