V CLA & Church Planting
* Introduction
CLA is your introduction to the life and language of a people who will change your life forever. Your life lived among these people for whom Christ died will, by God’s grace, help to open the doors of opportunity that will result in their hearing the precious Gospel.

This initial time given to learning and becoming is not just a stage to pass through on your way to “real ministry.” It is, in fact, your first, and for now, your most important ministry.

As a missionary, when you launch into CLA you are doing it with a long-range plan in mind that goes way beyond just understanding a new culture and language. Pouring your life out to gain meaningful relationships with the people you’ve come to reach is a great privilege, reserved for all who believe God for His enabling for such a challenging and eternally worthy task.
* CLA in the Church Planting Model
Traditionally our view of church planting has been to see it in stages, perhaps as “boxes” on a flow chart. First we do this, then that, then finally we reach the ministry boxes, where we really do what we came to do. So Culture and Language Acquisition is sometimes viewed as being a step, merely one of the boxes shown in the diagram below.

Figure 1
Figure 1


We survey, we enter, we learn culture and language, etc. With the focus on ourselves throughout this process, we can only hope that when we “phase out” the church doesn’t “phase out” with us. Rather, from the beginning, let’s turn our focus from ourselves to what God is doing among the people we have come to reach. Let’s shift our focus from a list of tasks to the future and ongoing function of the church.

The question now becomes, “How can I best fit into and serve that purpose through my entry among them, my house location, and through my study of the culture and language?”

Below are four on-going purposes which can help provide that proper focus—even during the culture and language acquisition time. These four purposes are actually different views of the same process: the growth and development of the church you have come to plant.

God's Word for the Church - Entrance and Engagement
The Life of the Church - Form and Function
Discipleship in the Church - Leaders and Led
Identity as a Church - Within and Without

These purposes are so interrelated and wound together in a web of fibers that they could only be characteristic of something that is living and growing. The model of boxes and stages falls short of capturing the awe of this amazing process as God plants his living church. All of these four purposes begin very early on and continue throughout the church planting process—even following your “phase out.” As your focus turns to these purposes, you can better see just where the issues of CLA (or
other activities) fit in.

Look more closely at the “Life of the Church.” In this context, “Life” includes anything that is going to affect the spiritual life of the church—first of all whether or not a church will be born, and then how healthy and long lasting it will be. “Function” is simply the evidence of that spiritual life—what actually happens on a practical level in the function of the living church. A primary focus for the CLA time is your concern,
“whether or not a church will be born.”

In that God, the Gardener, has chosen us as planters and waterers for His work of bringing about the life and function of a local church, there are two major factors in focus for us during the culture and language acquisition:

The Context—the culture and situation in which the church is being planted.
The Church Planters—how we live, teach and disciple in response to that context.
* The Context
To devote yourself to the careful study of the lives of the people is to give priority to the context (the “nest”!) into which God will give birth to His church. Given this eternal purpose, your study becomes much more than the tedious gathering of cultural data and meaningless facts.

Knowing the soil and demonstrating God’s genuine interest in them by loving and learning is the first important ministry of church planting. The primary role given to the study of “Culture Events” in this program supports your need to be focused “out there” on the life of the people you came to reach. The “lessons” for this fascinating study are “out there” in the daily life of the people as they live in their current context.

This focus on the life of the people continues seamlessly as the CLA time blends into other levels of ministry focus. CLA is really just one of the first threads of church planting. Those relationships built during the CLA time are the same relationships that God uses to build his church. The language assistant helping you with TPR could be a future Bible teacher. The couple you are talking with in their house may be a future elder and his wife. Any relationship is worth building in the light of their potential in God's eyes as a future brother or sister in Christ.

Seamless Focus
Seamless Focus

V The Role of Church Planters
In our consideration of “whether or not a church will be born” it can be sobering for us to think of the significant role that church planters play. At issue here is not just our readiness to be usable instruments but also our willingness to become usable instruments.

CLA is primarily a time of learning—of coming to a point of knowing and understanding the language and culture of the people. But the greater test will be our going beyond knowing and understanding to becoming and being; becoming and being someone that you are not now; changing some things about yourself for the purpose of reaching the people God loves. Christ himself is the foremost example of this and is a pattern for us.
* Christ's Example
[Philippians 2:5-8 ] ”Your attitude should be the same that Christ Jesus had. Though he was God, He did not demand and cling to His rights as God. He made himself nothing; He took the humble position of a slave and appeared in human form. And in human form He obediently humbled Himself even further by dying a criminal's death on a cross.”
Church Planter
Church Planter


Christ did not demand and cling to his rights as God—he gave up the privileges associated with his higher status or rank, and took on the nature and characteristics of humans.

The process we often refer to as “culture study” is really a study of how we might become “incarnate” (real people in the flesh) among the people we have come to reach—laying aside privileges of status, taking on new forms–becoming that usable instrument that God desires. Jesus came to initiate change and rebirth. He did not come to become like us in every way. But this did not prevent him from making every effort to become like us in every way he could. His earthly life was a perfect balance of Grace and Truth.
V Introduction to CLA
* Our Mandate: Go... and Make Disciples
Reaching…. people… for Christ.

