English Language Teaching History

English Language Teaching History

  • Submitted By: shervin9099
  • Date Submitted: 12/21/2008 10:44 PM
  • Category: English
  • Words: 1335
  • Page: 6
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Community language learning
Submitted by admin on 28 June, 2004 - 12:00.
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
o Stage 1- Reflection
o Stage 2 - Recorded conversation
o Stage 3 - Discussion
o Stage 4 - Transcription
o Stage 5 - Language analysis
o 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...

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