COMMUNITY LANGUAGE LEARNING (CLL)

"There is no the best or a better method in language teaching. Every method has advantages and disadvantages in itself."

The Main Theories:

There is a concept called as "true human learning" in CLL.

True human learning must be both in a cognitive and an affective way. This is also termed as "whole person learning".

Some ideas about succesful learning in CLL contain a few psychological factors. These are grouped under an acronym called SARD:

SARD (Security, Attention - Aggression, Retention & Reflection, Discrimination)  

Security: In order to make students feel self-confident and secure enough to attend the class successfully. Student's relation with any person in the class can affect this factor.

Attention: Learners need to be got involved in a successful learning period, this is identified as attention in SARD.

Aggression: It can be identified as a child's trying to explain to his/her parents about what s/he has learnt in the school. This is a way to show his/her power by using the knowledge as a tool. This is also named "self-assertion".

Retention: If a learner retains a material after involving in learnin process as “whole person”, it is internalised and becomes a part of learner. The material should neither be too odd nor too familiar to learner.

Reflection: Students need a reflection period to learn the language properly. Teacher reads a text a few times and students listen to it relaxedly for reflection. Also, students can listen to their own voices by a tap efor reflection.

Discrimination: Students compare their voices with te teacher’s voice in order to see the language form differences clearly in target language between two recordings.

Anexample of Similarity:

Present Continuous:  They are playing together.   

Past Continuous: They were playing together last night (Both sentences contain –ing suffix, but the second one also contain a time expression.)

           An Example of Difference:
           She opened the door closely. (regular verb)
           She knew the truth. (irregular verb)

The Other Features of Community Language Learning:

Language is for communication and improvement of creative thinking.

The focus is on sharing and interacting rather than grammar or sentence forms.

A confidence must develop between students and teacher.

Lifestyle and daily habits must be learnt in target culture.

Teacher is a counsellor in the class and tries to remove the fear and threatening factors in the class.

Teacher may stand behind students during activity periods in order to provide a relaxed atmosphere for students and lets them interact and cooperate with each other.

Students are clients and dependent on the teacher in early stages of classes, in late stages they will get more independent day by day. 

Teacher-student and student-student interactions are seen. Teacher also can stand apart from the activity area to provide a proper student-student interaction.

When teaching vocabulary, in order to make the meaning clear, native language can be given to students with target language.

Grammar can also be taught in native language when necessary. By means of recordings, grammar can be understood by children by comparing two recordings’ differences.

A book is not necessary mostly. Teacher can adopt the course according to students’ needs.

Syllabus is developed according to students’ communication needs. In early stages, event students can decide what to do in target language.

For evaluation, teacher can prepare an integrative (evaluation of whole language aspects) test rather then a discrete-point one. An oral interview and a paragraph writing are useful for evaluation.

The main goal is to teach the students how to use the target language affectively and fluently.

Error is not corrected, its correct form is repeated in order not to call further attention to the error.

In teaching process, students are asked to give feedback about their feelings and thoughts during the class period.

Techniques:

Transcription (writing the native language form of a text in target language and students’ writing them down)  

Reflection on Experience (Students’ feedbacks about the class)

Reflective Listening (Students’ listening to their own voices)

Human Computer (Don’t correct, just repeat.)

Small Group Tasks (Interactions by group works)

Listening and speaking skills are prior to the others. Reading and writing are also used.

Summarizing Keywords/Phrases:

Oral communication

Own voice recording and listening

SARD

Whole person learning

Non-defensive learning

Interactive activities

Student centered teaching

Confidence

Teacher as a counsellor

Student as a client