DELTA

COMMUNITY LANGUAGE LEARNING

PDA Stage 2: Experimental Practice word count: 2498

Bengherabi_PDA_EP_CLL_Essay

Contents
1. Background Essay 1.1. Theoretical Background 1.2. Practical Application 1.3. Professional Interest 2. Lesson 2.1. Origin of the idea 2.2. Lesson commentary 2.3. Objectives a) Teaching effects b) Learner objectives 2.4. Method of evaluation 3. Evaluation Bibliography Appendices

Bengherabi_PDA_EP_CLL_Essay

1. Background Essay
1.1. Theoretical background Community Language Learning (also known as Counselling Language Learning) was developed by Charles A Curran and his associates. Curran was a professor of psychology at Loyola University in Chicago, and he applied psychological counselling techniques to language learning (Richards & Rogers 1986). CLL is one of the practices G. Moskowitz calls humanistic techniques, which engage the student s linguistic knowledge as well as their effective realm (emotions and feelings) (Richards & Rogers 1986). In a CLL lesson, students discuss a topic of their choosing. The way they do this is by using their own language to produce the target language. They say what they want in L1 and, with the teacher s help, record themselves saying the same thing again in L2. The learning happens by comparing the two languages and also filling the gaps in the learners knowledge. During a CLL course, Curran says that the learner goes through five different stages, which he compares to the progressing from childhood to adulthood. These five stages are (MJAL 2009): y Birth: Students are completely dependent on the teacher for the target language for they know nothing of it. y Self: They start to understand how the new language works and to use it a little. They still need the teacher s help. Separate Existence: They start becoming more confident and begin to use the new language without the teacher s guidance. Adolescence: They continue using the language independently to express themselves, but at this stage they are aware that they have gaps in their knowledge, and are happy to seek the teacher s help for guidance. Independence: Students are now confident and have enough knowledge to use the new language without seeking the teacher s help and can be counsellors for less advanced learners.

Objectives: CLL aims at the following: a) Reducing students anxiety and self-consciousness, and to raise their selfconfidence by using small conversation circles, ideally including less than 10 students. In a successful circle, learners feel comfortable to talk and engage with their peers and a sense of community is created. (Richards & Rogers 1986)

Bengherabi_PDA_EP_CLL_Essay

b) Changing the teacher-student relationship. The teacher becomes a counsellor (Curran uses the term knower) and has the role of supporting them and helping them to achieve learning. By understanding students' fears and being sensitive to them, he can help students overcome their negative feelings and turn them into positive energy to further their learning. (Larsen-Freeman 2000) c) Increasing students' independence by putting them in charge of the lesson. Students are free to choose the topic of the conversation, which shapes the aims of the lesson. A CLL lesson allows students to have a genuine (if slow) conversation about things that they are interested in. (Scrivener 2005). 1.2. Practical application CLL is a very responsive method and is very sensitive to the learner s needs. Its humanistic nature, which views the teacher as facilitator/counsellor and the learners and teachers as a community, fits in nicely with modern trends in education. This method is useful with all levels of English language learning, but in my opinion, it works best with lower to mid-level classes, where learners tend to think in L1. Students at these levels are most vulnerable to language learning anxiety and can become very selfconscious which may hinder their progress. The lesson might be as follows (Larsen-Freeman 2000, Scrivener 2005): 1. The teacher. Students sit in a circle. The teacher prepares a tape recorder and stands outside the circle behind the students so they don t feel as threatened as when he is in front of them. 2. In the students native language, the teacher explains that they are going to have a conversation in English with his help, tape it then use it for language work. He asks the students to choose a topic they wish to discuss. 3. When a learner is ready to speak, they signal to the teacher, who stands behind them. 4. The learner says what they want in L1. The teacher translates it into English. The learner, with the teacher s help, practises saying the sentence in English and once they re ready they record themselves saying it. The teacher has to be sensitive the the learner s level of confidence and give them a translation just easy enough to be successful. 5. The other learners follow the same procedure to reply. Slowly, a complete conversation in English is built up on the tape. The teacher doesn t take part in the conversation; he only helps the learners with the translation. 6. When the teacher feels that the conversation has gone on long enough, the class discuss how they feel about it. This allows students to get to know each other more and build the community. 7. The class listen to the tape three times. While listening, students connect the L2 language to what they d said in L1. Their confidence grows because they understand everything on the tape.

