Community Language Learning (CLL): Concept, Characteristics, History, Merits, Demerits, Activities

 

Community Language Learning (CLL): Concept, Characteristics, History, Merits, Demerits, Activities

     IITE B.ED. SEM-2 Pedagogy of English-L2 2.1 

By. Dr. Alpeshkumar Nakrani 

Assistant Professor 

                                Smt. J. J. Kundalia Graduate Teachers’ College                            

Concept of Community Language Learning

Community Language Learning (CLL) is a method in which students work together to develop what aspects of a language they would like to learn. The teacher acts as a counselor (human computer) while the learners act as a collaborator (client).

There are other terms used to refer to the teacher’s role in this method. Besides using the term counselor, the terms knower, counselor experts and counselor teachers exist as well.

Within the language teaching tradition CLL is sometimes cited as an example of a humanistic approach. In Community Language Learning, the aim is to involve the learner's whole personality.

Community language learning (CLL) is a language-teaching approach focused on group-interest learning.

CLL derives its primary insights, and indeed its organizing rationale, from Rogerian counseling. Counseling, as Rogerians see it, consists of one individual (the counselor) assuming "insofar as he is able the internal frame of reference [of the client], perceiving the world as that person sees it and communicating something of this empathetic understanding" (Rogers 1951).

In lay terms, counseling is one person giving advice, assistance, and support to another who has a problem or is in some way in need. Community Language Learning draws on the counseling metaphor to redefine the roles of the teacher (the counselor) and learners (the client?) in the language classroom. The basic procedures of CLL can thus be seen as derived from the counselor-client relationship.

A group of learners sit in a circle with the teacher standing outside the circle; a student whispers a message in the native language (LI); the teacher translates it into the foreign language (L2); the student repeats the message in the foreign language into a cassette;  students compose further messages in the foreign language with the teacher's help; students reflect about their feelings. We can compare the client—counselor relationship psychological counseling with the learner—knower relationship in Community Language Learning

History of Community Language Learning

The Community Language Learning (CLL) was developed by Charles A. Curran, a professor of psychology at Loyola University in Chicago.

He came up with the idea to apply the concept of psychotherapy in the form of counseling to his students soon after he was inspired by Carl Rogers.

Carl Rogers has a way in viewing education that in order to facilitate learning so that each individual in the group can be valued and prized appropriately, students and teacher should join together. This is the main reason why Curran created a special method which is called the Community Language Learning.

Principle of Community Language Learning

As given by Stevick

1. Language is a behavior of a learner that is directed towards others. The learner can talk about things that make him interested and things that he has been experienced before.

2. A learner can learn a new behavior fast if he is not interrupted. Therefore a leaner as the client must have as many opportunities as possible to practice his language knowledge without many interference from the teacher as the counselor.

3. The counselor should give assistance the clients in using their language all the time.

4. The counselor should give assistance in maintaining useful behavior by using three suggested techniques, they are (1) give the chance to clients to talk much, (2) develop the language productivity of the clients and (3) give the counseling and then make some evaluations.

5. In preparing the materials, the counselor should choose the easy ones for both the clients and counselor which are suitable for the level and goal to be accomplished. 

Principle of Community Language Learning

1.            Building a relationship with and among students is very important.

2.      Any new learning experience can be threatening. Students feel more secure when they have an idea of what will happen in each activity. People learn no defensively when they feel secure.

3.      The superior knowledge and power of the teacher can be threatening. If the teacher does not remain in the front of the classroom, the threat is reduced and the students’ learning is facilitated.

4.      The teacher should be sensitive to students’ level of confidence and give them just what they need to be successful.

 5.            Teacher and students are whole persons. Sharing about their learning experience allows learners to get to know one another and to build community.

6.      The teacher ‘counsels’ the students. He does not offer advice, but rather shows them that he is really listening to them and understands what they are saying.

7.      Learning at the beginning stages is facilitated if students attend to one task at a time.

8.      The teacher encourages student initiative and independence, but does not let students flounder in uncomfortable silences.

 

Characteristics of Community Language Learning

1.            Students typically have a conversation using their native language.

2.      The teacher helps them express what they want to say by giving them the target language translation.

3.      These words are recorded, and when they are replayed, it sounds like a fairly fluid conversation.

4.      Later, a transcript is made of the conversation, and native language equivalents are written beneath the target language words.

 5.            The transcription of the conversation becomes a ‘text’ with which students work.

6.      Various activities are conducted (for example, examination of a grammar point, working on pronunciation of a particular phrase, or creating new sentences with words from the transcript) that allow students to further explore the language they have generated.

7.      During the course of the lesson, students are invited to say how they feel, and in return the teacher understands them.

 8.            Teacher’s and Students’ Role

(1) The teacher: The teacher’s initial role is primarily that of a counselor. This 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.

 (2) The students: Initially the learners are very dependent upon the teacher. As the learners continue to study, they become increasingly independent.