Effective Church Planting and discipleship are not academic or impersonal efforts. Real ministry focuses on people and requires relationships and the ability to communicate at an incredibly deep level.

Because of this, the most effective missionaries through the years have always recognized the need for “learning the language” and have also sensed the need for “understanding the culture,” as well.
* CLA & Relationships: One Task
“CLA” is short for Culture/Language Acquisition, the process of learning a new culture and language together as one seamless endeavor in the context of real relationships.

Relationships, Language Fluency and Cultural Insight: it is impossible to accomplish any one of the three without the other two:

You cannot truly learn a language or gain insight into a culture without meaningful interaction with the members of the community where you share in their lives.

You cannot develop relationships without being able to communicate and without insight into the world and the hearts of people.

You cannot understand a culture without knowing members of that culture and being able to communicate and to understand them as they share with you.

In real life, people, culture and language are interrelated in every occurrence. Every incident and each utterance involve culture and language and the people who speak that language, live out that culture and hold those values.

So the best way to learn culture and language and to develop relationships is to be a part of the community, sharing in their world.
* More than the "Translation" of Words
Much miscommunication comes through trying to express foreign thoughts in a foreign manner by simply translating words “into another language.” This is not real communication, and it certainly has little to do with reaching people. Relationships, empathetic understanding, trust, and a high degree of communicative competence are required to really stir hearts and impact people with God’s message.
* A Program for Church Planters
This CLA Manual grew out of these recognized needs—a program collating the attitudes and techniques used by the most successful missionaries, so our Church Planters could benefit from:
More and deeper relationships
Higher levels of language proficiency
Greater cultural insight and the ability to apply this in ministry
* CLA is "Becoming" -Not Merely Learning.
CLA is much more than simply learning—or acquiring—new information, the learner must actually change, becoming a different person, one who can live in a different way in a new world. This idea of becoming is at the heart of the incarnational model of cross-cultural ministry: as missionaries we must follow our Lord’s example where he fully entered our world in order to effectively reach us.

CLA Consultant Greg Thomson recently described this idea of becoming as the “redemptive aspect of CLA,” which, in many ways, is more important than the cognitive, or mental, aspect of how our brains learn language or culture.

Greg rightly says that we need to “become people that members of the host culture can talk to.” That is, we must first of all come to deserve their trust, and we must also come to be able to understand them—to understand them, and not merely comprehend their words.

He further states that we must also “become people that members of the host culture can listen to…people that they even desire to listen to.” Again, they must know and trust us and we must be able communicate at a level which enables us to pass on our message in a relevant, understandable and interesting way.
* Purpose of this Manual
The manual will guide you in gaining fluency in an unknown (and possibly yet unwritten) language, and in understanding, appreciating, and being able to function within the culture of its speakers. It will provide you with ways to discover the heart and soul of your new community, so that you can become an active, functioning member of that society, thus opening the door for you to have a positive impact and an effective ministry.
V CLA Program in a Nutshell
This CLA program is organized around field-tested principles and techniques which combine the development of Relationships, Language Fluency and Cultural Insight into one seamless routine as you progress through clearly defined levels of proficiency.

This program provides you with all the following:
* Principles
six foundational “Tenets of CLA,” plus three vital supporting principles to guide everything you do in CLA
* Program
a simple list of recurring Activities to follow from start to finish
V Learning Cycle
in each Learning Cycle, you will perform the same list of ACTIVITIES, which are a part of the whole process. STRATEGIES and TOOLS relevant to each activity and stage will be provided, as well.
A simple pattern to follow consistently throughout your CLA
* Plan
observe real life, then plan how you will experience a part of it
* Participate
experience a situation and glean culture and language
* Process
organize the material you gathered
* Practice
experience again and practice
* Context
the concept of Culture Event as the real-life contexts for learning
V Progression
clearly defined levels of proficiency
* Four distinct Stages of CLA, as you work toward each proficiency level
* Aspects of culture and language to focus on at each stage
* An ordered progression of social and linguistic skills to develop
V Cyclic Learning Pattern
how to learn more and more as you are ready
* manageable learning—not trying to learn everything at once before moving on
* progressive learning—interacting with the same Culture Events over and over
* focused learning—learning what you are ready for at any point in time
V Strategies, Tips and Techniques
* For each stage of your CLA
* Applicable universally around the world
* Supplemental Materials, Examples and References to help you
This program is built upon a very small set of principles and concepts. If you come to understand these foundational elements, everything will make sense. By reading the introductory sections of this manual, you will get a good overview of these principles.
* CLA: Broken into Stages
Learn the language! Learn and adjust to the culture!

