Community Language Learning

1. COMMUNITY LANGUAGE LEARNING
(CLL)

2. What is Community Language Learning?
◦ It's a method that is based on English for communication. CLL emphasizes the
importance of the learners themselves by calling them "clients" and letting
them design lesson content. The teacher plays the part of "counsellor", while
the learners are encouraged to work together, interacting and helping each
other personally in a supportive community. The method, which aims to
alleviate the anxiety and threat so often felt by language learners, is sometimes
described as "counselling learning"

3. Background
◦ CLL was developed by Charles A. Curran , His application of
psychological counseling techniques to learning is known as
Counseling – Learning .
◦ The term counseling means one person giving advice , assistance ,
and support to another who has a problem .
◦ The founder figure of CLL was Charles Curran, an American Jesuit
priest, whose work in Counselling Learning (a general learning
approach based on Rogerian counselling ideas and practices) was
applied to language learning.

4. Background
◦ The method was originally developed by Charles Curran who was
inspired by Carl Rogers view of education. in In this “Counseling-
learning” model of education, learners in a classroom are seen as a
group rather than as a class, a group in dire need of certain therapy and
counseling . The social dynamics occurring in the group are very
important and a number of conditions are needed for learning to take
place.

5. CLL
Community Language Learning advises teachers to take their students
as “whole person.” Whole person learning means that teachers consider
not only the students’ intellect but also their feelings. Teachers become
“language counselors” and give no threatening to students.

6. Typical features of a CLL lesson:
◦ target language/mother tongue
◦ teacher/learner-centred
◦ counselling role for teacher; client roles for learners
◦ in-a-circle seating for learners
◦ recorder inside circle and teacher outside
◦ TL dialogue generated learner by learner (helped as necessary by teacher)
◦ recorded dialogue transcribed by teacher on board
◦ analysis of dialogue by learners

7. UNIQUE FEATURES
◦ Students decide topics
◦ Teacher translates
◦ Teachers are “counselors”
◦ Students are “clients”
◦ Learning is inductive

8. In Class Room
1- The teacher greets the students, introduces himself, and has the students
introduce themselves.
◦ 2- The teacher tells the students what they are going to do that evening. He
explains the procedure for the first activity and sets a time limit.
◦ 3-Students have a conversation
◦ 4- The teacher translates what the students want to say
in chunks.
5-The students listen to the tape and give the translation L1.
6- The teacher asks the students to form a semicircle in front of
the whiteboard so they can see easily.
7- The teacher asks the students to give the L1
equivalents as he points to different phrases in the
transcript. He points to the first phrase and pauses; if no
one volunteers themeaning, he writes it himself.
8- The teacher reads the transcript three times. The
students relax and listen.

9. 9- In the Human Computer™ activity, the
students choose which phrase they want to
practice pronouncing; the teacher,
following the student’s lead, repeats the
phrase until the learner is satisfied and
stops
10- The students learn to
listen carefully to see if what
they say matches what the
teacher is saying.
11- The teacher corrects by
repeating correctly the sentence
the students have created.
13-The students are once
again invited to talk about the
experience they have had that
evening
In Class Room

10. Stages of CLL
◦ Stage 1- Reflection
◦ Stage 2 - Recorded conversation
◦ Stage 3 - Discussion
◦ Stage 4 - Transcription
◦ Stage 5 - Language analysis

11. Stage 1- Reflection
◦
I start with students sitting in a circle around a tape recorder to create a community
atmosphere.
◦ The students think in silence about what they'd like to talk about, while I remain
outside the circle.
◦ To avoid a lack of ideas students can brainstorm their ideas on the board before
recording.

12. Stage 2 - Recorded conversation
◦ Once they have chosen a subject the students tell me in their L1 what they'd like to say and
I discreetly come up behind them and translate the language chunks into English.
◦ With higher levels if the students feel comfortable enough they can say some of it directly
in English and I give the full English sentence. When they feel ready to speak the students
take the microphone and record their sentence.
◦ It's best if you can use a microphone as the sound quality is better and it's easier to pick up
and put down.
◦ Here they're working on pace and fluency. They immediately stop recording and then wait
until another student wants to respond. This continues until a whole conversation has been
recorded.

13. Stage 3 - Discussion
◦ Next the students discuss how they think the conversation went. They can discuss how they felt
about talking to a microphone and whether they felt more comfortable speaking aloud than
they might do normally.
◦ This part is not recorded.

