COMMUNITY LANGUAGE LEARNING AND THE PRINCIPLES OF CHAPTER VII

Principle I. Language is purposeful behavior between people, intertwined with other kinds of purposive behavior between the same people. The first conversations recorded during the investment phase often consist of cautious and somewhat erratic small talk: "It's a nice day," "Have you seen any good movies recently?" and the like. Here, the principal purpose may be to satisfy the requirements of the new and unfamiliar CLL format.

But after a few times through the basic procedure, including the first step of the reflective phase, students begin to feel more secure. As this happens, they begin to talk-during the investment phase-about things that are really on their minds. (Sometimes this includes their opinions of CLL, or of each other.} They invest more and more of themselves in the content of what they say, thus fulfilling Principle I to the extent that is hard to match in the beginning level of more conventional styles of instruction. The learners are always "enacting themselves" (Jakobovits and Gordon 1974:72}; and the wish of Jakobovits and Gordon (1974:31) to "begin the teaching of a language at the ... level [ of ordinary communicative interactions]" is realized.

Principle I/. The human person learns new behavior rapidly if the learner is not busy defending himself from someone else. As we said

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earlier, the "someone else" may be the teacher, or a former teacher; it may be one or more fellow students, or all fellow students; it may be specific foreigners who speak the language being learned, or the learner may have feelings of fear, resentment or contempt against all speakers of that language-or even against foreigners in general.

Aside from negative feelings of the kinds mentioned in the preceding sentence, Curran believes that the very disparity of knowledge between the teacher (who knows, in effect, everything) and the student (whG knows little or nothing) usually requires some sort of emotional adjustment on the part of the student.

Community Language Learning deals with these potentially destruc­

tive reactions in at least four ways. The first, chronologically, is the behavior of the resource person during the investment phase of the first three stages. This person remains outside the circle; he stands behind the person he is helping at the moment, and therefore is invisible to that person; he uses a very reassuring tone of voice, which implies understand­

ing of what the learner is going through; he speaks gently, but close enough to the learner's ear so that he is within the learner's personal space, so that the foreign sounds almost seem to the Learner to originate within his own head; he does not tell the learners what to say, but only how to say it; he neither criticizes nor praises. If the resource person is sufficiently skilled as a knower-counselor, the learners will forget that he exists as a separate person. At the same time, he provides them with all the linguistic support they ask for.

The second way in which CLL reduces defensiveness is found in the first step of the reflection phase. Here, the learner has an opportunity to voice directly whatever the investment phase has brought to his mind, and to have these thoughts understood without evaluation, comment, or questioning. This experience, in itself, often has a healing effect.

As time goes on, and the learners begin to talk about more than trivia, they have an opporturrity to hear-and to overhear-one another under the safe conditions described. This is a third way in which the need for self-defense is reduced.

Finally, in the later steps of the reflection phase, the taped record of the investment phase is entirely in the voices of the students. Even the written record is, as far as possible, made in their own handwriting. This further minimizes confrontation of the learner by an overpowering knower.

One may question whether this kind of learning will not produce another, and even more disturbing, kind of insecurity in the learners. After all, the content of what is said, plus its tape-recorded and written manifestations, has come from them. The person who is supposed to lead them, and in whom they need to have confidence, is inconspicuous, and has even tried to become a non-person in their eyes.

A parallel question may be raised with regard to the resource person.

How long can he continue to be only a tool, or a foreign-language reflector, in the hands of the learners? What satisfactions are available to him, to compensate for the lost roles of "originator" and "judge"?

To some extent, the objections outlined in the preceding paragraphs rest on an incomplete understanding of the role of the resource person.

First of all, this role is one which must be chosen consciously and accepted willingly. It is not without its responsibilities and its rewards. This person does, after all, provide and maintain the basic structure of Community Language Learning. He still does point out salient features of grammar. He does continue to provide ancillary activities and materials outside of the basic procedure described in the first part of this chapter. He even makes some corrections, especially in Stages 4 and 5. So the learners are not really left completely to their own devices, particularly in the very fundamental decisions about format of instruction.

On the other hand, it is true that the resource person in CLL must do without the "originator" and "judge" roles that are so much a part of other styles of teaching. He must be able to draw deep satisfaction from watching the learners develop through the five stages. He must be patient with small linguistic imperfections in Stages 1 and 2, and with larger ones in Stage 3. He must be more concerned about what the learners can and will do in the language than about how they perform on the usual kind of discrete-point test (Jakobovits and Gordon 1974:87, 104; M. Sommer, personal communication).

Principle Ill. Help the student to stay in contact with the language.

We have already seen, in discussion of Principles I and 11, how the learner in CLL works with a form-meaning complex in which the meanings are very much his own, and in which the forms are presented in a way which is least likely to cause him to break off contact with them.

Principle IV. Help the student to maintain wholesome attitudes.

Again, the discussion of Principle 11 has already given a general picture of how CLL meets this requirement. In our original discussion of Principle

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IV, we suggested three general guidelines for selecting techniques that would contribute toward wholesome attitudes:

"Reduce reflectivity." CLL complies both by leaving content up to the learners, and by putting the spoken and written models into their own voices and handwriting as soon as possible. (Note that reflectivity is used here in a sense different from the "reflective"

phase of CLL.)

"Increase productivity at as many levels as possible. " If productivity means "generating language in which one has exercised choice," then CLL is clearly in keeping with this guideline.

"Teach, then test, then get out of the way." In CLL, some of what goes on in the last step of the reflective phase may look like an attenuated form of what we generally think of as "teaching." There is no "testing" in any usual sense of that word. Of course, CLL is far beyond other methods in meeting the "get out of the way" part of the requirement. The absence of conventional testing will bother some teachers and even some students, who will ask, "But how am I to know what grade I've earned? How will I know my standing in the class?" For such teachers and students, CLL fails to meet one of the five criteria of Chapter VI I. It is probably also true that for those people CLL will not work. But for teachers and students who are able to paraphrase the "test" part of this guideline as, "How do my performance in the language and my ideas about its structure stack up against the realities of the language?" the alternation of reflection (especially the last step) and investment provide a deeply satisfying alternative to the traditional kind of test (cf., Jakobovits and Gordon 1974:49-57).

Principle V. In preparing materials, make it easy for teacher and students to follow Principles I-IV. Students who are engaged in CLL do have access, outside of class, to conventional grammar books and, as I hinted above, ancillary procedures are sometimes used in the class session itself. But the only "materials" used in the basic procedure are the tape recordings of the conversations, and daily digests of the sessions prepared and distributed by the resource person. These materials help to prevent the successive rounds of investment and reflection from degenerating into a formless mess in the learner's mind.

OTHER OBSERVATIONS ON COMMUNITY LANGUAGE