If you feel like CLA is one big task—just a blur between you and your final objective, you will be understandably discouraged. But it’s not like that: this CLA program will take you through a progression of distinct stages, each with a different focus, each with different short-term tasks and activities designed to help you reach a short-range goal.

Starting Point - Zero Ability to Understand, Communicate, or Function
Starting Point - Zero Ability to Understand, Communicate, or Function


Your CLA program will be divided into a Warm-Up Period, followed by four distinct STAGES OF CLA. You will be directed to experience real CULTURE EVENTS, learning more and more with each new exposure, an experience described as “CYCLIC LEARNING.”
* CLA principles and Techniques for any Situation
A manual like this cannot tell you everything that you will encounter, since that is language- and culture-specific. But it contains general principles and strategies which can then be used to learn any culture and language, as you are exposed to them.

So this manual is generic and flexible—you can stay within the principles of this program while adding your own ideas and strategies that work for you. In addition to the information in this manual, your field CLA Consultants will provide you with help, suggestions, ideas and lists of language features and/or culture events specific to your country, region, language and culture.

The principles in this manual, the Six Tenets of CLA, will give you a guideline for evaluating everything you do and for determining what other techniques and strategies you may incorporate into your CLA; anything that fits within the tenets is great! Together with the Three Supporting Principles of a good CLA program, you have the foundation for success.

All this can be summed up as follows: This manual encourages learners to gain most new knowledge of the culture and language through consistent, strategic exposure to the daily life of the people. After being processed in various ways, this new knowledge will be learned and assimilated primarily through communicative interaction with the people and participation in their everyday lives, in the context of building meaningful relationships with them.

A good CLA program must recognize clearly defined, universal stages and guide learners through them. These stages, and the measurement of a learner’s progress, should be based upon the ability to perform cultural and linguistic tasks, and to function in real contexts of interaction.

Such a program will succeed best when the learner is enthusiastic, highly motivated and disciplined. Consistent encouragement and guidance by a consultant or language coach, who can help to adapt specific details of the program to the individual learner, is also vital.

V Three Foundational Principles of the CLA Program
* Culture and Language Together
Culture and language are treated as inseparable parts of one whole. They are not separate artifacts to be analyzed and learned or merely learned about. This program is based on the belief that authentic culture and language cannot really be learned apart from one another. However, it is not only that they must be learned simultaneously, but that each is an integral part of the other. Language is the expression of culture; and to a great extent, culture is expressed through language.

Here are some definitions upon which this program is based:

CULTURE is the shared knowledge, behavior and values, consciously and unconsciously passed from one generation to the next, which make a particular people unique. On the surface, culture is what people have, know, think, do and say. Under the surface, culture also deals with the why; that is, their values, feelings, motives and attitudes.

LANGUAGE is a culture-specific code for describing what exists and occurs in a particular society, including the thoughts and feelings of the members of that society.

To define culture and language in the simplest terms, we could say, “Culture is what wants to be said; language is how it is expressed.”

We need to realize that language is rooted in culture, and that culture is much more than teaching illustrations and interesting anecdotes—it is the very heart of a people and it is played out in their daily lives.

For our purpose of wanting to have an impact and to be a part of peoples’ lives, neither language nor culture is an academic subject to be merely studied and learned at a desk. The brain learns and processes language differently than subjects such as mathematics or history, and both language and culture are social, interactive activities that must be acquired and practiced in the context of such real-life, relational situations.
* Spoken Language over Written Form
This program will place the main focus on live culture and language and on learning from hearing and responding to the spoken, rather than the written, form. Here you will be guided to note and record culture and live language in a real situation and then to listen to it and interact with it later. Most learners should not write much of anything at all as they work toward Basic Level proficiency, especially if they are limited to phonetics (i.e. in an unwritten language). Transcription, if any, will serve as part of the follow-up, working from the recorded text, and will facilitate analysis, rather than language learning.
* Inductive Learning
Finally, this program will guide you through an inductive approach, with the goal of gaining an insider’s view of the culture and language. Read below for more details about this approach…
V Getting to the Insider's View
The purpose of CLA for the missionary is more than just “learning a language and culture.” The goal of having a significant spiritual impact requires becoming a part of the community, and even more, it means getting to know the people of that community at a deep level. As William Rayburn said years ago in his classic Don’t Learn That Language!:

“Real communication takes place between two people when each understands the assumptions which lie behind the other's words and phrases.”
* Etic and Emic
The terms “etic” and “emic” have been coined from linguistic terminology to express the difference between an outsider’s perspective (the etic, based only upon what is objectively observable), and an insider’s perspective (emic). Your goal is to reach that insider’s perspective, to understand what is going on inside the hearts and heads of the members of your new community. The path to that goal travels via the observable aspects of their life. An Emic, Inductive Approach is the best way to gain an insider’s perspective.
* CLA: Using the Observable to Get to the Hidden
The diagram below shows how your hidden goal (the motives, values, beliefs, knowledge and thoughts of the people) must be reached through meaningful exposure to the observable elements of their life (their actions, relationships, speech, and the physical things in their world).

