ELT Methods and Approaches
Johannah J. Santos
Mikaela Donato
Reporter
Community Language
Learning
Reviewing the Techniques
Community Language Learning (CLL) is the
name of a method developed by Charles A.
Curran and his associates. Community Language
Learning (CLL) was primarily designed for
monolingual conversation classes where the
teacher-counselor would be able to speak the
learners’ L1.
Reviewing the Techniques
This methodology is not based on the usual methods by which
languages are taught. Rather the approach is patterned upon
counseling techniques and adapted to the peculiar anxiety and
threat as well as the personal and language problems a person
encounters in the learning of foreign languages. Consequently,
the learner is not thought of as a student but as a client. The
native instructors of the language are not considered teachers
but, rather are trained in counseling skills adapted to their roles
as language counselors.
Reviewing the Techniques
The language-counseling relationship begins with the client’s
linguistic confusion and conflict. The aim of the language
counselor’s skill is first to communicate an empathy for the
client’s threatened inadequate state and to aid him
linguistically. Then slowly the teacher-counselor strives to
enable him to arrive at his own increasingly independent
language adequacy. This process is furthered by the language
counselor’s ability to establish a warm, understanding, and
accepting relationship, thus becoming an “other-language self”
for client.
The Main Principles
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 non-
defensively when they feel secure.
The Main Principles
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.
The Main Principles
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.
The Main Principles
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.
The Main Principles
9) Students need quiet reflection time in order to learn.
10) Students learn best when they have a choice in what they
practice. If students feel in control, they can take more
responsibility for their own learning.
The Main Principles
11) Students need to learn to discriminate in perceiving the
similarities and differences among the target language forms.
12) In groups, students can begin to feel a sense of
community and can learn from each other as well as the
teacher. Cooperation, not competition, is encouraged.
The Main Principles
13) Learning tends not to take place when the material is too
new or, conversely, too familiar.
14) Students reflect on what they have experienced.
15) In the beginning stages, the ‘syllabus’ is generated
primarily by the students.
Richards and Rogers (1986) explain five
stages involved in using this method. They
are as follows:
STAGE 1
▰ The client is completely dependent on the language counselor.
▰ First, he expresses only to the counselor and in L1 what he wishes to say to
the group. Each group member overhears this English exchange but no other
members of the group are involved in the interaction.
▰ The counselor then reflects these ideas back to the client in the foreign
language in a warm, accepting tone, in simple language in phrases of five or
six words.
▰ The client turns to the group and presents his idea in foreign language. He
has the counselor’s aid if he mispronounces or hesitates on a word or phrase.
This is the client’s maximum security stage.
Stage 2
▰ Same as above.
▰ The client turns and begins to speak the foreign
language directly to the group.
▰ The counselor aids only as the client hesitates or turns for
help. These small independent steps are signs of positive
confidence and hope.
STAGE 3
▰ The client speaks directly to the group in the foreign
language. This presumes that the group has now acquired
the ability to understand his simple phrases.
▰ Same as 3 above. This presumes the client’s greater
confidence, independence, and proportionate insight into
the relationship of phrases, grammar, and ideas. Translation
is given only when a group member desires it.
STAGE 4
▰ The client is now speaking freely and complexly in the
foreign language. He/she presumes group’s understanding.
▰ The counselor directly intervenes in grammatical error,
mispronunciation, or where aid in complex expression is
needed. The client is sufficiently secure to take correction.
STAGE 5
▰ Same as stage 4.
▰ The counselor intervenes not only to offer correction but to
add idioms and more elegant constructions.
▰ At this stage the client can become counselor to the group
in stages 1, 2, and 3.
THANKYOU!