 

Merits of Community Language Learning

1. Since this method is a student-oriented method it can help students become independent in doing their activities in the classroom.

2. Having a strong cooperation with other students in learning a target language can help create a healthy atmosphere, reduce the low self-esteem of the slow learners and increase the self-confident.

3. The students learn to communicate and use the cognitive knowledge from the very beginning in order to practice the rules of the target language before they formulate their individual sentences or utterances.

4. This method offers certain insights to teachers by reminding them to lower the learners’ anxiety, to create as much supportive group as possible in the classroom, to allow students to initiate language, and to show learners the autonomous learning as a preparation to face the day when the teacher is no longer around to guide them.

 5. Even though this method allows students to move according to their own speed, the fast learners may push and help the slow ones.

6. This method allows students to identify themselves to language they are learning.

7. This method allows students to have the freedom and initiative as much as they want that makes this method as a unique and fascinating learning experience. This method can be applied to the learners who are very beginner. They just know English, in addition; they know nothing about English yet. This method can be used in teaching speaking and listening skill.

8. CLL works especially well with lower levels who are struggling to produce spoken English.

 Demerits of Community Language Learning

1. In the beginning when the teacher uses a tape recorder as an audio instrument and the students build their own sentences and utterances, the process can only go well if the students have a certain knowledge about the structure and vocabulary of the target language. If the teacher keeps on giving the translation of the students’ sentences, the presentation in the classroom tend to be “translation presentation”.

2. The presentation of this method in the classroom is process-based and not content-based which makes it difficult to build the outline of this method.

3. The possible fixed material to be used in all classrooms may be the instructions given about the structure of the target language.

4. The recording process can create difficulties to those who are not familiar to the it and may waste valuable time in doing it.

 5. The new role of the teacher may cause a certain feeling of frustration to those who do not get the teacher-student relationship that they expected before.

6. The evaluation test to see the progress that students have may be more complicated to be done than in ordinary classroom that does not use this method.

7. The success of this method depends largely on the translation expertise of the counselor. The counselor must not make any mistakes in doing the translation because if certain aspects of language are mistranslated there could be a less effective understanding of the target language.

8. Community Language Learning places unusual demands on language teachers. They must be highly proficient and sensitive to nuance in both L1 and L2. They must be familiar with and sympathetic to the role of counselors in psychological counseling.

Process/ Activities in Community Language Learning

There are several simple steps of Community Language Learning method that can be applied in real life. Those simple steps are taken from Brown (2000)

1. The group of clients are seated in a circle with the counselor on the outside of the circle. Those clients first of all have to establish an interpersonal relationship and trust in their native language. The clients may consist of complete beginners in the foreign language.

2. When one of the clients wants to say something to the group or to an individual, he say it in the native language.

3. The counselor translates the utterance back to the client in the target language.

4. The client repeats the translation as accurately as possible.

5. When another client responds in his native language, again the counselor translates his utterance in the target language. This is done over and over again with other clients who wants to speak.

6. If possible the conversation is taped for later listening, and at the end of each session the clients try to get information about the new language.

7. The counselor may take a more directive role and explain certain linguistic explanation rules.

 

Process/ Activities in Community Language Learning
Steps given by Subiyakto (1988)

1. The group of students are limited from 5 to 10 people in order to get a more effective teaching process. The students are asked to choose a topic based on the general agreement among them. Once they are ready, they record their sentences or utterances one by one.

2. After taping for 20 minutes, the teacher stops the activity and ask the students to listen carefully and play the recorded sentences or utterances of the students.

3. After listening to the tape, the teacher stops the tape to give a chance to the students to make some suggestions to improve the recorded sentences or utterances.

4. On the next meeting, the students are asked to listen to the record once again and write down the transcription of the record together.

5. After reading the transcription written by the students, the teacher can determine which language structures that should be learnt more thoroughly.

6. By using the sentences made by the students, the teacher can give the instruction to change a form of sentence into another form of sentence, for example from statements into questions. The teacher can also give other language exercises, for example making sentences or utterances to invite special responds from the students.

Process/ Activities in Community Language Learning

1.      Tape Recording Student Conversation (Students choose what they want to say, and their target language production is recorded for later listening/dissemination)

2.      Transcription (Teacher produces a transcription of the tape-recorded conversation with translations in the mother language - this is then used for follow up activities or analysis)

3.      Reflection on Experience (Teacher takes time during or after various activities to allow students to express how they feel about the language and the learning experience, and the teacher indicates empathy/understanding)

4.      Reflective Listening (Students listen to their own voices on the tape in a relaxed and reflective environment)

5.      Human Computer (Teacher is a "human computer" for the students to control - the teacher stating anything in the target language the student wants to practice, giving them the opportunity to self correct)

6.      Small Group Tasks (Students work in small groups to create new sentences using the transcript, afterwards sharing them with the rest of the class)

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