Observation of the Hidden
Observation of the Hidden


The diagram also shows how the learner is the bridge between the known and the unknown. Only as we move from being a newly-introduced part of their world to becoming more a part of their world, and actually gaining an insider’s perspective of their worldview, thoughts and values, can we meaningfully communicate to them the completely new concepts which are contained in our message of the Gospel. This is why a CLA program which is based upon culture and relationships is the very heart of your ministry.
* How You are Led to an Insider's View
The following diagram shows how relationships and your experience of the culture are the context for gaining an insider’s view. You start with your own subjective observations and observable data such as pictures, then gradually get more of a glimpse of the insider’s view through ongoing experience and conversations with members of the host community. Finally, further investigation and confirmation of your data and hypotheses, can lead you to conclusions, and eventually, to cultural themes—the hidden insider’s view you seek to discover.

Cultural Insight
Cultural Insight


This chart does not show precise details of the procedures for Processing data in the CLA program, but it gives a general idea of how different kinds of input, tested and confirmed, contribute to the drawing of conclusions and the understanding of themes.
* An Adventure
Your task of Culture and Language Acquisition (CLA) is a large and challenging undertaking! It will consume most of your full-time attention for the next several years. That is the kind of commitment it will take for you to reach your goal of fluency and the ability to function in your new community.

But CLA is an exciting adventure with rich returns—rewarding in the short term, as you identify with a new culture and develop rich relationships, and worthwhile in the long-term, as you reach the point where you can have a positive impact on your new community.
V Foundational CLA Principles
This section is the core of the CLA program and the most important part of the entire manual. The Six Tenets of CLA explained here form the basis of everything you will do. They encompass the manner and thecontext in which a culture and language should be learned. Familiarize yourself with these tenets and with how they interact with one another. This will help you to understand the reasons behind the procedures and strategies laid out in the working sections of this manual.

But how and where is not enough. Along with the six tenets, there are Three Supporting Principles which define how to provide the energy and support that is vital to the success of any CLA program.
V Six Tenets of CLA
The relationship between the tenets and supporting principles of CLA is illustrated by a tree—a living, growing thing, where all components are present from the very beginning, but grow in height, depth and girth over time.
V
Tenets of CLA
Tenets of CLA

The six Tenets of CLA, which are the very heart of the CLA program, encompass:
the reason/goal for CLA--relationships
the arena of CLA activity--the life of the people
the means of reaching your goal--relationships, firsthand experience, focusing on comprehension and communicative activities
the focus of your efforts stage-by-stage--engaging in activities
appropriate to your current level, and which help you to reach the proficiencies of the next level.
* The Culture—that is, the world and daily life of the people, is the soil, your context for growth, the very ground you will draw upon for culture, language and relationships.
* The way you tap into the life of the people is through personal Experience, and the deeper your roots go over time, the better.
* Out of your time spent in their world, will grow the trunk of the tree: Relationships, which are the center and strength of the tree.
* The connection between good relationships and fruitful CLA is shown by the branches of CLA activities and strategies involving Comprehension and Communication.
* Lastly, the foliage and fruit produced by the tree are the linguistic, cultural, social and relational Proficiencies you will gain.
V Not shown in this diagram are the three Supporting Principles: Learner-Motivated, Consultant-Guided and Situationally-Adapted.
* The learner’s Motivation is like the sun and rain needed to keep a tree alive and growing.
* A consultant’s Guidance is like the pruning and feeding done by the one tending the orchard, helping the tree to bear fruit up to its full potential.
* And just as the gardener must remove stones and weeds and prepare the soil, the consultant and learner together must Adapt the program to fit the individual learner and situation.
* Relationship Centered
Effective ministry will be built on good relationships, but you cannot wait until after CLA to develop them! You are not merely trying to learn about the people and their culture in your new community, but are seeking to get to know them as individuals. In the same way, you are not simply learning “how to talk” in their language, but rather you are learning to relate to them and to communicate with them. Successful CLA will grow out of interacting within good relationships, and such positive relationships will in turn enhance and facilitate your CLA progress and your ministry.

Relationships—many relationships, and many varied and good relationships will be vital in at least two ways—as both means and as motivation. Good personal relationships will serve to help you to become fluent and culturally adjusted. They will also form a vital part of your motivation, since your goal of having an effective ministry is the whole reason for taking on the challenge of CLA in the first place. The relationships you build during CLA will be a key starting point for your ministry, and the ability to make and maintain new relationships in your new community will also be of utmost importance.

So this CLA program will encourage you to spend a great deal of time out in the community, to be transparent, and to engage in lots of meaningful interaction with many people all throughout the CLA process. Locking into one language helper, or doing all your CLA in your home or in an office does not facilitate building relationships as much as being a part of the community and its activities will. Treating people simply as “data sources” is also counterproductive. Don’t simply treat every relationship as a CLA opportunity. Instead, treat every CLA encounter as part of building a relationship, and you will reach your goals.

