Community Language Learning MethodParticipants: Claudia Sánchez Olivares

Francisca González Morales

Introduction

This method advises teachers to consider their students as “whole persons”. Whole-persons learning means that teachers consider not only their students’ intellect, but also have some understanding of the relationship among students’ feelings, physical reactions, instinctive protective reactions, and desire to learn.

According to Curran (1977), adults often feel threatened by a new learning situation and he believed that a way to deal with the fears of students is for teachers to become “language counselors”.

Class in a private language institute in Indonesia

They are adults

Most of the students work during the day and come for language instruction in the evening.

The class meets two evenings a week for two hours a session.

o They will have a conversation in English with the teacher’s help and this conversation will be tape-recorded. Then, they will create a written form of the conversation “a transcript”

o The student have to say what they would like to say in Indonesian and the teacher will give the English translation.

o After the activity, the teacher asks the students, in Indonesian, how they feel about the experience.

o The teacher reads the transcript of the English conversation three times, varying the students task each time.

Principles

Language is person

Learning is dynamic and creative

The students’ native language as a bridge

Working in groups is helpful

The goal of the teacher who use the CLL

They want that their students learn how to use the target language communicatively and their own learning.

The role of the teacher is to be a Counselor

The role of the student is to become increasingly

independent

Characteristics

In the first class the student can use the L1 because they are not get used to the L2

The teacher persuade the students to create a conversation and if they cannot express in English the teacher helps them.

The student has a Non-defensive learning that consists in 6 elements. It is the main characteristic.

Non-defensivelearning

Security

Attention

Reflection

Retention

Discrimina

tion

Aggression

What is the role of the student’s native language?

Student’s security is initially enhanced by using their native language. The purpose of using the native language is to provide a bridge from the familiar to the unfamiliar

How does the teacher respond to student errors?

One way of doing this is for the teacher to repeat correctly what the student has said incorrectly, without calling further attention to the error.

Conclusion

The particular class showed before represents a first lesson of what is considered a stage I experienced in the Community Learning Language Method. Also, the principles that was highlighted can also be seen in stages II, III, IV and V relationships, although they will be implemented in different ways in order to respond appropriately to learner growth.

References

Larsen-Freeman, Dl. (). Techniques and Principles in Language Teaching (Second Edition). New York: Oxford University Press.

Curran, C. (1976). Counseling-Learning in Second Languages. Cliffside Park, NJ: Counseling-Learning Institutes.

Curran, C. (1977). Counseling-Learning: A Whole-person Approach for Education (Second Edition). Cliffside Park, NJ: Counseling-Learning Institutes