Majid Al-Humaidi Community Language Learning
Introduction
This methodology is not based on the usual methods by which languages are taught. Rather the approach is patterned upon counseling techniques and adapted to the peculiar anxiety and threat as well as the personal and language problems a person encounters in the learning of foreign languages (Curran, 1976). Consequently, the learner is not thought of as a student but as a client. The native instructors of the language are not considered teachers but, rather are trained in counseling skills adapted to their roles as language counselors. The language-counseling relationship begins with the client's linguistic confusion and conflict. The aim of the language counselor's skill is first to communicate empathy for the client's threatened inadequate state and to aid him linguistically. Then slowly the teacher-counselor strives to enable him to arrive at his own increasingly independent language adequacy. This process is furthered by the language counselor's ability to establish a warm, understanding, and accepting relationship, thus becoming an "otherlanguage self" for the client.
Approach, procedure and objectives
Richards and Rogers (1986) explain five stages involved in using this method. They are as follows: STAGE 1
The client is completely dependent on the language counselor. 1. First, he expresses only to the counselor and in English what he wishes to say to the group. Each group member overhears this English exchange but no other members of the group are involved in the interaction. 2. The counselor then reflects these ideas back to the client in the foreign language in a warm, accepting tone, in simple language in phrases of five or six words.
3. The client turns to the group and presents his ideas in the foreign language. He has the counselor's aid if he mispronounces or hesitates on a word or phrase. This is the client's maximum security stage. STAGE 2
1. Same as above. 2. The client turns and begins to speak the foreign language directly to the group. 3. The counselor aids only as the client hesitates or turns for help. These small independent steps are signs of positive confidence and hope. STAGE 3
1. The client speaks directly to the group in the foreign language. This presumes that the group has now acquired the ability to understand his simple phrases. 2. Same as 3 above. This presumes the client's greater confidence, independence, and proportionate insight into the relationship of phrases, grammar, and ideas. Translation is given only when a group member desires it. STAGE 4
1. The client is now speaking freely and complexly in the foreign language. He/she presumes group's understanding. 2. The counselor directly intervenes in grammatical error, mispronunciation, or where aid in complex expression is needed. The client is sufficiently secure to take correction. STAGE 5
1. Same as stage 4. 2. The counselor intervenes not only to offer correction but to add idioms and more elegant constructions. 3. At this stage the client can become counselor to the group in stages 1, 2, and 3.
Points of criticism
1) A message/lesson/class is presented in this method in the native tongue and then again in the second language. The danger of this is that learners would be used to thinking in their first language and transferring their message to the second which
might lead obviously to negative transfer of patterns and structures. Learners of a second language should be trained through the target language with no, or at least minimum, resort to the source language to avoid mother language interference. 2) The focus of this method is on oral proficiency. Thus, its main aim is developing learners' proficiency of one of the four major skills of language which is speaking. With modifications it may be used to teach writing, yet this is not sufficient in language teaching. Successful methods should take not only the full scope of language skills into account but also different language components. 3) The method is time consuming as it requires each student to utter what he thinks of in the first language, the teacher's translation, repetition of the utterance collectively, recording, transcription and analysis. With limited language teaching classes it could never work. 4) In this method, learning is not viewed as an individual accomplishment but as something that is achieved collaboratively. This does not take into account difference between learners in terms of proficiency and language ability. The result would be having proficient students bored awaiting their counterparts to intake a certain aspect of language before moving on to another. This could only be avoided if the general level of students is similar or near similar. 5) It places unusual demands on language teachers. They must be highly proficient and sensitive to nuance in both L1 and L2; they must be familiar with and sympathetic to the role of counselors in psychological counseling; and they much resist the pressure to teach in the traditional sense. 6) The teacher must operate without conventional materials, depending on student topics to shape the class. This could lead to ignoring very important issues because they were not raised by students. 7) The focus is on fluency rather than accuracy.
Community Language Learning in the Saudi Context
What can be said about the disadvantages of this method in general applies to its application in the Saudi context. Classes in most cases are large in number and this would hinder the application of the method. Moreover, in Saudi language classes there is considerable variation in students' levels of proficiency, having highly
proficient language learners, on the one hand, and very poor learners on the other. Proficient learners in such a case would be at a disadvantage as the learning process is holistic and involves group rather than individual progress. Besides, language teachers and learners are used to traditional ways of teaching and learning, and time would be needed for them to digest the method.
Conclusion
Community Language Learning is the most responsive method in terms of its sensitivity to learner communicative intent. However, learners' intents may vary considerably and this would lead to contradicted needs and interests which would enlarge the scope of teaching and lead to disorganization. The appropriateness of the counseling metaphor is also criticized upon which it is predicated; there is no evidence that language learning in classrooms indeed parallels the processes that characterize psychological counseling. Nevertheless, certain application of this method could be applied in integration with other methods in an eclectic approach.
References
Curran, C. (1976). Counseling-learning in second languages. Apple River, Ill.: Apple River Press.
Richards, J. C. & Rogers, T. S. (1986). Approaches and methods in language teaching: A description and analysis. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
