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Humanistic Theory of Learning By: Adora A. Barnachea IM 219 - Principles and Teachniques of Adult Learning Dr. Carmen Garlan 2nd Sem. 2009 - 2010 Miriam Colleg...

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Humanism

Colin wants to be a baseball player when he grows up. He thinks school is boring and gets frustrated when teachers try to make him learn things that just don't seem relevant to his life. After all, who needs to know averages and percentages when he's hitting home runs?

To Colin, and many like him, school seems unrelated to his life and goals, and so he is not able to learn and grow. Humanism, a branch of psychology related to the theories of Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers, has at its core the idea that people want to grow and fulfill their ultimate potential. When students, like Colin, don't fulfill their potential, it's because something is holding them back. What does this mean for teachers? Let's take a look at how some of the core principles of humanism can be utilized in the classroom.

Self-Directed Learning

Colin is smart but an undedicated student. He just doesn't see the point; his plan is to become a professional baseball player and make millions of dollars. But math? Reading? He just can't seem to make himself feel passionate about subjects that seem so unrelated to his life and goals.

One key component of humanism is the idea of self-directed learning, which involves students learning what they want and need to learn, not what the teacher arbitrarily decides is important. In this way, the teacher becomes more of a facilitator than a disciplinarian. Instead of insisting that Colin, and students like him, learn a prescriptive lesson plan, teachers support the students in following their passion.

The idea behind self-directed learning is that passion for a subject will motivate students to learn. For example, Colin isn't interested in reading and math, but if a teacher was able to show him books about sports figures and help him study statistics related to baseball, he would be much more likely to be excited about learning. And that excitement would translate into a real, deep understanding of key concepts.

Self-Evaluation

If self-directed learning is important because it ignites students' passion for learning, grades do just the opposite, according to humanism. Instead of making students want to learn, humanists believe, grades turn students off.

True, a student like Colin might work to get a good grade so that he can pass and be eligible to play baseball. But the grades are extrinsic motivators, or things outside of a person that motivate them to do something. Studies have shown that extrinsic motivation is not good in the long-term for learning and achievement.

So, what should Colin's teachers do instead of grades? According to humanism, grades should be replaced with self-evaluation, or thoughtful assessment of one's own work. Self-evaluation teaches students to think about what they have done and what they can still do.

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humanism: overview & practical teaching examples - video & lesson transcript | study.com

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Humanism: Overview & Practical Teaching Examples - Video & Lesson Transcript | Study.com

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Colin wants to be a baseball player when he grows up. He thinks school is boring and gets frustrated when teachers try to make him learn things that just don't seem relevant to his life. After all, who needs to know averages and percentages when he's hitting home runs?

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Language Teaching Methods: Community Language Learning

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Community Language Learning (also called Counseling Language Learning) was created by Charles A Curran, a Jesuit priest and professor of psychology, and Paul La Forge. Inspired by the humanistic psychology of Carl Rogers, it aimed to remove the anxiety from learning by changing the relationship between the teacher and student. In CLL, that relationship the "teacher" - who is known not as the teacher but as the "knower", the one who knows the language - is seen as being in the same relationship to the student as the counsellor is to a client : the client has a "problem" (in this case not knowing the language) which is currently creating confusion and causing problems. The counsellor's role is not to tell the client what to do, but to help him or her explore and resolve the problem while retaining personal autonomy.

In CLL, it is therefore the learner who to a great extent decides what is happening. The approach (at least in the beginning stages) is based around a set technique, within which the students are free to determine content. A typical CLL lesson using this technique would have the following stages :

Stage One - Investment : The students sit in a circle with a tape recorder in the middle. The knower is outside the circle. The first student who wants to say something calls the knower over, and quietly says what she wants to say in his or her own language. The knower repeats this in English, using a non-threatening and encouraging tone of voice. The student has the chance to repeat and practise the utterance, with help if necessary from the knower, before finally recording it on the tape. Another student who wishes to reply then repeats the process. This continues until a full conversation has been recorded - when I've used the approach we've probably spent about twenty to thirty minutes on this phase, though Earl Stevick (1) suggests that it should be limited to ten. He however was using it with a much larger group than I was - he describes a class of twelve whereas I only had three. In his situation each individual would obviously have been involved in the conversation relatively infrequently and a longer session could have led to a demotivating drop in pace.