14. Stage 4 - Transcription
◦ Next they listen to the tape and transcribe their conversation. I only intervene when
they ask for help.
◦ The first few times you try this with a class they might try and rely on you a lot but aim
to distance yourself from the whole process in terms of leading and push them to do
it themselves.

15. Stage 5 - Language analysis
◦ I sometimes get students to analyse the language the same lesson or sometimes in
the next lesson. This involves looking at the form of tenses and vocabulary used and
why certain ones were chosen, but it will depend on the language produced by the
students.
◦ In this way they are totally involved in the analysis process. The language is
completely personalised and with higher levels they can themselves decide what parts
of their conversation they would like to analyse, whether it be tenses, lexis or
discourse.
◦ With lower levels you can guide the analysis by choosing the most common problems
you noted in the recording stages or by using the final transcription.

16. Length of stages
The timing will depend entirely on the class, how quickly they
respond to CLL, how long you or they decide to spend on the
language analysis stage and how long their recorded conversation is.
Be careful however that the conversation isn't too long as this will in
turn make the transcription very long

17. Objectives
◦ The goal of this method is attaining near-native mastery of the target language
. Specific goals include developing a whole person learning process and a
trusting relationship among the members of the class

18. What are the goals of teachers who use the
Community Language Learning Method?
◦ Teachers who use CLL want their students to learn how to use the target
language communicatively. In they want their students to learn about their own
learning
◦ To learn how to learn from one another
◦ The teacher and learner(s) treat each other as whole persons, valuing both
thoughts and feelings.

19. What is the role of the students?
◦ learners become members of a community - their fellow learners and the teacher
◦ learn through interacting with members of the community.
◦ Learning is not viewed as an individual accomplishment but as something that is achieved
collaboratively.
◦ Learners are expected to listen attentively to the teacher to freely provide meanings they wish
to express.
◦ repeating target utterances without hesitation,
◦ supporting fellow members of the community,
◦ to report deep inner feelings and frustrations as well as joy and pleasure, and to become
counselors to other learners.

20. What is the role of the students?
◦ Initially, the learners are very dependent upon the teacher. It is recognized, however, that as the
learners continue to study, they become increasingly independent. Community Language
Learning methodologists have identified five stages in this movement from dependency to
mutual inter-dependency with the teacher. the teacher focuses not only on the language but
also on being supportive of learners in their learning process. In Stage IV, because of the
students’ greater security in the language and readiness to benefit from corrections, the teacher
can focus more on accuracy. It should be noted that accuracy is always a focus even in the first
three stages; however, it is subordinated to fluency.

21. What is the role of the teacher?
◦ The teacher’s a counselor. This does not mean that the teacher is a therapist, or that the teacher does
no teaching. Rather, it means that the teacher recognizes how threatening a new learning situation
can be for adult learners, so he skillfully understands and supports his students in their struggle to
master the target language.
◦ The counselor's role is to respond calmly and non-judgmentally, in a supportive manner, and help the
client try to understand his or her problems better by applying order and analysis to them.
◦ The counselor is not responsible for paraphrasing the client's problem element for element but rather
for capturing the essence of the client's concern,
◦ There is also room for actual counseling in Community Language Learning.
◦ Explicit recognition is given to the psychological problems that may arise in learning a second
language. "

22. Advantages of CLL
◦ CLL is an attempt to overcome the threatening affective factors in EFL and ESL.
◦ The councelor allow the learners to determine type of coversation and to analyze the language
inductively
◦ The student centered nature of the method can provide extrincic motivation and capitalize on
intinsic motivation

23. Disadvantages
◦ The counselor/teacher can become too non directive. Students often need directions .
◦ The method relies completely on inductive learning. It is worthwhile noting that deductive
learning is also a viable strategy of learning.
◦ Translation is an intricate and difficult task. The success of the method relies largely on the
translation expertise of the counselor.

24. Conclusion
Although CLL is primarily meant as a 'whole' approach to teaching I have found it equally useful
for an occasional lesson, especially with teenagers. It enables to refocus on the learner while my
students immediately react positively to working in a community. They take exceptionally well to
peer-correction and by working together they overcome their fear of speaking. I have also found
quieter students able to offer corrections to their peers and gladly contribute to the recording
stage of the lesson. It's a teaching method which encompasses all four skills while simultaneously
revealing learners' styles which are more or less analytical in their approach to language learning.
All of which raises our awareness as a teacher and that of our students.