•Rooted in the humanistic
client-centered learning exemplified by Carl Rogers (1951), Community Language Leaming
is a
method developed by Charles A. Curran (I 976) for teaching second
and foreign languages. A typical lesson in a CLL classroom proceeds as
follows. Students sit around a table with a tape recorder–a key too] of the
method. The counselor (i.e., the teacher) stands behind one of the students,
with hands on the student's shoulders. After speaking reassuringly, the
counselor asks the student to say something in the native language he or she
wishes to be able to say in the target language. This utterance is then
provided by the teacher in the target language, who takes care to phrase it
idiomatically. The counselor provides the phrase (broken into chunks for ease
of repetition), the student repeats, and once the student can produce the
whole utterance fluently, it is recorded on tape.
•Several tools and techniques are
critical to the treatment of pronunciation in CLL. First, the audiotape recorder not only
captures what is said in the student-generated utterances but also provides a
way for students to distance
themselves from what was said so they can focus on how it was said and compare their
pronunciation with that of the counselor. Second, the human computer technique, which gives no overt
correction of pronunciation, allows the student to initiate
pronunciation practice by selecting the item(s) to practice and deciding the
amount of repetition needed.