Stage Two - Analysis : Between one session and the next (or possibly immediately, on the board) the knower transcribes the complete conversation, and the students then listen again to the tape while following the transcript. They then have the chance to ask for any explanation they want, and if they wish, to ask for practice activities on specific points.

Stage Three - Reflection : The students then have the chance to reflect on the whole experience, and to decide how useful it was, if they could have done things differently and so on. Again, the knower's job is not to "tell them where they went wrong" but to help them discover for themselves how they could have made the session maximally useful.

The learner is seen as passing through five psychological stages as learning progresses, which Curran likens to progressing from childhood to adulthood :

1. Birth : the learners know nothing of the target language, and are completely dependent on the knower for everything they want to say.
2. Self : the learners start to get an idea of how the language works and to use it for themselves, but still seek the knower's help. They may, for instance tell the knower what they want to say directly in the target language, looking to the knower only for confirmation or correction.
3. Separate Existence : they start to use the language without referring to the knower, and may even be resentful of his/her attempts to help.
4. Adolescence : learners continue to express themselves independently, but may be aware of gaps in their knowledge, and start to turn back to the knower.
5. Independence : learners can continue their learning independently. They no longer need the knower, and may start to act as counsellors for less advanced students.

Alan Maley (2) criticises CLL as being one of several humanistic approaches to emerge in the 70s which evolved separately from mainstream language teaching and which all imposed their own "fairly rigidly-prescriptive" method. Not everyone agrees - Earl Stevick (3) suggests that while there may have been a certain resistance to adaptation of the method at the outset "the followers of Curran were never inhibited from devising their own techniques withing the Counseling-Learning Approach." Stevick himself (1) talks of incorporating Suggestopaedic concert readings (4) into his CLL lessons, and virtually any writer on the method will describe a "typical" lesson as including features which are slightly different from the outline I've given here.

If a certain amount of flexibility is possible, is it also possible to incorporate CLL into your courses as just one technique amongst many which you use ? The answer to this will probably depend on your teaching situation :

At complete beginner level, the group needs to be fairly small or the students spend the whole time just waiting for others to record their utterances. Jo Bertrand (5) discusses the possibility of dividing large classes into groups and having them work simultaneously, but it is hard to see how this would be possible (without the presence of a second or third knower in the class) until the students have reached at least the "separate existence" stage.

If you teach students whose language you don't understand, again the method will not be possible at beginner level.

How much time do you have to spend? CLL isn't something that can be fitted into a lesson as a "filler". Each session will involve at least an hour's work, though this might be split between two lessons. And in my experience, it's not something that works well the first time you do it - or for that matter the second or the third. It's a method which involves the students in making their own choices about how to learn, evaluating their success, trying out something different, reflecting on that ... and so on. It's not until they've been through several sessions that things really start to work.

And obviously, if you want to use the method as it was intended to be used, you will need some knowledge of counselling. While there is nothing in the conversation stage of the lesson that precludes it being used as a technique in a far more teacher-guided class, bear in mind that if you intervene in a more "authoritative" way without being asked for help - for instance, by deciding who will speak and what they'll talk about in stage one, or by giving unsolicited explanations and deciding what to practice in stage two - you are no longer using CLL.

In Part Two of this article, I'll describe how I used CLL as a component of one particular course, what it meant to adopt a counselling rather than a teaching role, and the stages the learners went through as they "learnt how to learn"

Notes

1. Earl Stevick, A Way and Ways, Heinle and Heinle 1980. (Probably the best introduction to CLL, it contains two sections describing in detail a CLL course and the role of the teacher.)

