Community Language Learning

Background

Community Language Learning (CLL) is the name of a method devel­oped by Charles A. Curran and his associates. Curran was a specialist in counseling and a professor of psychology at Loyola University, Chi­cago. His application of psychological counseling techniques to learning is known as Counseling-Learning. Community Language Learning rep­resents the use of Counseling-Learning theory to teach languages.

Within the language teaching tradition Community Language Learn­ing is sometimes cited as an example of a "humanistic approach." Links can also be made between CLL procedures and those of bilingual ed­ucation, particularly the set of bilingual procedures referred to as "lan­guage alternation" or "code switching." Let us discuss briefly the debt of Community Language Learning to these traditions.

As the name indicates, CLL derives its primary insights, and indeed its organizing rationale, from Rogerian counseling. Counseling, as Ro-gerians see it, consists of one individual (the counselor) assuming "in­sofar as he is able the internal frame of reference [of the client], perceiving the world as that person sees it and communicating something of this empathetic understanding" (Rogers 1951). In lay terms, counseling is one person giving advice, assistance, and support to another who has a problem or is in some way in need. 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 (Table 8.1).

CLL techniques also belong to a larger set of foreign language teaching.

TABLE 8.1 COMPARISON OF CLIENT-COUNSELOR RELATIONSHIPS IN PSYCHO­LOGICAL COUNSELING AND CLL

Psychological counseling (client-counselor)

Community Language Learning (learner—knower)

1. Client and counselor agree [con­
tract] to counseling.

2. Client articulates his or her prob­
lem in language of affect.

3. Counselor listens carefully.

4. Counselor restates client message
in language of cognition.

5. Client evaluates the accuracy of
counselor's message restatement.

6. Client reflects on the interaction
of the counseling session.

1. Learner and knower agree to lan­
guage learning.

2. Learner presents to the knower
(in LI) a message he or she
wishes to deliver to another.

3. Knower listens and other learners
overhear.

4. Knower restates learner's message
inL2.

5. Learner repeats the L2 message
form to its addressee.

6. Learner replays (from tape or memory) and reflects upon the messages exchanged during the language class.

practices sometimes described as humanistic techniques (Moskowitz 1978). Moskowitz defines humanistic techniques as those that blend what the student feels, thinks and knows with what he is learning in the target language. Rather than self-denial being the acceptable way of life, self-actualization and self-esteem are the ideals the exercises pursue. [The techniques] help build rapport, cohesiveness, and caring that far transcend what is already there... help students to be themselves, to accept themselves, and be proud of themselves... help foster a climate of caring and sharing in the foreign language class. (Moskowitz 1978: 2)

In sum, humanistic techniques engage the whole person, including the emotions and feelings (the affective realm) as well as linguistic knowledge and behavioral skills.

Another language teaching tradition with which Community Lan­guage Learning is linked is a set of practices used in certain kinds of bilingual education programs and referred to by Mackey (1972) as "lan­guage alternation." In language alternation, a message/lesson/class is presented first in the native tongue and then again in the second language. Students know the meaning and flow of an L2 message from their recall of the parallel meaning and flow of an LI message. They begin to holistically piece together a view of the language out of these message sets. In CLL, a learner presents a message in LI to the knower. The message is translated into L2 by the knower. The learner then repeats the message in L2, addressing it to another learner with whom he or she wishes to communicate. CLL learners are encouraged to attend to the "overhears" they experience between other learners and their know-ers. The result of the "overhear" is that every member of the group can understand what any given learner is trying to communicate (La Forge 1983: 45). In view of the reported success of language alternation pro­cedures in several well-studied bilingual education settings (e.g., Lim 1968; Mackey 1972), it may be that this little-discussed aspect of CLL accounts for more of the informallv reported successes of CLL students than is usually acknowledged.

Approach

Theory of language

Curran himself wrote little about his theory of language. His student La Forge (1983) has attempted to be more explicit about this dimension of Community Language Learning theory, and we draw on his account for the language theory underlying the method. La Forge reviews lin­guistic theory as a prelude to presenting the CLL model of language. He seems to accept that language theory must start, though not end, with criteria for sound features, the sentence, and abstract models of language (La Forge 1983: 4). The foreign language learners' tasks are "to apprehend the sound system, assign fundamental meanings, and to construct a basic grammar of the foreign language." He cites with pride that "after several months a small group of students was able to learn the basic sound and grammatical patterns of German" (1983: 47).

A theory of language built on "basic sound and grammatical patterns" does not appear to suggest any departures from traditional structuralist positions on the nature of language. However, the recent writings of CLL proponents deal at great length with what they call an alternative theory of language, which is referred to as Language as Social Process.

La Forge (1983) begins by suggesting that language as social process is "different from language as communication." We are led to infer that the concept of communication that La Forge rejects is the classic sender-message-receiver model in information theory. The social-process model is different from earlier information-transmitting models, La Forge sug­gests, because communication is more than just a message being transmitted from a speaker to a listener. The speaker is at the same time both subject and object of his own message... communication involves not just the unidirectional transfer of information to the other, but the very constitution of the speaking subject in relation to its other.... Communication is an exchange which is incom­plete without a feedback reaction from the destinee of the message. (La Forge 1983: 3)

The information-transmission model and the social-process model of communication are compared in Figure 8.1.

Date: 2016-03-03; view: 1220