COMMUNITY LANGUAGE LEARNING METHOD:
Community language learning (CLL) was primarily designed for monolingual conversation classes where the teacher-counsellor would be able to speak the learners' L1.
The intention was that it would integrate translation so that the students would disassociate language learning with risk taking. It's a method that is based on English for communication and is extremely learner-focused. Although each course is unique and student-dictated, there are certain criteria that should be applied to all CLL classrooms, namely a focus on fluency in the early stages, an undercurrent of accuracy throughout the course and learner empowerment as the main focus.
How it works in the classroom
Stage 1- Reflection
Stage 2 - Recorded conversation
Stage 3 - Discussion
Stage 4 - Transcription
Stage 5 - Language analysis
Length of stages
For and against CLL
Working with monolingual or multilingual classes
Working with large classes
Conclusion
How it works in the classroom
In a typical CLL lesson I have five stages:
Stage 1- Reflection
I start with students sitting in a circle around a tape recorder to create a community atmosphere.
The students think in silence about what they'd like to talk about, while I remain outside the circle.
To avoid a lack of ideas students can brainstorm their ideas on the board before recording.
Stage 2 - Recorded conversation
Once they have chosen a subject the students tell me in their L1 what they'd like to say and I discreetly come up behind them and translate the language chunks into English.
With higher levels if the students feel comfortable enough they can say some of it directly in English and I give the full English sentence. When they feel ready to speak the students take the microphone and record their sentence.
It's best if you can use a microphone as the sound quality is better and it's easier to pick up and put down.
Here they're working on pace and fluency. They immediately stop recording and then wait until another student wants to respond. This continues until a whole conversation has been recorded.
Stage 3 - Discussion
Next the students discuss how they think the conversation went. They can discuss how they felt about talking to a microphone and whether they felt more comfortable speaking aloud than they might do normally.
This part is not recorded.
Stage 4 - Transcription
Next they listen to the tape and transcribe their conversation. I only intervene when they ask for help.
The first few times you try this with a class they might try and rely on you a lot but aim to distance yourself from the whole process in terms of leading and push them to do it themselves.
Stage 5 - Language analysis
I sometimes get students to analyse the language the same lesson or sometimes in the next lesson. This involves looking at the form of tenses and vocabulary used and why certain ones were chosen, but it will depend on the language produced by the students.
In this way they are totally involved in the analysis process. The language is completely personalised and with higher levels they can themselves decide what parts of their conversation they would like to analyse, whether it be tenses, lexis or discourse.
With lower levels you can guide the analysis by choosing the most common problems you noted in the recording stages or by using the final transcription.
Length of stages
The timing will depend entirely on the class, how quickly they respond to CLL, how long you or they decide to spend on the language analysis stage and how long their recorded conversation is. Be careful however that the conversation isn't too long as this will in turn make the transcription very long
ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES OF CLL
ADVANTAGES:
Learners appreciate the autonomy CLL offers them and thrive on analysing their own conversations.
CLL works especially well with lower levels who are struggling to produce spoken English.
The class often becomes a real community, not just when using CLL but all of the time. Students become much more aware of their peers, their strengths and weaknesses and want to work as a team.
DISADVANTAGES:
In the beginning some learners find it difficult to speak on tape while others might find that the conversation lacks spontaneity.
We as teachers can find it strange to give our students so much freedom and tend to intervene too much.
In your efforts to let your students become independent learners you can neglect their need for guidance.
Working with monolingual or multilingual classes
I have used CLL with both monolingual and multilingual classes and found that it works well with both. With the multilingual low-level classes I, as the teacher-counsellor, reformulated their English in the same way you might do with higher levels. However, the first few attempts at CLL work better with a monolingual class as the instructions can be given in L1. It's important that the learners understand their and your new roles in the language learning process.
Working with large classes
For the first lesson it's important to record the conversation as a whole class even though this can limit student-speaking time. It's more practical in terms of giving instructions before you start and for moving from one student to another when they need you to translate or reformulate what they want to say. The next time you use CLL however, you could split the class into two groups. This gives them more speaking time.
Make sure the groups are far enough away from each other for the recording stage but not so far that you can't move freely from one group to another.
A further alternative is that they swap tapes for the transcription stage. The language is obviously less personalised but their listening skills are being challenged in a different way and they still feel part of a whole class community.
Conclusion
Although CLL is primarily meant as a 'whole' approach to teaching I have found it equally useful for an occasional lesson, especially with teenagers. It enables me to refocus on the learner while my students immediately react positively to working in a community. They take exceptionally well to peer-correction and by working together they overcome their fear of speaking. I have also found quieter students able to offer corrections to their peers and gladly contribute to the recording stage of the lesson. It's a teaching method which encompasses all four skills while simultaneously revealing learners' styles which are more or less analytical in their approach to language learning. All of which raises our awareness as a teacher and that of our students.