Bengherabi_PDA_EP_CLL_Essay

8. The students form a semi-circle. The teacher, or the students if their level allows, write sentences from the recorded conversation on the whiteboard. 9. The students translate what is on the board back to L1. 10. The L2 sentences are then used as basis for language work. The above procedure is for monolingual classes and requires a bilingual teacher. However, CLL can be used in multi-lingual classes where the conversation happens in English and the role of the teacher would be to help with students accuracy. 1.3 Professional interest I first heard about Community language Learning during a teachers meeting; it had been suggested to deal with a group of Arabic speaking beginners who were about to start at our school. I was intrigued by the idea that translation could be used as means of developing spoken and even written accuracy. I was also especially drawn to CLL because I studied translation at university, and wanted to try it and see how efficient it is and how students feel about it. My lessons have generally been rather heavy in terms of grammar and vocabulary, and my students usually become very good at doing grammar and vocabulary tasks on paper. However, even after several weeks in class, I have noticed that many of them don t develop enough confidence to speak independently. I am hoping with this experiment to learn to lower my students anxiety, and encourage them to take risks and speak more in English.

2. Lesson
2.1. Origin of the lesson idea I have always been interested in languages, which was the reason I chose to study translation at university. Therefore the idea to do this lesson came naturally when I heard about CLL. I first thought about doing two lessons; one with a group of Arabic speakers and another with French speakers. I didn t manage to do a lesson with the first group, but I found seven French speakers who were available and happy to take part in the experiment. 2.2. Lesson commentary My intention from this lesson is to put my research into practice and see how the theory behind CLL applies in real classroom conditions.

Bengherabi_PDA_EP_CLL_Essay

I will first ask the students to sit in a circle. I will be outside the circle so students don t feel intimidated (Richards and Rogers. 1986). In order to avoid any confusion, I explain the procedure of the recording activity, then let the class decide on a topic to discuss. Giving them the freedom to choose the topic of the lesson helps them take more responsibility for their own learning. When a student asks to speak, I go and stand behind them, listen carefully to what they say in L1 then translate it into English. While translating, I will be thinking about two main points: y The student s ability and level of confidence: I will ensure to give them a translation which they are able to say, but still keep a certain degree of challenge. y Content: my translations will convey the same meaning as the students French ones, but as the conversation progresses I will try to focalise my translation on one or two language elements on which the following tasks will be based. I will give students the choice to speak in English only if they feel confident enough, avoid direct correction of errors and keep repeating in English until their reproduction is accurate enough to be recorded. I will encourage them to say long sentences in chunks to boost the confidence of the quieter ones. As Scrivener (2005) suggests, I expect the building up of the conversation to be rather slow. I will only stop it when I think there is enough language in it to constitute a basis for analysis activities. When I have finished recording the conversation, I will ask the students to talk to one another in L1 for a few minutes, and discuss how they feel. This is useful for exchanging ideas and fostering a sense of community in the class. (Larsen-Freeman 2000) I will then ask students to sit in a semi-circle facing the board, and play the recording three times. The class should easily understand what is on the tape, which lowers their affective filters. I transcribe the conversation on the board as the students listen. After a quick discussion on how they felt when they heard their voices, the students provide the French translations of the sentences on the board, which they should achieve without major problems. They then analyse the language on the board by contrasting their French sentences to the English ones. This should be useful for learning new language. After the analysis, students write down what is on the board to keep a record of it. To finish the lesson in a fun way, the last activity will be English Whispers, as described by Scrivener (2005, p.310-311), see appendix 1. With CLL, I will try to reduce my students anxiety, encourage them to speak more in class to take more responsibility for their own learning. (519 words)

Bengherabi_PDA_EP_CLL_Essay

2.3. Objectives a) Teaching effects This lesson aims at making the students feel comfortable enough to overcome their insecurities and communicate. I am hoping this lesson achieves the following: y that my students enjoy themselves. y that they participate equally. y that they interact with one another without fear. y that they start to notice their own language and their peers , during the recording activity, the listening tasks and even afterwards. This is essential for them to recognise the gaps in their knowledge and to start being more independent in their learning. b) Learner objectives y to provide students with speaking practice in a non-judgemental environment. y to help students notice their speaking errors using a recorded conversation. y to encourage the students to take responsibility for their own learning, by giving them control over the contents of the lesson. y to reduce students affective filter and encourage them to interact more with their peers. 2.4. Method of evaluation In order to evaluate the usefulness of this lesson, I have prepared two questionnaires, one for the students and one for the observer. Through the questionnaires I am hoping to know: y how comfortable the learners felt. y what they thought about the different activities. y whether they feel they have learned anything. y whether they enjoyed the lesson and if they are willing to do it again. Students will be free to write any comments or suggestion about the lesson in French.