This tenet supports the need for your CLA to be “Experience-Oriented.” You should not merely seek firsthand exposure to culture and language as data, but you need to be a part of people’s lives, building relationships through spending time with them in their world.

CLA is not “learning the language and culture.” CLA is getting to know people!
* Culture Derived
“Culture-Derived” does not simply mean that you are supposed to learn “about the culture” or “the cultural way to say things,” or even to learn “the cultural things to say.”

One defining aspect of “Culture-Derived” is that culture and language are inseparable; language is probably best considered as a sub-set of the culture.

But the major concept behind “Culture-Derived” is that you should be getting exposure to real life—to significant amounts of culture/language as they happen naturally, apart from elicitation, prompting or any influence from you as a learner. As much as possible, you want to experience Culture Events as they would happen without them being skewed or changed in focus because of the presence of an inquisitive outsider, with pen and other gadgets in hand. In other words, there's a world of difference between the real situation of “Instant cooks rice” and the artificial situation of “Joe Missionary learns about Instant cooking rice.”

So, the bulk of your initial exposure—the very core of the program—will be from these naturally-occurring Culture Events where, as much as possible, you will initially be a “fly on the wall.” In some situations, it may be better not to bring a digital camera and recorder the first time you experience a Culture Event, unless you can do this unobtrusively. Then later, there will be planned, intentional follow-up consisting of re-entry into similar situations where your agenda will be to ask, interview, elicit and investigate. Then you will also spend time conversing and discussing other Culture Events and other topics which come up. But the main, foundational exposure will be taken from natural Culture Events.

This program provides you with strategies and techniques for getting that kind of exposure, and for maximizing the benefit from it. It will help you to focus your attention and not be overwhelmed by the immensity of casual exposure to the entire culture/language all at once. In other words, the program is not simply “hang out and observe until you are fluent.”
* Experience Oriented
This tenet is the complement to “Culture-Derived.” The best CLA will come as you personally witness and experience the Culture Events—seeing what happens, and hearing the language used in the real-life context. This is better than learning abstractly or trying to learn only from someone else’s second-hand experience. As much as possible, the culture and language you gain should come from personally experienced events and review of what was seen and heard. The benefit of other’s experience is that it can serve as preparation for your own experience, making your own time with the people that much more profitable.

Of course, in some situations you will not be able to be in the community getting exposure, and will be forced to do your CLA from a distance. Also, in team situations, quality materials based upon a co-worker’s previous exposure can be of great value to supplement and give direction to your own times of exposure. But the best approach to CLA—and the best way for you to get the most benefit from others’ materials—is for you to personally spend a significant amount of your time out with the people.

There is also a place for texts about events which you did not personally experience, but those come later in your CLA; even then, as much as possible, you should study them as follow-up to similar, personally experienced events. The basic pattern for you to follow should always be: personally observe, experience and participate in a real-life event. Then, as follow-up, ask, clarify, research, converse, etc., based on that event. Finally, you should go back and participate in similar events. Make personal observation, experience, participation and practice a repeated, ongoing process.

These next two tenets have to do with the inherently interactive nature of language as a means of communication, and the way in which our brains seem to learn it.
* Comprehension Based
This tenet is based on the principle that language is learned through trying to understand, and that comprehension comes before speaking ability. Language is not simply a “set of habits” learned by rote practice, i.e., saying it over and over until you “remember” it. Rather, language is a creative act. And unlike an academic subject such as history, language is not simply a list of facts to be memorized. Rather, to a great extent, language fluency is acquired by the very act of trying to comprehend, or understand, real language. Your mind makes unconscious connections and inferences by putting together what you already know with what may be inferred from the context.

Of course, for some complex grammatical features, it helps to “prime the pump,” so to speak, by having some conscious explanation. This is especially helpful for certain adult learners. But such explanation should never take the place of comprehension-based activities. A conscious, “study-and-learn” approach is not the path to fluency; but grammatical awareness from analysis which supplements well-planned, communicative drills can help you to be aware, in order to enhance your comprehension and the benefit you will receive from listening.
* Communication Focused
Comprehension always grows ahead of the ability to produce language. But fluency and the reinforcement of what has been acquired through comprehension activities come through speaking.

The most successful language learners engage in large amounts of extemporaneous speaking practice. Actual communicative interaction in real-life situations is more effective than rote “speaking” practice. You will learn more—and better—if you are really trying to communicate something and get a response, rather than simply repeating pre-planned lines as practice. In other words you are trying to say something, rather than quoting the next line in a memorized lesson or dialogue. When there is a need for “drills,” you will find the most effective (and certainly the most interesting!) drills are those which are the most communicative.

So this program will ask you to spend lots of time in trying to communicate creatively—mostly within the range of what you know how to say at your current level of proficiency, while attempting to stretch yourself just beyond that. The responses of your conversation partner fall back into the “comprehension-based” tenet, forcing you to understand what was said, so as to form an appropriate reply. The two tenets work together and have a tremendous effect on your progress.
V Proficiency Measured
When learning a new culture and language, you are doing much more than merely learning “how to say” things, or “what people believe and do in this culture.” You are gaining proficiencies, the ability to do things with language and to function in cultural situations.

