Give the background of the Community Lang. Learning. describe it in terms of approach, design and procedure

background of the Community Lang. Learning is developed by Charles A. Curran and his associates. Charles A. Curran was a specialist in counseling and a professor of psychology at Loyola university, Chicago. Community Language Learning rep­resents the use of Counseling-Learning theory to teach languages. Community Language Learning draws on the counseling metaphor to redefine the roles of the teacher (the counselor) and learners (the clients) in the language classroom. The basic procedures of CLL can thus be seen as derived from the counselor-client relationship. Consider the following CLL procedures: 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 in psychological counseling with the learner-knower relationship in Community Language Learning. CLL techniques also belong to a larger set of foreign language teaching.

Approach – a theory of lang. is built on “basic sound and grammatical pattern” lang. as Social process. The Social process view of lang. is then elaborated in terms of 6 qualities on sub-processes: - the whole person process; - the educational process; -the interpersonal process; - the developmental process; -the communicative process; - the cultural process.

How it works in the classroom
In a typical CLL lesson I have five stages:

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

For and against CLL

Pros

· Learners appreciate the autonomy CLL offers them and thrive on analysing their own conversations.

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

· The class often becomes a real community, not just when using CLL but all of the time. Students become much more aware of their peers, their strengths and weaknesses and want to work as a team.

Cons

· In the beginning some learners find it difficult to speak on tape while others might find that the conversation lacks spontaneity.

· We as teachers can find it strange to give our students so much freedom and tend to intervene too much.

· In your efforts to let your students become independent learners you can neglect their need for guidance.

Working with monolingual or multilingual classes
I have used CLL with both monolingual and multilingual classes and found that it works well with both. With the multilingual low-level classes I, as the teacher-counsellor, reformulated their English in the same way you might do with higher levels. However, the first few attempts at CLL work better with a monolingual class as the instructions can be given in L1. It's important that the learners understand their and your new roles in the language learning process.

Working with large classes
For the first lesson it's important to record the conversation as a whole class even though this can limit student-speaking time. It's more practical in terms of giving instructions before you start and for moving from one student to another when they need you to translate or reformulate what they want to say. The next time you use CLL however, you could split the class into two groups. This gives them more speaking time.

Make sure the groups are far enough away from each other for the recording stage but not so far that you can't move freely from one group to another.

· A further alternative is that they swap tapes for the transcription stage. The language is obviously less personalised but their listening skills are being challenged in a different way and they still feel part of a whole class community.

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 me 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.

Once you have tried CLL with your class, it's a good idea to evaluate the method. Here are some possible questions you could ask.

Design. Objective: since linguistic or communicative competence is specified only is social terms explicit linguistic or communicative objectives are not defined in the literature on CLL.

The syllabus. CLL is most often used in the teaching of oral proficiency, but in the teaching of writing. The course progression in topic based with learners nominating things they wish.

Types of learning and teaching activities. As with most methods, CLL combines innovative learning tasks and activities with conventional ones. They include:

1. Translation. Learners form a small circle. A learner whispers a message or meaning he or she wants to express, the teacher translates it into (and may interpret it in) the target language, and the learner repeats the teach­er's translation.

2. Group Work. Learners may engage in various group tasks, such as small- group discussion of a topic, preparing a conversation, preparing a sum­mary of a topic for presentation to another group, preparing a story that will be presented to the teacher and the rest of the class.

3. Recording. Students record conversations in the target language.

4. Transcription. Students transcribe utterances and conversations they have recorded for practice and analysis of linguistic forms.

5. Analysis. Students analyze and study transcriptions of target language sen­tences in order to focus on particular lexical usage or on the application of particular grammar rules.

6. Reflection and observation. Learners reflect and report on their experience of the class, as a class or in groups. This usually consists of expressions of feelings - sense of one another, reactions to silence, concern for something to say, etc.

7. Listening. Students listen to a monologue by the teacher involving ele­ments they might have elicited or overheard in class interactions.

8. Free conversation. Students engage in free conversation with the teacher or with other learners. This might include discussion of what they learned as well as feelings they had about how they learned.

Learner roles: - In CLL learners become members of a community their fellow learners and the teacher and learn through interacting with members of the community. - Learning is not. – learners are expected; - to listen attentively to the 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 feelings and frustrations as well as joy and pleasure; - to become counselors to other learners.

Teacher roles: - the teacher is responsible for providing a safe environment in which clients can learn and grow. – Learners feeling secure are free to direct their energies to the tasks of communication and learning rather than to building and maintaining their defensive positions. – The role of instructional material: - a textbook is not considered a necessary component. – Conversation may also be transcribed and distributed for study and analysis and learners may work.

Procedure. Since each Community Language Learning course is in a sense a unique experience, description of typical CLL procedures in a class period is problematic. Stevick distinguishes between "classical" CLL (based di­rectly on the model proposed by Curran) and personal interpretations of it, such as those discussed by different advocates of CLL (e.g., La Forge 1983). The following description attempts to capture some typical activities in CLL classes.

Generally the observer will see – a circle of learners sit all facing one another. – the learners are linked in some way to knower or a single knower as teacher. – the 1^st class (and subsequent classes) may begin with a period of silence, in which learners try to determine what is supposed to happen in their lang. class. – the teacher might then form the class into facing lines for 3 minute.