Mention the features of Community Language Teaching
The Community Language Teaching (CLT) model has many features. A lot of these features are completely opposite to a traditional school model of learning. It is true that teachers like to stand in front of the class and take control. This is what anyone would think of as a normal approach and what most students expect. This allows the teacher to be the instigator of most topics while the students sit passively at their desks. CLT goes against the traditional grain and tries to make the learning experience more group structured. In this essay, I will show that the learning experience is based more on a type of counseling learning where the use of counseling techniques are used to develop language for all concerned. Everybody has a part to play and a community is born where students can empathize with each other.
This CLT method was developed in the early seventies by Charles Curran. It involved recognizing the affective and the emotional factors as paramount in a classroom. It is always hard for a student to feel relaxed in a new class let alone having confidence in speaking let alone a second language. There is a consensus that views community language as learning that can help reduce anxiety. This is, of course, one of the main factors in learning (a language) where the students feel anxious about expressing their feeling in a class full of people that in the main they do not know. There is a move towards the interpersonal contact between student and teacher as well as student and student. The teacher should have the skills that involve counseling and bring the students together through their techniques. If the class can have a good relationship language and confidence should flow better. One way to get the students to be more familiar with each other is to get the learning group into a circle. There is less turning of heads and the shy people can not be stuck in the corner. In all of this, the teacher is more of a facilitator and tends to sit outside the circle. This format is fine if the group is of a smaller size that helps everyone to be seen and heard. A desirable amount of students would be about 10. This gives the students more time to speak, less time to get distracted, the teacher also has more time to cater to all the students.
The process of the CLT pertains to a pervading tone in the classroom where the students can take control and build their skills and language with the help of others. The students become active learners in their own right. It has been said that the teacher should not control the conversation in CLT, but let students talk about whatever they want to talk (Rardin et al., 1988). Firstly the group can sit in a circle and think about what they want to say. If ideas are flying around they can be written on the whiteboard and brainstormed to see which is liked the best. Students are allowed to use their mother tongue and the teacher translates this language and the building process starts. Students are made to feel more comfortable talking in the conversation circle. This allows them to express their feelings. The student can mention something in their own language. This is then put into small phrases by the teacher and then the students can work with the teacher before they open up to the rest of the class. There is not so much error correction.
Even though the layout of the class and the relaxed atmosphere may bring on some anxiety at first, the students through the CLT feel less stress as goes on and begin to work with their peers which is the goal. This highlights the awareness of community which is in a non-competitive atmosphere with a sense of involvement. The students also take responsibility for their learning and make themselves become active learners that are inquisitive of language and each other.
Once the class has finished a reflection session is essential in the CLT approach. Trust between the teacher and learners or among learners is established by sharing their feelings, anxieties, frustrations or demands. By sharing anxiety, learners may build a sense of unity to do one task together (Rardin et al., 1988). The teacher also uses less error correction during the class as not to stop the flow. If any correction is used it should not be intrusive as the method is to let the students express their meaning. The teacher’s job is to try and extract as much information as can be without pressuring the student. There is a focus on meaning over accuracy. After class, the teacher’s job is to write up a report of the students’ language during the lesson as to be a reflection of all that went on and give the students some resources to look back on. This shows all the key structures and vocabulary they used.
To conclude, the CLT method certainly helps promote better communication in the class. The classes will succeed if the students get used to taking part in their learning. It also focuses on the teacher’s ability to promote this working relationship with all involved.
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Classroom based report on language acquisition
Abstract
Learning any second language can be challenging. Lower level students, who are new to learning, are those students that need all the support and understanding for their acquisition of a new language. For this paper, I have produced a research plan for a new class of lower level students. This was devised to create thinking on how students were learning their second language. I wondered how I could facilitate their learning and their classroom experience that would help make English language easier for them to comprehend. My initial thoughts were on using as many different ways to reinforce a language point. My thinking was that if the students get to look at a specific grammar/language point, whilst using it and thinking about it, in different ways, the language will stay in their memory that much easier. I felt that if you used the language in various ways such as activities, methods of teaching and games, their possession of the language could be helped.
I looked at my ideas for lesson plans and checked how I planned to use the time in class to vary my methods. I also looked on the internet for any information that would correspond with my area of interest. I tried reading as much material that honed in on my specific area of interest. This was the material that was related to different methods and activities. It was while I was acquiring my new knowledge that I got to read about an interesting theory where different activities were used regarding multiple intelligences. This I found on a website called ‘developingteachers.com’. The article in question that took my interest was called ‘Starting with multiple intelligences – activities for foreign language teachers’ by Rolf Palmberg. I immediately realised this article was very much linked in with my ideas, that I had proposed. I did a lot of preliminary reading on the subject until I felt that I should put my old and new ideas about how to get the students speaking more into effect. This paper and the theories within is helped by what I found from the initial article by Rolf Palmberg and increasingly by reading about American psychologist Howard Gardner who developed ‘The Theory of Multiple Intelligences’.