The Silent Way is a language teaching methodology which was devised by Caleb Gattegno in the 1960s. Gattegno states that a foreign language can only be learnt in schools by artificial methods, employing materials constructed for the purpose
Theory and characteristics
As the name already suggests, the method is built upon the hypothesis that inside the classroom the teacher should be as silent as possible, whereas the students/learners should be encouraged to produce as much language as possible.
2.Participation actively in class and in this way become autonomous learners. 3.Silence is regarded as the best instrument for learning in the classroom, because “in silence students concentrate on the task to be accomplished and the potential means for its accomplishment
4. The techniques of the Silent Way “made it possible for the teacher to say less and less as the lessons advanced, while the pupils were saying more and more and using their own inner criteria developed in this approach. In general, there are three basic theories on which Gattegno’s work is founded:
1. Learning is regarded as a “problem-solving, creative, discovering activity, in which the learner rather acts and participates actively than just being passive and doing nothing but listening to the teacher. If the learner is involved directly, he automatically benefits from the so called “discovery learning”.
2. The use of special physical objects such as coloured wooden rods or colour-coded wall charts facilitates learning. These physical objects “provide physical foci for student learning and also create memorable images to facilitate student recall” (Richards & Rodgers 2001: 81).
3. Learning is facilitated by involving the learners and letting them solve problems on their own with the help of the provided materials.
Learner and teacher roles
Though the Silent Way is not considered to be a teacher-centred approach, the teacher is very much in control of what happens in the class. While the teacher uses mainly gestures and facial expressions to address the learners, his/her main task is the teaching of the language by letting the students express themselves on a variety of subjects and by making their own hypotheses about grammar, pronunciation, style, etc. The teacher's guidance, though silent, is very active.
The learners are expected to participate in class actively. They should be willing to make mistakes, to test out the basic language elements via the usage of the materials provided and their motivation is solicited by the constant presentation of problems to be solved.
The materials make meaning visible and tangible so Silent Way lessons are usually easily understandable by students. It does require of students that they be willing to take risks and be comfortable about making mistakes which is encouraged by the supportive attitude of the teacher.
Materials and how they can be used
The Silent Way uses a whole set of materials, which can be used in class. It includes:
coloured wooden rods (Cuisenaire rods)
a set of wall charts, containing words of a 'functional‘ vocabulary and some additional ones
a rectangle chart
a Fidel
a pointer for use with the charts
tapes or discs
drawings or pictures
Cuisenaire Rods:
The coloured wooden rods can be used to represent whole situations in an abstract way. The teacher for example could use the green rods to represent a certain number of people, the red ones to represent cars and a single white rod representing a special character, for instance the teacher himself. The teacher then would probably first point at the white rod and thereafter at himself to show the students the meaning of the rods. The next step would be the presentation of the meanings of the other rods (the green and red ones), and after the students get their meaning, the teacher might present a certain everyday situation with the rods. During this presentation, the teacher may feature certain grammatical aspects of the language and let the students find out about these. Another way to use the rods could simply be the usage of them as representing certain parts of the word order of the language. The students might then test out in which order the rods have to be put, so that the correct form is created.
The rectangle chart, the Fidel and the word charts:
The different charts can be used to teach different aspects of the language. The rectangle chart for instance can be used to show the pronunciation of the phonemes of a language. It contains several different coloured rectangles which represent the various sounds of a language. The same colour code which is used in the rectangle chart is also used in the Fidel and the word charts. The Fidel contains several different charts. They present all possible spellings of every single sound of the language. The word charts present the functional words of the language.
Advantage and disadvantage
Advantage
The use of the Silent Way enables a very high degree of interaction as well between the teacher and the students as between the students themselves and additionally raises the participation of the students in class. The students/learners cooperate and help each other in class and in this way the social aspect of learning is supported. For the students it is beneficial that they are expected to develop a certain degree of self-awareness and that they can discover the language on their own via testing things and making use of the materials provided by the teacher.
Disadvantage
Just from reading descriptions some people feel the Silent Way is a very abstract way of learning a language and it is true that it is extremely different from more commonly used methods of language learning. Some learners may have may be put off by this. However most of those who have practical experience of the approach appreciate the way they are given the opportunity to function as autonomous learners.
Some have assumed that the Silent Way can only be used in small classes but this is not in fact the case: particularly with beginners, classes of 40 or more have been successful.
There is also a certain amount of scepticism on the part of some teachers who doubt the utility of a teaching method in which the teacher apparently says nothing.
