Community Language Learning

In Community Language Learning the teacher acts as a facilitator whose job it is to be an empathetic helper in the learning process and so lower the affective filter. The students are perceived of as being a "group" receiving counselling rather than a "class".

The students typically sit in a circle, and they initially use their first language to get to know each other. When they wish to say something in English the teacher translates it for them. The idea is that over a period of time they become independent of the teacher and able to converse on their own.