Community language learning (CLL)

Community language learning (CLL) is an approach in which students work together to develop what aspects of a language they would like to learn. The teacher acts as a counsellor and a paraphraser, while the learner acts as a collaborator, although sometimes this role can be changed.

The CLL method was developed by Charles A. Curran, a professor of psychology at Loyola University in Chicago.[1] This method refers to two roles: that of the know-er (teacher) and student (learner). Also the method draws on the counseling metaphor and refers to these respective roles as a counselor and a client. According to Curran, a counselor helps a client understand his or her own problems better by 'capturing the essence of the clients concern ...[and] relating [the client's] affect to cognition...;' in effect, understanding the client and responding in a detached yet considerate manner.

To restate, the counselor blends what the client feels and what he is learning in order to make the experience a meaningful one. Often, this supportive role requires greater energy expenditure than an 'average' teacher.

Characteristics of Community Language Learning

u This 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.

u The learner is not thought of as a student but as a client.

u The instructors are not considered teachers but, rather are trained in counseling skills adapted to their roles as language counselors.

u The language-counseling relationship begins with the client's linguistic confusion and conflict.

u 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.

u Then slowly the teacher-counselor strives to enable him to arrive at his own increasingly independent language adequacy.

u 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 the client.

The process involves five stages of adaptation:

STAGE 1

The client is completely dependent on the language counselor.

1. First, he expresses only to the counselor and in English 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.

2. 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.

STAGE 2

1. Same as above.

2. The client turns and begins to speak the foreign language directly to the group.

3. The counselor aids only as the client hesitates or turns for help. These small independent steps are signs of positive confidence and hope.

2. 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 3

1. 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.

2. 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

1. The client is now speaking freely and complexly in the foreign language. Presumes group's understanding.

2. 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

1. Same as stage 4.

2. The counselor intervenes not only to offer correction but to add idioms and more elegant constructions.

3. At this stage the client can become counselor to the group in stages 1, 2, and 3.