Managing a class Teaching large classes Humanistic Approaches

1. Community Language Learning (CLL)
In the early seventies, Charles Curran developed a new education model called "Counseling-Learning". This educational model was also applied to language learning and became known as Community Language Learning (CLL).
CLL advocates a holistic approach to language learning. "True human learning" is both cognitive and affective.
Language is for communication. Language is for developing creative thinking. Culture is integrated with language.
“The primary aim of CLL is to create a genuinely warm and supportive ‘community’ among the learners and gradually to move them from complete dependence on the teacher to complete autonomy” (Nunan 1991: 236).
The native instructors of the language are not considered teachers but, rather are trained in counseling skills adapted to their roles as language counselors. Teacher's initial role is that of a counsellor. The teacher tries to remove the threatening factors in the classroom.
This method works in the following way. Students sit in a circle with the teacher on the outside. The students decide what they want to discuss. Student say whatever they want to communicate to the teacher in L1 or in the taget language. In the former case, the teacher translates the utterance, in effect teaching the student how to say the utterance in English. In some CLL lessons the students’ utterances are recorded onto a tape to be analysed later. In all these cases the teacher offers help to the ‘community’ of the class.
In-class reflection
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The Silent Way
The Silent Way was founded in the early 1970s and shared many of the same essential principles as the cognitive code and made good use of the theories underlying discovery learning.
A prominent feature of the Silent Way is the behaviour of the teacher who typically stays "silent" most of the time, as part of his/her role as facilitator and stimulator because it is believed that the learner discovers and creates language rather than just remembers and repeats what has been taught.
Language learning is usually seen as a problem solving activity to be engaged in by the students both independently and as a group, and the teacher needs to stay "out of the way" in the process as much as possible.
Students should make use of what they already know. They are responsible for their own learning. They actively take part in exploring the language.
There is no linear structural syllabus. The teacher starts with what students already know, and builds from one structure to the next. The syllabus develops according to the students' learning needs.
The learning hypotheses underlying the Silent Way are stated by Richards and
Rodgers (1986:99):
1. Learning is facilitated if the learner discovers or creates rather than remembers and repeats what is to be learned.
2. Learning is facilitated by accompanying (mediating) physical objects. [rods and color-coded pronunciation charts].
3. Learning is facilitated by problem solving involving the material to be learned. . . . [This hypothesis is] represented in the words of Benjamin Franklin:
Tell me and I forget,
Teach me and I remember,
Involve me and I learn
The Silent Way commonly uses small colored rods of varying length (Cuisinere rods) and color-coded word charts depicting pronunciation values, vocabulary and grammatical paradigms. It is a unique method and the first of its kind to really concentrate on cognitive principles in language learning.