ESL job interview question: Tell us about the Community Language Learning Method

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Community Language Learning (CLL) method was developed by Charles A. Curran. It applies psychological counseling techniques to learning. Learners in a classroom were not regarded as a class but as a group in need of certain therapy and counseling. Basic procedures of Community Language Learning derives from counselor-client relationship open interpersonal communication and the role of supportive community was emphasized. Community Language Learning was designed to ease the anxiety of foreign language learners in educational contexts and promote group dynamics. 

In Community Language Learning, the aim is to involve the learner's whole personality. The teacher understands the fears of the learner and vulnerabilities as they struggle to master another language by being sensitive to the learner’s fear. The teacher can turn the negative energy of those fears into positive energy and enthusiasm for learning. 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. Consequently, the learner is not thought of as a student but as a client. The language-counseling relationship begins with the client's linguistic confusion and conflict. Then slowly the teacher-counselor strives to enable him to arrive at his own increasingly independent language adequacy (Nagaraj 2009).

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