Community Language Learning CLL

Overall view
1. Introduction.
2. Historical Overview.
3. Experience.
4. Goals.
5. The advantages of CLL.
6. Disadvantages.
7. How it works in the classroom.
8. Six elements necessary for non defensive learning.
9. Summary.
10.
Conclusion.

Community Language Learning CLL

Introduction
Community Language Learning advises teachers to take their
students as whole person.
Whole person learning means that teachers consider not only the
students intellect but also their feelings.
Teachers become language counselors and give no threatening to
students.
Conversation classes where the teacher-counselor would be able to
speak the learners' L1.

Historical Overview
The founder figure was American Jesuit priest called Charles Curran
in 1972.
Modeled from his view of education.

Experience
Techniques

Principles

Situation/ Effect

Tape recording
students
conversation

Motivation
for
learners and able to
recall the meaning in
first conversation

Short Conversation

Reflection on
experience

Students reflect on
what they have
experienced

Students share their difficulties

and experiences in the process
of learning

Transcription

The opportunity to
translate his or her
utterances

Dialogue- translate native

language to English

Techniques

Principles

Situation/ Effect

Reflective
listening

Students need quiet

reflection time in
order to learn

Concentration on new language

learning

Human
Computer

Enable
students
develop
an
inner
wisdom about where
they need to work

Aroused learners spontaneity in

learning English

Students can begin to

feel
a
sense
of
community and learn
from each other

Encouraged cooperation, not

competition among learners

Small
tasks

group

Characteristics
1. A conversation in a beginning class in L1 with translation of the
teacher and later on transcription
2. Students sitting in a circle with a tape recorder: a dependent
community to cooperate with each other rather than compete
with each other.
3. Teachers as counselors and students as clients: sensitive to
students feelings and fears
4. Six elements necessary for non defensive learning: security,
aggression, attention, reflection, retention and discrimination.

Influences
1. the role of teachers as counselors who understand and assist
students to help them overcome the threatening affective factors
2. emphasis of classroom interaction in cooperation, not competition
3. respect for students choice of learning content with a learnergenerated conversation
4. no translation but for Ss to induce rules

Goals
1. Helping students to learn how to use the target language
communicatively.
2. Helping students about their own learning by taking increasing
responsibility for it.
3. Helping students how to learn from one another.
The advantages of CLL
The advantages of CLL
1. Building a relationship with and among students.
2. Makes students feel comfortable and enjoyable during the
lesson.
3. Helps student to overcome their negative feelings.
4. Build trust and can help to reduce the threat of the new
learning situation.
5. Students decide topics.
6. Teacher translates.
7. Teachers are counselors, students are clients.
8. Student interest.
9. Student independence.
10. Students learn inductive techniques.
11.Non threatening.

Disadvantages
1. Student number control.
2. Time control.
3. Only suggested for adults learners.
4. Individual skills is not emphasized.
5. Teacher poor translator.
6. Students have mix of languages.

How it works in the classroom

It works on five sages
Stage 1 Reflection
Teacher starts 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 information

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
teacher gives the full English sentence. When they feel
ready to speak the students take the microphone and
record their sentence.

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.
Teacher 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
Teacher sometimes get students to analyze 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 personalized and
with higher levels they can themselves decide what
parts of their conversation they would like to analyze,
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.

Six elements necessary for non defensive learning

1. securitynon-threatening learning environment
2. aggression actively involved in the learning experience
3. attentionability to attend to many factors simultaneously by
narrowing the scope of attention initially
4. reflectionwhen Ss reflect on the language as the teacher reads
the transcript three times; when Ss are invited to stop and
consider the active experience they have
5. retentionthe integration of the new material that takes place
within the whole self
6. discriminationsorting out differences among target language
forms such as Human Computer

Summary(Charles Curran, 1972)

A counseling-learning model in which non-defensive
learning is achieved with six elements (security,
aggression, attention, reflection, retention, and
discrimination) and learners are considered whole
persons. It aims at building a supportive community

of Ss to interact in an interpersonal relationship, to

lower defenses, and to meet learner needs.
The principles of discovery learning, student-centered
participation and development of student autonomy
(independence) remain viable in the application to lg
classrooms. But it was too restrictive for institutional
lg programs. Teachers are too non-directive, and their
translation expertise determines success. Finally,
there is too much reliance on an inductive strategy of
learning.
Conclusion

No one uses only CLL

But certain aspects of it may be useful

Learning is persons: whole-person language takes place best

in a relationship of trust, support, and cooperation between
teacher and students and among students.

Learning is dynamic and creative: learning is a living and

developmental process.

10 Questions to be answered
1. What are the goals of teachers who use the CLL
method?
To learn how to use the target
communicatively in a non defensive manner

language

2. What is the role of the teacher? What is the role

of the students?
Ta counselor; Sa client
The relationship between T and S from dependency
to independency through five stages (focus of fluency or
accuracy)

3. What
are
some
characteristics
teaching/learning process?

of

the

a conversation in L1-> translation in chunks

recording of the conversation a transcript with L1
equivalents activities based on the conversation
4. What
is
the
nature
of
student-teacher
interaction? What is the nature of studentstudent interaction?
S-T first and S-S interaction afterwards; teacherstudent-centered with both being decision-makers in the
class
5. How are the feelings of the students dealt with?
Inviting Ss to comment on how they feel to keep their
security
6. How is language viewed? How is culture viewed?
Language for communication in a supportive learning
process; culture as an integral part of language learning
7. What areas of language are emphasized? What
language skills are emphasized?
Grammar points, pronunciation patterns and
vocabulary based on the language Ss generate; the
importance of understanding and speaking the language
at first, then reading and writing
8. What is the role of the students native language?
L1 to enhance students security as a bridge from the
familiar to the unfamiliar; literal L1 equivalents but less L1
in later stages

9. How is evaluation accomplished?

An integrative test rather than a discrete-point one
such as writing a paragraph or an oral interview or selfevaluation too
10. How does the teacher respond to student
errors?
T repeats correctly what Ss say incorrectly without
calling further attention to the error