Community language learning (CLL) was primarily designed for monolingual conversation classes where the teacher-counsellor would be able to speak the learners' L1.
The intention was that it would integrate translation so that the students would disassociate language learning with risk taking. It's a method that is based on English for communication and is extremely learner-focused. Although each course is unique and student-dictated, there are certain criteria that should be applied to all CLL classrooms, namely a focus on fluency in the early stages, an undercurrent of accuracy throughout the course and learner empowerment as the main focus.
How it works in the classroom
Stage 1- Reflection
Stage 2 - Recorded conversation
Stage 3 - Discussion
Stage 4 - Transcription
Stage 5 - Language analysis
Length of stages
For and against CLL
Working with monolingual or multilingual classes
Working with large classes
Conclusion
How it works in the classroom
In a typical CLL lesson I have five stages:
Stage 1- Reflection
I start with students sitting in a circle around a tape recorder to create a community atmosphere.
The students think in silence about what they'd like to talk about, while I remain outside the circle.
To avoid a lack of ideas students can brainstorm their ideas on the board before recording.
Stage 2 - Recorded conversation
Once they have chosen a subject the students tell me in their L1 what they'd like to say and I discreetly come up behind them and translate the language chunks into English.
With higher levels if the students feel comfortable enough they can say some of it directly in English and I give the full English sentence. When they feel ready to speak the students take the microphone and record their sentence.
It's best if you can use a microphone as the sound quality is better and it's easier to pick up and put down.
Here they're working on pace and fluency. They immediately stop recording and then wait until another student wants to respond. This continues until a whole conversation has been recorded.
Stage 3 - Discussion
Next the students discuss how they think the conversation went. They can discuss how they felt about talking to a microphone and whether they felt more comfortable speaking aloud than they might do normally.
This part is not recorded.
Stage 4 - Transcription
Next they listen to the tape and transcribe their conversation. I only intervene when they ask for help.
The first few times you try this with a class they might try and rely on you a lot but aim to distance yourself from the whole process in terms of leading and push them to do it themselves.
Stage 5 - Language analysis
I sometimes get students to analyse the language the same lesson or sometimes in the next lesson. This involves looking at the form of tenses and vocabulary used and why certain ones were chosen, but it will depend on the language produced by the students.
In this way they are totally involved in the analysis process. The language is completely personalised and with higher levels they can themselves decide what parts of their conversation they would like to analyse, whether it be tenses, lexis or discourse.
With lower levels you can guide the analysis by choosing the most common problems you noted in the recording stages or by using the final transcription.
Length of stages
The timing will depend entirely on the class, how quickly they respond to CLL, how long you or they decide to spend on the language analysis stage and how long their recorded conversation is. Be careful however that the conversation isn't too long as this will in turn make the transcription very long
ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES OF CLL
ADVANTAGES:
Learners appreciate the autonomy CLL offers them and thrive on analysing their own conversations.
CLL works especially well with lower levels who are struggling to produce spoken English.
The class often becomes a real community, not just when using CLL but all of the time. Students become much more aware of their peers, their strengths and weaknesses and want to work as a team.
DISADVANTAGES:
In the beginning some learners find it difficult to speak on tape while others might find that the conversation lacks spontaneity.
We as teachers can find it strange to give our students so much freedom and tend to intervene too much.
In your efforts to let your students become independent learners you can neglect their need for guidance.
Working with monolingual or multilingual classes
I have used CLL with both monolingual and multilingual classes and found that it works well with both. With the multilingual low-level classes I, as the teacher-counsellor, reformulated their English in the same way you might do with higher levels. However, the first few attempts at CLL work better with a monolingual class as the instructions can be given in L1. It's important that the learners understand their and your new roles in the language learning process.
Working with large classes
For the first lesson it's important to record the conversation as a whole class even though this can limit student-speaking time. It's more practical in terms of giving instructions before you start and for moving from one student to another when they need you to translate or reformulate what they want to say. The next time you use CLL however, you could split the class into two groups. This gives them more speaking time.
Make sure the groups are far enough away from each other for the recording stage but not so far that you can't move freely from one group to another.
A further alternative is that they swap tapes for the transcription stage. The language is obviously less personalised but their listening skills are being challenged in a different way and they still feel part of a whole class community.
Conclusion
Although CLL is primarily meant as a 'whole' approach to teaching I have found it equally useful for an occasional lesson, especially with teenagers. It enables me to refocus on the learner while my students immediately react positively to working in a community. They take exceptionally well to peer-correction and by working together they overcome their fear of speaking. I have also found quieter students able to offer corrections to their peers and gladly contribute to the recording stage of the lesson. It's a teaching method which encompasses all four skills while simultaneously revealing learners' styles which are more or less analytical in their approach to language learning. All of which raises our awareness as a teacher and that of our students.
