Community Language Learning

Hello, good to have you here again! We are almost done 😱  Finally, we are going to talk about the last method of register 1, Community Language Learning 💬💭

Community Language Learning (CLL) is the name of the method developed in the 1970s by Charles A. Curran, who was a counseling specialist and professor of psychology, and his associates at Loyola University in Chicago. 

The key idea is that the students determine what is to be learned, so the teacher is a facilitator and provides support. The teacher plays the part of "counselor", while the learners are encouraged to work together, interacting and helping each other personally in a supportive community. The method, which aims to alleviate the anxiety and threat so often felt by language learners, is sometimes described as "counselling learning". 

The learning goal behind the use of this method is to use the target language communicatively in an environment where students are provided with stress-free, non-dependent, and value-respecting teaching circumstances. Also, learning is expected to occur through oral activities, such as dialogues and mini-drama.

Characteristics: 

• Non-threatening environment to express myself better.

• Focused on speaking.

• Nothing is prepared, everything flows naturally. 

• Authentic material.

SWOT

S - Feel the support of your classmates and improve your social skills. 

W - For those who preferred to work individually may not like it. And, distracting for the use of devices.

O -  There is an opportunity to talk and socialize more.

T - It can be distracting, and difficult to deal with over time.

Activities: 

For the first activity, the teacher asked us to form groups and we had to write down topics that we should all have in common, while the teacher walked around the room observing us. He then asked each group for a topic and wrote them on the board to explain what we would do next. We talked for 1 minute about each topic and when we got to the one we had selected we were going to record ourselves, and then proceed to listen to our conversation in order to extract vocabulary, structures, and the key questions we asked ourselves. Finally, one of the group read aloud what we had extracted. 

For the last activity of this method, the teacher assigned each group one of the methods we have been learning the whole registration, we had to make posters and present them to our classmates in the next class.

Well, that would be all about the Community Language Learning, I hope you have understood the importance of this method, see you in the next entry! 💪💟