These proficiencies grow in a common, recognizable order and are described in increments called “proficiency levels.” This CLA program recognizes this and encourages you to base your learning activities on your current proficiency level as you work toward the proficiencies of the next level. Learners often make the mistake of trying to gain proficiencies which are too far beyond them; this results in frustration and lessens their rate of progress.

NTM has taken ACTFL’s guidelines for speaking proficiency and combined them with an ordered progression of proficiencies in cultural knowledge and insight, relationships and missionary adjustment, to create combined CLA Proficiency Guidelines.

This CLA Manual, and the ordered progression of NTM’s F.A.I.R. CLA Proficiency Guidelines are based upon what a learner can reasonably be expected to understand and do at each stage, in light of their ordered acquisition of the Text Types as defined by ACTFL:
Words, phrases and memorized bits of language
Sentences, the ability to question/answer
Paragraphs, narration and description in past/present/future
Extended discourse

CLA must also consistently move through the progression of:
Hear/comprehend/respond
Mimic
Reproduce by rote
Produce creatively

In order to maintain the efficiency of “working at your level,” you will need periodic comprehension CLA evaluations to determine your proficiency level, as well as your strong and weak areas. Then consultant guidance can be effective and individually tailored to your situation.

But a question every missionary engaged in CLA asks is, “When will I be finished?” We all realize that we must be “good enough” in the language and have “enough” understanding of the culture before we can engage in effective ministry, but how good is “good enough”? In light of the incredible depth at which we must communicate when doing Church Planting, with ministries involving evangelism, discipleship, counseling, leadership development, translation, etc., we must set the bar very high!

This program gives guidance in doing CLA all the way to the highest proficiency level, and the descriptions in the F.A.I.R. CLA Proficiency Guidelines define what that level of proficiency involves.
* CLA Evaluations and Proficiency Levels
The descriptions in NTM’s CLA Proficiency Guideline does more than help with evaluations. It provides an underlying support to your entire CLA program, helping to identify the proficiencies, knowledge, understanding and successful adjustments which should be gained during each stage of CLA. Clearly defined, level-specific proficiencies also help to determine the most appropriate CLA activities for you to engage in during each stage of CLA. CLA RESOURCE CLA Proficiency Guideline

You may find evaluations to be intimidating, but they are both necessary and helpful. Mere “pass-or-fail” exams give little help, but proper assessment can encourage you by giving a measure of progress attained, and it can give guidance to your consultants by pointing out specific areas where help is needed.

Measuring proficiency is easier to accomplish in a trade language where the consultant speaks the language, but trained consultants can be confident in giving proficiency evaluations in tribal languages, and in culture, as well.
V Three Supporting Principles
In addition to the six tenets, the following three principles are vital to the success of any CLA program. These principles provide the energy and support to keep your program going and progressing on track.

The following tenets are an expanded description of the principles underlying what Greg Thomson, in “Language Learning in the Real World for Beginners” (1993), has called “key principles for ongoing language learning” in a CLA program:

Principle I: Expose yourself to massive comprehensible input (Comprehension-Based)
Principle II: Engage in extensive extemporaneous speaking (Communication-Focused)
Principle III: Learn to know the people whose language you are learning (Relationship-Centered, Culture-Derived and Experience-Oriented)

This manual will guide you in following these principles in a Culture-Derived, Experience-Oriented program. This means:
more time in the community, among the people
more time experiencing their world with them
more time interacting
less time at the desk
less of a paper-focused approach
more real, communicative interaction
less mere “practice”

See the Missionary’s CLA Manifesto for a reminder of your commitment to these tenets and principles of CLA. Print it out and post it in a prominent place! Also, click here to see the Anti-Tenets of CLA so you know how not to be!
* Learner Motivated
Motivation—discipline, setting goals, flexibility, creativity, dedication, and the willingness to work hard—these are essential characteristics for you to be a successful learner in any CLA program. No amount of instruction, strategies or techniques will help much if you don’t diligently apply them day after day. CLA and the experience of immersion into another culture can be exhausting, and throughout most of your time of CLA in a tribal allocation, you will not have someone there to push you ahead; you have to trust the Lord to give you the needed intrinsic motivation.

What is termed here as “Learner-Motivated” is often described in other literature as “Self-Directed” or “Learner-Directed.” This is true in the sense that a good learner must be motivated, disciplined and active. You must take ownership and responsibility for your own CLA progress and work hard. You must maintain the momentum yourself, and you must realize that you can't blame the program, the consultant, your language helpers, or anyone else. Your Culture/Language Helpers and the members of your new community will not teach you the language—you must apply good strategies to get the knowledge that you need from them.