The Silent Way is a language teaching methodology which was devised by Caleb Gattegno in the 1960s. Gattegno states that a foreign language can only be learnt in schools by artificial methods, employing materials constructed for the purpose
Theory and characteristics
As the name already suggests, the method is built upon the hypothesis that inside the classroom the teacher should be as silent as possible, whereas the students/learners should be encouraged to produce as much language as possible.
2.Participation actively in class and in this way become autonomous learners. 3.Silence is regarded as the best instrument for learning in the classroom, because “in silence students concentrate on the task to be accomplished and the potential means for its accomplishment
4. The techniques of the Silent Way “made it possible for the teacher to say less and less as the lessons advanced, while the pupils were saying more and more and using their own inner criteria developed in this approach. In general, there are three basic theories on which Gattegno’s work is founded:
1. Learning is regarded as a “problem-solving, creative, discovering activity, in which the learner rather acts and participates actively than just being passive and doing nothing but listening to the teacher. If the learner is involved directly, he automatically benefits from the so called “discovery learning”.
2. The use of special physical objects such as coloured wooden rods or colour-coded wall charts facilitates learning. These physical objects “provide physical foci for student learning and also create memorable images to facilitate student recall” (Richards & Rodgers 2001: 81).
3. Learning is facilitated by involving the learners and letting them solve problems on their own with the help of the provided materials.
Learner and teacher roles
Though the Silent Way is not considered to be a teacher-centred approach, the teacher is very much in control of what happens in the class. While the teacher uses mainly gestures and facial expressions to address the learners, his/her main task is the teaching of the language by letting the students express themselves on a variety of subjects and by making their own hypotheses about grammar, pronunciation, style, etc. The teacher's guidance, though silent, is very active.
The learners are expected to participate in class actively. They should be willing to make mistakes, to test out the basic language elements via the usage of the materials provided and their motivation is solicited by the constant presentation of problems to be solved.
The materials make meaning visible and tangible so Silent Way lessons are usually easily understandable by students. It does require of students that they be willing to take risks and be comfortable about making mistakes which is encouraged by the supportive attitude of the teacher.
Materials and how they can be used
The Silent Way uses a whole set of materials, which can be used in class. It includes:
coloured wooden rods (Cuisenaire rods)
a set of wall charts, containing words of a 'functional‘ vocabulary and some additional ones
a rectangle chart
a Fidel
a pointer for use with the charts
tapes or discs
drawings or pictures
Cuisenaire Rods:
The coloured wooden rods can be used to represent whole situations in an abstract way. The teacher for example could use the green rods to represent a certain number of people, the red ones to represent cars and a single white rod representing a special character, for instance the teacher himself. The teacher then would probably first point at the white rod and thereafter at himself to show the students the meaning of the rods. The next step would be the presentation of the meanings of the other rods (the green and red ones), and after the students get their meaning, the teacher might present a certain everyday situation with the rods. During this presentation, the teacher may feature certain grammatical aspects of the language and let the students find out about these. Another way to use the rods could simply be the usage of them as representing certain parts of the word order of the language. The students might then test out in which order the rods have to be put, so that the correct form is created.
The rectangle chart, the Fidel and the word charts:
The different charts can be used to teach different aspects of the language. The rectangle chart for instance can be used to show the pronunciation of the phonemes of a language. It contains several different coloured rectangles which represent the various sounds of a language. The same colour code which is used in the rectangle chart is also used in the Fidel and the word charts. The Fidel contains several different charts. They present all possible spellings of every single sound of the language. The word charts present the functional words of the language.
Advantage and disadvantage
Advantage
The use of the Silent Way enables a very high degree of interaction as well between the teacher and the students as between the students themselves and additionally raises the participation of the students in class. The students/learners cooperate and help each other in class and in this way the social aspect of learning is supported. For the students it is beneficial that they are expected to develop a certain degree of self-awareness and that they can discover the language on their own via testing things and making use of the materials provided by the teacher.
Disadvantage
Just from reading descriptions some people feel the Silent Way is a very abstract way of learning a language and it is true that it is extremely different from more commonly used methods of language learning. Some learners may have may be put off by this. However most of those who have practical experience of the approach appreciate the way they are given the opportunity to function as autonomous learners.
Some have assumed that the Silent Way can only be used in small classes but this is not in fact the case: particularly with beginners, classes of 40 or more have been successful.
There is also a certain amount of scepticism on the part of some teachers who doubt the utility of a teaching method in which the teacher apparently says nothing.
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