3. Earl Stevick, Humanism in Language Teaching, OUP 1990

4. You can hear Sue talking about both CLL and Suggestopaedia, as well as TPR, in the podcast interview Integrating Various Methodologies into the Classroom on ESL Teacher Talk

Photo provided under Creative Commons Licence by SusanNYC via flickr

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Community Language Learning (also called Counseling Language Learning) was created by Charles A Curran, a Jesuit priest and professor of psychology, and Paul La Forge. Inspired by the humanistic psychology of Carl Rogers, it aimed to remove the anxiety from learning by changing the relationship between the teacher and student.

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The intention was that it would integrate translation so that the students would disassociate language learning with risk taking. It's a method that is based on English for communication and is extremely learner-focused. Although each course is unique and student-dictated, there are certain criteria that should be applied to all CLL classrooms, namely a focus on fluency in the early stages, an undercurrent of accuracy throughout the course and learner empowerment as the main focus.

How it works in the classroom

Stage 1- Reflection

Stage 2 - Recorded conversation

Stage 3 - Discussion

Stage 4 - Transcription

Stage 5 - Language analysis

Length of stages

Working with monolingual or multilingual classes

Working with large classes

How it works in the classroom
In a typical CLL lesson I have five stages:

Stage 1- Reflection
I start with students sitting in a circle around a tape recorder to create a community atmosphere.

The students think in silence about what they'd like to talk about, while I remain outside the circle.

To avoid a lack of ideas students can brainstorm their ideas on the board before recording.

Stage 2 - Recorded conversation
Once they have chosen a subject the students tell me in their L1 what they'd like to say and I discreetly come up behind them and translate the language chunks into English.

With higher levels if the students feel comfortable enough they can say some of it directly in English and I give the full English sentence. When they feel ready to speak the students take the microphone and record their sentence.

It's best if you can use a microphone as the sound quality is better and it's easier to pick up and put down.

Here they're working on pace and fluency. They immediately stop recording and then wait until another student wants to respond. This continues until a whole conversation has been recorded.

Stage 3 - Discussion
Next the students discuss how they think the conversation went. They can discuss how they felt about talking to a microphone and whether they felt more comfortable speaking aloud than they might do normally.

This part is not recorded.

Stage 4 - Transcription
Next they listen to the tape and transcribe their conversation. I only intervene when they ask for help.

The first few times you try this with a class they might try and rely on you a lot but aim to distance yourself from the whole process in terms of leading and push them to do it themselves.

Stage 5 - Language analysis
I sometimes get students to analyse the language the same lesson or sometimes in the next lesson. This involves looking at the form of tenses and vocabulary used and why certain ones were chosen, but it will depend on the language produced by the students.

In this way they are totally involved in the analysis process. The language is completely personalised and with higher levels they can themselves decide what parts of their conversation they would like to analyse, whether it be tenses, lexis or discourse.

With lower levels you can guide the analysis by choosing the most common problems you noted in the recording stages or by using the final transcription.

Length of stages
The timing will depend entirely on the class, how quickly they respond to CLL, how long you or they decide to spend on the language analysis stage and how long their recorded conversation is. Be careful however that the conversation isn't too long as this will in turn make the transcription very long

For and against CLL

Learners appreciate the autonomy CLL offers them and thrive on analysing their own conversations.

CLL works especially well with lower levels who are struggling to produce spoken English.

The class often becomes a real community, not just when using CLL but all of the time. Students become much more aware of their peers, their strengths and weaknesses and want to work as a team.

In the beginning some learners find it difficult to speak on tape while others might find that the conversation lacks spontaneity.

We as teachers can find it strange to give our students so much freedom and tend to intervene too much.

In your efforts to let your students become independent learners you can neglect their need for guidance.

Working with monolingual or multilingual classes
I have used CLL with both monolingual and multilingual classes and found that it works well with both. With the multilingual low-level classes I, as the teacher-counsellor, reformulated their English in the same way you might do with higher levels. However, the first few attempts at CLL work better with a monolingual class as the instructions can be given in L1. It's important that the learners understand their and your new roles in the language learning process.

