COMMUNITY LANGUAGE LEARNING

Background

Community Language Learning (CLL) is the name of method developed Charles A. Curran, a professor of psychology at Loyola University, Chicago. It represent the use of counseling-learning theory to teach language. The basic procedures of CLL can thus be seen as derived from the counselor-client relationship
Community Language Learning is linked is a set of practices used in certain kinds of bilingual education programs as “language alternation”, a message/lesson/class is presented first in the native language and then again in second language.






Approach: Theory of Language and Learning

La Forge, student of Curran, elaborate an alternative theory of language, which is referred to as “Language as social Process”
“…communication involves not just unidirectional transfer of information to the other, but the very constitution of the speaking subject in relation to its other…”(La Forge 1983;3)
“Language is people; language is persons in contact; language is person in response”, CLL interaction are two distinct and fundamental kinds: interaction between learners and interaction between learners and knower.
The CLL view of learning is a human learning both cognitive and affective. Its termed whole person learning, the development of the learner’s relationship with the teacher is central. The process of learning a new language, then, is like being reborn and developing a new persona, with all the trials and challenges that are associated with birth and maturation.
Curran discusses “consensual validation” or “convalidation” that is the key element of CLL classroom procedures. A group of ideas concerning the psychological requirements for successful learning are collected under the acronym SARD, as follow:
S stand for security
A stands for attention and aggression
R stand for retention and reflection
D denotes discrimination


Design: Objectives, Syllabus, learning activities, roles of learner, Teachers, and Materials

The progression is topic based, with learners nominating thing they wish to talk about and messages they wish to communicated to other learners.
The teacher’s responsibility is to provide a conveyance for these meanings in a way appropriate to the learners’ proficiency level, a syllabus emerges from the interaction between the learner’s expressed communicative intentions and the teacher’s reformulations of these into suitable target language utterances.
CLL combines innovative learning takes and activities with conventional once. They include:
1. translation
2. group work
3. recording
4. transcription
5. analysis
6. reflection and observation
7. listening
8. free conversation
Learners roles in CLL is be become members of a community – their fellow learners and the teacher – and learn through interacting with the community.
Learners are expected :
- to listen attentively to their knower,
- to freely provide meaning they wish to express
- to repeat target utterances without hesitation,
- to support fellow members of the community,
- to report deep inner feeling and frustrations as well as joy and pleasure,
- and to become counselors of other learners
The teachers role derives from the function of the counselor is to respond calmly and not judgmentally, in a supportive manner, and help the client try to understand his or her problems better by applying order and analyze to them.
More specific teacher’s roles are the teacher operates in a supportive role, providing target language translations and a model for imitation on requests of the client,
Teacher monitor learner utterance, providing assistance when requested,
The teacher may intervene directly to correct deviant utterances, supply idioms, and advise on usage and fine point of grammar when student capable of accepting criticism
Since a CLL course evolves out of the interactions of community, a textbook is not considered a necessary component.


Procedures

The learners are linked in some way to knower or a single knower as a teacher. The first class may begin with a period of silence. Later, may sit in silence while they decide what to talk about. The knower may use the volunteered comment as way of introducing discussing of classroom contact or as a stimulus for language interaction regarding hoe learner felt about the period of silence. The knower may encourage learners to address questions to one another or to the knower.
The class might be re-formed into small group in which a single topic, chosen by the class or the group, is discussed. The summary of the group discussion may be presented to another group, who in turn try to repeat or paraphrase the summary back to the original group.
In an intermediate or advanced class, a teacher may encourage groups to prepare a paper drama for presentation to the rest of the class. Finally, the teacher asks learners to reflect on the language class, as a class or in groups.

Conclusion

Community Language Learning must be familiar with and sympathetic to the role of counselor in psychological counseling. The teacher must also be relatively non directive and must be prepared to accept and even encourage the “adolescent” aggression of the learner as he or she striver for independence. The teacher must operate without conventional materials, depending on student topics to shape and motivate the class.
Critics of CLL question the appropriateness of counseling metaphor on which it is predicated, the lack of a syllabus makes objectives unclear and evaluation difficult to accomplish, and the focus on fluency rather than accuracy may lead to inadequate control of grammatical system of the target language.
Supporters of CLL is emphasize the positive benefits of a method that centers on the learner and stresses the humanistic side of language learning, and not merely its linguistic dimension.