Bengherabi_PDA_EP_CLL_Essay

3. Evaluation
CLL proved to be such an enjoyable and engaging method than even the quietest student, Carole, opened up and said a few sentences. Context: Since it was the students who chose the topic of the lesson and came up with the whole conversation, the context was therefore real and meaningful to the class, which is a big advantage of CLL. However, it took us over half the lesson time (35 minutes) to create 2 13 of recorded material. Content: At the beginning of the recording activity, L1 sentences were spontaneous and their English equivalents contained a lot of new language, which made them a little difficult to say. Some students then started saying simple, straight-to-the-point sentences, and the L2 ones became easier but not as rich in language. I tried to keep a certain degree of complexity in my translations in order to get enough language in the recording to analyse later on but this was difficult and required a lot of effort. I first tried to include multi-word verbs with get, but could only use get on, get on with and get to. I also managed to introduce the words swept, spilt, etc. The observer noted that the language in the recorded conversation wasn t enough to constitute a comprehensive language lesson, and that the language analysis was too easy. The students understood everything in the recording during the listening, and easily managed to translate L2 sentences back into French, as well as deduce the meaning new words by contrasting L1 and L2 sentences. Students enjoyment: The lesson was student-centred, and the class were mostly happy to be given the role of shaping the entire lesson. I gave the class a couple of minutes after each task to discuss, in L1, how they felt and what they thought about the tasks. They were eager to exchange opinions and hear what their classmates had to say. Students very much enjoyed the activities and found the whole lesson interesting (appx. 3 and 4). Student learning: The students successfully deduced the meanings of the new language by contrasting L1 to L2. However, they didn t feel that they d learned more than in ordinary classes. This

Bengherabi_PDA_EP_CLL_Essay

was probably because most their L1 sentences were very simple, and therefore their L2 equivalents weren t very rich in new language. They and the observer didn t feel the class had used English much; they only said a few English sentences each. All the students, in the questionnaires and after the class, agreed that the lesson was helpful for noticing similarities and differences in the use of some language elements between French and English. Student independence: They didn t say any English sentences without my help during the recording task. This suggests that they were at the self stage of the five stages of CLL mentioned earlier. They noticed how English works, but weren t confident enough to use it without my help. Evaluation material: I feel the student questionnaires were pertinent and easy to understand. The comment section were the learners were encouraged to write in French was useful to know their thoughts and suggestions. I should have included a section where students would have given examples of what they learned. This would have been useful in knowing whether this CLL lesson was useful in facilitating learning. CLL can be very useful in class to help learners notice the gaps in their language knowledge and encourage them to take more responsibility for their learning. It has big disadvantages though such as the need for a bilingual teacher and the fact that the students do not use English enough. (2498 words)

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Bengherabi_PDA_EP_CLL_Essay

BIBLIOGRAPHY:
y Larsen-Freeman 2000, Techniques and Principles in language Teaching, 2nd Ed. Oxford University Press. y
Richards & Rogers 1986. Approaches and methods in language teaching: A description and analysis. Cambridge University Press. y

Scrivener 2005, Learning Teaching. MacMillan. http://etprofessional.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=93 4:community-language-learning&catid=94&Itemid=81

y y y

http://iteslj.org/Articles/Koba-CLL.html http://mjal.org/Journal/Community.pdf http://www.teachertube.com/viewVideo.php?title=Counselling_Learning&video_id=44 29&vpkey=

y y y

http://members.fortunecity.com/nadabs/communitylearn.html http://vimeo.com/30118776 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_language_learning

APPENDICES:
Appendix 1: English Whispers Appendix 2: Observer Questionnaire Appendix 3: Student Questionnaires. Appendix 4: Translation of students comments.

Bengherabi_PDA_EP_CLL_Essay