Working with large classes
For the first lesson it's important to record the conversation as a whole class even though this can limit student-speaking time. It's more practical in terms of giving instructions before you start and for moving from one student to another when they need you to translate or reformulate what they want to say. The next time you use CLL however, you could split the class into two groups. This gives them more speaking time.

Make sure the groups are far enough away from each other for the recording stage but not so far that you can't move freely from one group to another.

A further alternative is that they swap tapes for the transcription stage. The language is obviously less personalised but their listening skills are being challenged in a different way and they still feel part of a whole class community.

Conclusion
Although CLL is primarily meant as a 'whole' approach to teaching I have found it equally useful for an occasional lesson, especially with teenagers. It enables me to refocus on the learner while my students immediately react positively to working in a community. They take exceptionally well to peer-correction and by working together they overcome their fear of speaking. I have also found quieter students able to offer corrections to their peers and gladly contribute to the recording stage of the lesson. It's a teaching method which encompasses all four skills while simultaneously revealing learners' styles which are more or less analytical in their approach to language learning. All of which raises our awareness as a teacher and that of our students.

Once you have tried CLL with your class, it's a good idea to evaluate the method. Here are some possible questions you could ask.

Download evaluation task.pdf

Further Reading
Charles A. Curran is the name most associated with CLL. He was a priest and psychologist who derived his ideas from 'Counselling Learning', a humanistic concept introduced by Carl Rogers in the 1950s. CLL has been categorised alongside The Silent Way and Suggestopedia because of its humanistic tendencies.

Approaches and Methods in Language Teaching by J Richards and T Rodgers CUP 2002
CLL: A Way Forward? by Rod Bolitho taken from ELT documents 113 - Humanistic Approaches: An Empirical View The British Council (1982)
Communicating Naturally in a Second Language by Wilga M. Rivers CUP 1986
Introducing Innovations into your Teaching by Denise Ozdeniz taken from Challenge and Change in Language Teaching Ed. Jane Willis and Dave Willis Macmillan Heineman 1998
Language Teaching Methodology by David Nunan Prentice Hall 1998
Reformulation and Reconstruction: Tasks that Promote 'Noticing' by Scott Thornbury taken from ELT documents 51/4 October 1997
Working with Teaching Methods by Earl W. Stevick ITP Co. 1998

Jo Bertrand, Teacher, Materials writer, British Council Paris

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The intention was that it would integrate translation so that the students would disassociate language learning with risk taking. It's a method that is based on English for communication and is extremely learner-focused.

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Humanistic language teaching is an approach based on the principle that the whole being, emotional and social, needs to be engaged in learning, not just the mind.

Example
A teacher always responds to the content of learners' written work, not just the quality of the language. They write an extended 'answer' to this work, and also offer choices for learners who prefer to write on another topic.

In the classroom
Humanistic teaching approaches include the Silent Way, Community Language Learning, Total Physical Response and Suggestopaedia.

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Humanistic language teaching is an approach based on the principle that the whole being, emotional and social, needs to be engaged in learning, not just the mind. Example A teacher always responds to the content of learners' written work, not just the quality of the language.

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The silent way is a methodology of teaching language based on the idea that teachers should be as silent as possible during a class but learners should be encouraged to speak as much as possible. There are three basic principles:

- The learner needs to discover or create
- Learning is made easier by the use of physical objects such as Cuisenaire rods
- Learning is made easier by problem-solving using the target language

Example
The teacher shows the learners a small red Cuisenaire rod and a bigger blue one and says 'The blue one is bigger than the red one'. The learners repeat this. The teacher then substitutes the rods to produce other models, and finally encourages the learners to produce their own comparisons.

In the classroom
Areas of target language where Cuisenaire rods can be useful include word boundaries, contracted forms, prepositions, word order and word stress. Learners can use the rods to first represent and then to manipulate language.

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The silent way is a methodology of teaching language based on the idea that teachers should be as silent as possible during a class but learners should be encouraged to speak as much as possible.

