Page 34 - HOW TO TEACH GRAMMAR

The syllabus
A Suggestopedia course last thirty days and consist of ten units of study. Classes are held four hours
a day, six days a week. The central focus of each unit is a dialogue consisting of 1,200 words or so,
with an accompanying vocabulary list and grammatical commentary. The dialogues are graded by
lexicon and grammar.

There is a pattern of work within each unit and a pattern of work for the whole course. Unit study is
organized around three days: day 1 – half a day, day 2 – full day, day 3 – half a day. One of the first
days of work on a new unit the teacher discusses the general content (not structure) of the unit dialogue.
The learners then receive the printed dialogue with the native language translation in parallel column.
The teacher answers any questions of interest or concern about the dialogue. The dialogue then is
read, the second and third time in ways to be discussed subsequently.

Communicative Language Learning

Background

Communicative language Learning (CLL) is the name of a method developed by Charles A.
Curran and his associates. Curran and his associates. Curran was a specialist in counseling and
professor of psychology at Loyola University, Chicago. His application of psychological counseling
techniques to learning is known as Counseling-Learning. Community Language Learning represents
the use of Counseling-Learning theory to teach languages.
Within the language teaching tradition Community Language Learning is sometimes cited as
an example of a “humanistic approach.” Links can also be made between CLL produces and those of
bilingual education, particularly the set of bilingual procedures referred to as “language alternation” or
“code switching.”

As the name indicates, CLL derives its primary insights, and indeed its organizing rationale,
from Rogerian counseling. Counseling, as Rogerians set it, consists of one individual (the
counselor)assuming “insofar as he is able the internal frame of reference [of the client], perceiving

the world as that person sees it and communicating something of his empathetic understanding”
(Rogers 1951). In lay terms, counseling is one person giving advice, assistance, and support to
another who has a problem or is in some way in need. Community Language Learning draws on the
counseling metaphor to define the roles of the teacher (the counselor) and learners (The clients) in
the language classroom. The basic procedures of CCL can thus be seen as derived from counselor-
client relationship. Consider the following CLL procedures: A group of learners sit in an circle with
the teacher standing outside the circle; a student whispers a message in the native language (L2);
the student repeats the message in the foreign language into a cassette; students compose further
message in the foreign language with the teacher’s help: students reflect about their feelings. We can
compare the client-counselor relationship in psychological counseling with learner-knower
relationship in community Language Learning.

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