Professional Development results can come in many ways
A report of the dissemination you have carried out to inform colleagues/teachers (either in your own school, neighbouring school or LEA), or young people, governors, parents. This report will include what they have learned from the process of dissemination (approximately 1,000 words).
I was on a teaching course for two months and tried different ways to promote professional development. I would like in this report to give an account of the benefit of the distribution of my efforts. One major fact involved in these endeavors, I found is that some teachers are inexperienced to teaching/professional development. It meant I had to look deeper to see salient points that highlighted recognition of the work I had been completing. I must say I did this report against some barriers, that being the Asian way of teaching which entails the students just listening to the teacher in a very passive way. The students must believe every word that comes out of the teacher’s mouth as these young minds sit in quiet obedience. It can be hard to change people’s methods in a short time. It is true the students dare not ask leading questions to their teachers which I must admit mildly extended to me but perseverance for professional development is a must.
The initial awareness of my development came through surveying 50 student’s ideas as to what a good teacher should be like. I noticed that there were high scores for most of the questions even though some questions were polar opposites. You either had to think one question was right and the other wrong, not the same. I questioned the answers the students gave and proposed my uncertainty to my colleagues. It certainly made them think about how the students answer surveys and the feeling was that, do they really understand what they are doing when they answer questions? It was noticed that the majority of the students just fill in the form not knowing what they are doing while others copy. It held true with my colleagues because the students were given a questionnaire by our training centre at the end of each term where they had to give a points score for their teacher. My colleagues firmly believed and used my evidence when the manager came to say that the students can not give a true representation of a teacher’s lessons by a score card.
I would like to add that through my survey of 50 students which I had designed the questions; the scores, as mentioned, did not seem to add up. I decided to let the students come up with the questions. I reviewed and edited it completely. This led to better results and a better understanding from the students on how to complete the survey.
I can certainly say that I have changed perceptions of teaching and shown a few teachers how I think a positive thinking teacher should teach. For example, I was asked by one teacher to help her teaching her class strong adjectives. The teacher’s approach was to just give the students pronunciation practice. I did the lesson in a constructive approach leaving time to have the students produce spoken sentences. She mentioned to me that she thought the material I used was great. I took the opportunity to explain that the book had many words that were too much for the students.
I also spoke to her about the students copying. I wondered how they can learn. She said ‘oh, when the test comes they will fail’. Basically, it was the students’ problem, not hers. It was attitudes like this I came up against. This teacher had already mentioned a few times that the students were bad. This led me to think that it was their learning skills, not their ability that was holding them back. It was examples like these that made me even more determined to show these teachers how students should learn in class. This meant creating a learning environment when they have to think for themselves. I did have some feedback from one teacher who said that the students enjoyed learning with me and found my lessons interesting. I had a chance to explain to this teacher that if the lesson is interesting and thought-provoking the students will feel they are part of a learning process.
Moreover, I have been continually giving advice to other teachers. This I found irritating at times. For example, I decided to teach one lesson for a teacher for him to see teaching from a new angle. I used one of my lesson plans that I felt fitted in with a more relaxed approach as this teacher had been told he was putting too much effort into his teaching. I showed him that with the right approach he can get the students doing the work for him and he just has to facilitate them and coax them along during the lesson keeping them on a learning path. I then observed him the next day teaching my lesson. In the feedback session, he did not really give me a great response when I asked him about my lesson and how well his lesson went doing my demonstration class. I wondered why he was evasive, was it he was not used to professional development, was it he was scared to show his failing, or was it he felt I was I intruding? I actually thought at one point that I should slow down on the teaching conversations. I wondered how I could help him with his teaching. The fact was the following days after I felt he began to notice how I worked and the detail I put into teaching. I began to see examples of professional development coming through. I saw his new sheet for his lesson plan. It looked not too dissimilar to my lesson sheet I had done with him and some of my material which he had seen on my desk. I also realized he was asking more questions and enquiring what I thought he should do for this learning process. At least, the advice was slowly getting through.
Overall, you must expect professional development to be a bit alien to some and teachers not enthused over trying new methods. However, the benefits are certainly there.
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So, how does creative and continuous writing start?