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This article briefly discusses Suggestopedia, a teaching method developed by a Bulgarian psychologist Georgi Lozanov. Particularly, this article explains the method's goal & characteristics, and provides sample activities for teaching. This method is commonly used in English language teaching, but I believe that this can also be used in other foreign languages like Filipino, Chinese, Korean, Arabic, and others.

The Goal of Suggestopedia as a Method of Teaching

To learn a foreign language at an accelerated pace for everyday communication by tapping mental powers and overcoming psychological barriers.

9 Characteristics of Suggestopedia as a Method of Teaching

According to Villamin et al. (1994), the nine characteristics of Suggestopedia are the following:

1. It uses the power of suggestion to help students eliminate the feeling that they cannot succeed.
2. There should be a relaxed, comfortable environment with dim lights and soft music to facilitate learning.
3. Students' imagination is used. They can assume new names, and new identities and respond to the teacher accordingly using the target language.
4. Present and explain grammar and vocabulary words, but not discuss at length or thoroughly.
5. Native language translation is used in order to get the clear meanings of words in the target language.
6. Communication takes place in the conscious and subconscious of the learners. The former is about the linguistic message. It is where the students pay attention to a dialogue that is being read, while the latter is where the music is played as a background. Music suggests that learning is easy.
7. Teaching is done by integrating music, song, and drama.
8. The emphasis of teaching is more on content. Errors made by students are tolerated at the beginning of the lesson but in the later part, the correct forms are used by the teachers.
9. No formal tests are given, but the evaluation is done during the normal in-class performance.

Sample of Classroom Activities using Suggestopedia

If you are a teacher or mentor, you may use the following activities using the Suggestopedia method.

1. Choose a background music that will give an impression or feeling that you are in a forest. For example, the music may be punctuated by the chirping of the birds or the sounds of the leaves as they dance in the wind, or any sound indicating that the location is in the forest.

In the classroom, turn off the lights and play the background music. Then, group the students into three, and ask them to close their eyes, and let them imagine, for one minute, that they are animals, birds, trees, or flowers.

After that, ask them to create their own dialogues on how people should take care of the environment. But in their dialogues they have to remember their roles. If one assumes to be a bird, his/her point of view and dialogues should be like a bird, and not as a human being.

2. Choose a story. Practice reading the story with emotions or feeling. Then, choose appropriate background music for the story. It would be best if you prepare it in advance.

In the classroom, ask the students to relax and make themselves comfortable. Allow them to sit on the floor or lie down, and to be with their classmates or listen by themselves while seated at their desk. Then, turn off the lights, play the music and start reading the story. You may ask questions in between to check that they are listening intently to you and to keep their motivation high. In answering your questions, don't correct the students' grammatical errors immediately. Focus first on the content. Before you end the lesson, at the later part, you may give the correct form by repetition.

Don't you think these are good ideas to start the ball rolling in class? If you believe so, then try Suggestopedia as a method of teaching!
References
Rhalmi, M. (2009). The origin of Suggestopedia. Retrieved 16 January 2015 from http://www.myenglishpages.com/blog/suggestopedia/#.VLjUy5X9ljo

Villamin, A.M., Salazar, E.L., Bala, E.C., & Sunga, N.R. (1994). Innovative strategies in communication arts. Quezon City, QC: Phoenix Publishing House, Inc.

2015 January 21 M. G. Alvior

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How to Apply Suggestopedia as a Method of Teaching - SimplyEducate.Me

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This article briefly discusses Suggestopedia, a teaching method developed by a Bulgarian psychologist Georgi Lozanov. Particularly, this article explains the method's goal & characteristics, and provides sample activities for teaching. This method is commonly used in English language teaching, but I believe that this can also be used in other foreign languages like Filipino, Chinese, ...

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A Teaching Method: Suggestopedia Written by: Anggun Apriana (06081001022) Mutiara Islamiyah (06081001038) English Education Study Program Sriwijaya University INTRODUCTION Teacher should be creative in using different kinds of teaching method. They have to choose an appropriate method to transfer the knowledge because they will find different situation and different students in the class.