But, of course, by “self-directed” no one means “self-sufficient” or “independent.” No, in fact, being truly Learner-Motivated will also mean taking initiative to seek out consultant help—and to diligently heed and apply any input that you receive. And the most important aspect of being Learner-Motivated is to acknowledge your dependence upon God and to maintain your relationship with Him, and to trust Him for help and encouragement every day.
* Consultant Guided
No one of us knows it all. We can all learn from others, especially from those who have been there before us, and those who have helped many others find success at what we ourselves are working through.

Good consultant help all throughout your CLA is vital. A consultant, teacher or language coach can be a good resource for a variety of helps and strategies, based on their study and experience and their having knowledge of a full quiver of tools. The consultant can help you to tweak the program to work best for you as an individual, whereas on your own, you probably lack the experience to make a lot of changes.

A consultant can also give you specific tips and guidance relevant to your country or region, something a one-for-all manual like this cannot do.
* Situationally Adapted
Each learner is an individual and every situation is unique. Any CLA program needs to be flexible to fit you and the unique language/culture circumstances you are facing in your new community.

But learner/situation adaptation is best done in concert with a consultant. So “Learner-Motivated” plus “Consultant-Guided” equals “Situationally- Adapted.” You will be wise to draw on a consultant’s experience, rather than making major changes in your CLA program just because something feels easier or is more comfortable for you. Of course, you are encouraged to be innovative and creative, but it is important to keep within a basic, established program and be willing to listen to consultant help, to be guided, and to seek the voice of experience for input regarding your innovations.

A consultant can help you to take fullest advantage of your natural learning style, by suggesting strategies that you may not be aware of. At the same time, they can help you make up for your weaknesses by encouraging you to employ some effective methods and techniques which relate to other learning styles, even when these other techniques may be less comfortable for you. This kind of help will ensure that you have a broader, richer learning environment and a better CLA experience.

Remember, knowing your learning style does not tell you the one-and-only way in which you should learn. Rather, it explains why you are most comfortable in certain types of learning activities, and why you unconsciously default to them and avoid others. But in many learning activities—especially in language—it is best to involve the entire person and to employ a “multi-style” approach.
V The Culture Event
Any naturally-occurring event, scene or setting in the life of the community is a “Culture Event.”

The Culture Event is the basic context of your exposure to both the culture and the language. By using naturally-occurring (non-elicited) Culture Events as the basis for your primary culture and language exposure, you will be assured of learning natural language and of seeing life as it really happens among the people you want to get to know. This is so much better than eliciting language out of context and doing culture interviews completely apart from any real-life situation.

Results of Exposure to Culture Event
Results of Exposure to Culture Event

* How Exposure to Culture Events Will Help You
Observing the life of the people, you will notice countless Culture Events going on all the time. You should make a plan and then gain exposure through those Culture Events. The product will be your language and culture data, which, together with additional exposure and interaction with the people, are your means to relationships and fluency in the language—the very foundation of your future ministry. Each Culture Event is a rich source for your learning everything from vocabulary (the objects present), kinship and language (description of what is happening, what is naturally spoken about in the event), to the values underlying speech and actions.
V Culture Events Big and Small
Note that the term “Culture Event” (or CE) does not necessarily refer only to big events like weddings or religious ceremonies. The culture event is simply anything that naturally happens and/or is spoken by the people—ANYthing!
V Examples of Culture Events might be:
* cooking of meals
* fetching water of firewood
* hunting
* receiving visitors into a home
* meeting someone on a trail
* plating crops
* fishing
* weddings
* religious ceremonies
* introductions
* The CE is both Culture and Language as they occur together
Each Culture Event occurs naturally and involves: people, speech, objects, setting, action, and underlying values and motives

At every Culture Event, you will be exposed to what the people do, and what they say. That exposure will form the primary basis for your CLA experience. What you see and hear will increase your knowledge and fluency and, as times passes, this will enable you to become more of an active participant and less of a merely passive observer in similar Culture Events.
* What About Elicitation?
Of course, in your early CLA you won’t be able to understand what is being said in a Culture Event—you have to build up to that. So there will be times when you must create an artificial situation such as various types of elicitation, role-play, etc., as part of your CLA investigation and practice. But these are not your primary exposure to the language and culture; rather they should serve as follow-up to, and investigation of, natural Culture Events to which you have already been exposed. Such techniques also prepare you for a more profitable re-exposure to a Culture Event. It is out in actual Culture Events that you will be truly exposed to the real world of the people, and that will be the context for forming relationships.
V Your Needs as a Learner
* Exposure to many and varied Culture Events
* Strategies to maximize your exposure
* The means to "take exposure with you"
* Ways to benefit the most from said exposure
* Strategies to use what you have gained
V The CLA Learning Cycle
The Culture Event is the basic context of your exposure during CLA. But how can you make the most of the Culture Events going on around you? You cannot learn everything all at once! The Learning Cycle consists of four simple steps you will follow repeatedly to get that exposure, to benefit from it, and to get meaningful re-exposure.
* What to Do?!
CLA involves so much new information and there are so many techniques and strategies, it can be confusing at times. “What do I do today?” is one of the learner’s most frequent questions. It helps to have a simple, repeatable procedure to make the process more manageable.