I am reading this great book called ‘Teacher’ written by Sylvia Ashton-Warner which highlights her teaching of Moari kids in New Zealand in the 1960s. The facts is, how do you teach kids who have different upbringings and only know one way of life? You teach them ‘organic teaching’. You bring their inner feelings and stories to the fore. I hope this passage below gives you an insight into how a teacher can get too attached to lesson plans and teaching books while forgetting the reality of the classroom with the students and their own history. The passage starts with Sylvia getting the students to write.
…..Yet there are times when one cannot start. He’s just plain not in the mood. You can’t always say an important thing because it is the time to say it. Sometimes he will say candidly, “I don’t want to write,” and that’s just what you get him to write: “I don’t want to write”. From there you ask, “Why?” and here comes an account of some grievance or objection which, after all, just as well as any other idea, delivers his mind of what is on it, practices his composition, and wraps him up in what is of interest to himself.
You never want to say that it’s good or bad. That’s got nothing to do with it. You’ve got no right at all to criticise the content of another’s mind. A child doesn’t make their own mind. It’s just there. Your job is to see what’s in it. Your allowable comment is one of natural interest in what they are writing. As in conversation. And I never mark their books in any way; never cross out anything beyond helping them to rub out a mistake, never put a tick or a stamp on it and never complain about bad writing. Do we complain about a friend’s writing in a story felt letter? The attention is on the content.
What I feel about their work has nothing to do with it. The thing is for them to write what is on their minds and if they do or do not accomplish that, it is you who are good or bad. From the teacher’s end, it boils down to whether or not she is a good conversationalist; whether or not she has the gift or the wisdom to listen to another; the ability to draw out and preserve that other’s line of thought. Which refers to the nature of the teacher. The best juniors I had on this work were the modest, self-effacing kind, while the worst of them was a very clever girl who was an insatiable talker and who in her personal life talked everyone else to pieces on the subject of herself (Ashton-Warner, 1963: 58).
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Process Learning in Language Teaching and Acquisition
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My first thoughts are to say that Process Teaching seems a more relaxed attitude to teaching. It is encouraging that with this teaching method, a material light approach is advocated. From my own point of view, I try to be a proficient teacher and have worksheets to help the students as well as use material to stimulate the students throughout a lesson. The materials-free approach goes against what is seen day in day out in the staff room (there is always a cue at the photocopier) and classrooms although the opportunities are there to create better learning.
The Process Teaching method of learning English, although being competent and wanting to do their best, teachers can feel more relaxed and appreciate more clearly that it is the students who are the ones who should be speaking and helping each other. The teacher acts as a facilitator. Thus, it makes teachers take a look at themselves; standing in front of the whiteboard, projecting grammar, and doing lots of writing (using handouts) albeit in their own way teaching proficiently. However, this being said, any teacher still can think that for two and half hours the students have got have a chance to freely talk and have an attitude that they are as much a part of the class as the teacher. I sometimes find that for some students, it is hard to get them to talk, especially where some foreign language systems of learning English do not facilitate the conversational aspect of learning such that Process Learning could fall short of achieving its aim.
As for my classroom performances, I try to put various processes into practice (helped by the Dogme teaching book). For example, one lesson was a Task-Based exercise where I tried to bring in elements of Process Learning where the students would ask me questions or sometimes just say one word during the task. I would try and use this as a building block for more language. I think teachers should provide the scaffolding for the students to build their language and even if they say one word it has to be remembered that any word has a thought behind it that can be expanded.
Referring more to my lesson, I set up the students with some pictures of people doing sports. I asked some focus questions for each sport. I got the students to write the questions on the whiteboard and elicited the answers. The students gave me the answers and showed they were capable of answering the questions. I then gave each group a set of seven pictures showing sports. There were two groups and I sat between them. I let them answer the questions for each of their sports. Now some students did not know the answers to the questions and as a helper/facilitator, I encouraged them to ask me questions and to use their language by any means possible. Thus, Process Learning was being used. As such the students seemed at ease to speak even if it was one or two words. As previously mentioned, I said before sometimes that one word was enough to get some students started. The whole group joined in, this was great as I felt they were trying to use their language.
Once they had answered every question about the sports, I then had a competition where one team explains a sport and the other has to guess what it is. Again, looking at Process Learning, the stage was set and they knew what to do. For myself, I sat in between them and just facilitated the process, encouraging them to open up. This exercise went on for more than an hour. I think the students enjoyed it.
To finish this reflection on Process Learning, I think this method has been beneficial and can be used in lessons even though using it completely would be a wide-ranging change that many students would need a bit of time to get used to.
