WHAT IS THE COMMUNITY LANGUAGE LEARNING (DISCUSS)

The method we will examine in this chapter advises teachers to consider their students as ‘whole persons.’ Whole – person learning means that teachers consider not only their students ‘intellect , but also have some understanding of the relationship among students ‘feelings , physical reactions , instinctive protective reactions , and desire to learn. The Community Language Learning Method takes its principles from the more general Counseling-Learning approach developed by Charles A. Curran. Curran studied adult learning for many years. He was also influenced by Carl Rogers ‘ humanistic psychology (Rogers 1951 ; Brown 1994 ) , and he found that adults often feel threatened by a new learning situation. They are threatened by the change inherent in learning and by the fear that they will appear foolish.

The community language learning is the way of teacher to teach their students to be more active on speak. the goals of teachers who use the community language learning method are the teacher wants their student to learn how to use the target language communicatively. In addition , they want their students to learn about their own learning , to take increasing responsibility for it , and to learn how to learn from one another. All of these objectives can be accomplished in a nondefensive manner if a teacher and learner (s) treat each other as whole persons , valuing both thoughts and feelings.

About the role of teacher and what is the role of the students are the teacher’s initial role is primarily that of a counselor. This does not mean that the teacher is a therapist , or that the teacher does no teaching. Rather , it means that the teacher recognizes how threatening a new learning situation can be for adult learners , so he skillfully understanda and supports his students in their struggle to master the target language. Initially the learners are very dependent upon the teacher. It is recognized , however , that as the learners continue to study , they become increasingly independent. Community language learning methodologists have identified five stages in this movement from dependency to mutual interdependency with the teacher. In stages I , II , and III , the teacher focuses not only on the language but also on being supportive of learners in their learning process. In stage IV , because of the students’ greater security in the language and readiness to benefit from corrections , the teacher can focus more on accuracy. It should be noted that accurary is always a focus even in the first three stages ; however , it is subordinated to fluency. The reverse is true in Stages IV and V.

About the some characteristics of the teaching / learning process are according to Curran , there are six elements necessary for nondefensive learning. The first of these is security. Next is aggression , by which Curran means that students should be given an opportunity to assert themselves , be actively involved , and invest themselves in the learning experience. One way of allowing for this in the lesson we observed was for students to conduct their own conversation. The third element is attention. One of the skills necessary in learning a second or foreign language is to be able to attend to many factors simultaneously. To make this skill easier to learn , especially at the beginning of the learning process , the teacher helps to narrow the scope of attention. Recall that the teacher in our lesson asks the students not to copy the transcript while he was writing it on the blackboard. Instead , he wanted them to attend to what he was writing and to add what translation they may have recalled in order to complete the transcript.


The fourt element , reflection , occurred in two different ways in our lesson. The first was when the students reflected on the language as the teacher read the transcript three times. The second was when students were invided to stop and consider the active experience they were having. Retention is the fifth element , the integration of the new material that takes place within the whole self. The last elements is discrimination , sorting out the differences among target language forms. We saw this element when the students were asked to listen to the Human Computer and attempt to match their pronunciation to the computer’s.


If we want to discuss about this case , I think this case suitable to teacher to make their student be more active and communicative. We can see the example :
“whenever one of you would like to say something , raise your hand and I will come behind you. I will not be a participant in the conversation except to help you say in English what you want to say. Say what you want to say in Indonesian; I will give you the English translation. I will give you the translation in phrases, or “chunks.” Record only the chunks , one at a time. After the conversation , when we listen to the recording, your sentence will sound whole. Only your voices in English will be on the tape. Since this is your first English conversation , you may want to keep it simple. We have ten minutes for this activity.’