Here is an easy-to-remember, 4-Phase Learning Cycle, which you will follow through all the stages of your CLA. This cycle will become very familiar and will help you to plan and implement your CLA from the very beginning right up to the time you are approaching Superior Level.

The CLA Learning Cycle
The CLA Learning Cycle


In reality, this entire CLA program can be summed up as “Apply the Tenets of CLA to the Learning Cycle, over and over and over…” There are many activities which are performed as you work through the Learning Cycle. Exactly how these are done will vary somewhat, depending on which Stage of CLA you are in. This is explained in more detail in the CLA Activities file CLA PROGRAM CLA Activities. For now, here is an overview of how the Learning Cycle works.
V Starting with Observation
Initially, of course, you must start with observation—not planning. Start by noticing what is happening and what is being said in your new community. What Culture Events are occurring through which you may gain exposure? This is the heart of a Culture-Derived CLA program. Such observation starts during your Warm-Up Period, when you begin to notice Culture Events going on all around you every day.
V Plan
The first phase of the Learning Cycle is to Plan. Here are the types of things you need to plan:
* Which previously observed Culture Event to observe/experience/ participate in
* Where, with whom
* Any permissions or preparations required before your arrival

* The data gathering techniques you will use
* Participate
The second phase of the Learning Cycle is to Participate. What is meant by that is “Pure Observation” of what people are doing and saying (i.e. Observe and record a Culture Event), and Active Participation where you are involved (i.e. Elicit language/culture and take part in a Culture Event if appropriate).

Participation involves Culture Events which would have occurred anyway, without prompting from the learner.

In most cases, the first time you participate in a Culture Event, it would be good for you to focus on “Pure Observation.” Don’t let the focus be on you as a learner (taking notes, asking questions, trying to talk or perform actions). Let the people know that you want to watch and listen—discover what they naturally do and say.

In the future, during re-exposure to each Culture Event, you will take initiative to learn, over time being able to take part as an increasingly-active participant.
V Process
Processing should mainly serve to facilitate learning activities. For those doing phonemic or grammar analysis, some processing will be record-keeping to facilitate that analysis.

During this third phase, some incidental learning will usually take place, but the focus should be processing your data:
* Copy, file and cross-reference your data
* Discuss with your Culture/Language Helper for clarification
* Analyze your data
* Organize your data for review and practice
V Practice
Unlike Participate, where you will experience an event which would have happened anyway, Practice involves learner-initiated interaction and participation in Culture Events—here you have an agenda and will need to control the range and depth of topics discussed, etc., so that you are not overwhelmed.

There are two basic types of practice
* Practice OUT of the situation
This type of practice is planned and can include listening to recorded data for comprehension, review and drilling.
* Practice IN native contexts
This type of practice can include visiting, conversation and any other active participation.
* The Learning Cycle... is a Cycle!
Once you get going in your CLA, each Learning Cycle feeds into the next. Everything you experience and process and practice will generate new plans to experience, practice, investigate and verify. Your learning will take on its own momentum.
* Overlap Between the Cycles
Of course, you don’t simply work through one Learning Cycle at a time. You will always have several Learning Cycles going at once, each in different Phases. Throughout your week, while you are processing some newly- recorded data, you will be practicing “old” material and going out to observe and record brand new material. At the same time, you will be planning what to do next.

The overlap between Cycles may seem complicated, but once you get going, it’s really not too hard. Just remember that for each Learning Cycle, the process is simple: Plan, Participate, Process, Practice!

Here is a diagram showing how different cycles of the Learning Cycle (the colored rings) can be going on at the same time, while feeding into each other, as well:

Learning Cycle Overlap
Learning Cycle Overlap

* Using Your Time
You want to use your time to the best advantage. Don’t default to the office and spend too much time planning and processing. But be careful not to simply “hang out with the people,” never having a plan or purpose in your exposure time.
* Activities Checklist
Will add more to this later... as I populate charts and lists for the web.
V Cyclic Learning: Progressing to Deeper Levels
* How to Approach Learning an Entire Culture and its Language
Learning another culture and language can be overwhelming! Events and conversation are occurring all around you, but you cannot learn everything at once. You cannot even discern everything! But you can learn if you focus on one thing at a time.

You are also not ready to learn everything which you find in a given situation. That should be obvious, but many learners act as though they must learn everything from a given Culture Event, or from any piece of language text, before they can move on. That kind of strategy will only lead to frustration. Trying to exhaust a Culture Event will only exhaust you, the learner!

It is a mistake for you to set up an agenda or schedule and try to plan in advance what you will learn next about the culture. You cannot just follow the points of the Outline of Cultural Materials (or the SIL Version of the OCM with “Frames” for the familiar Universal Culture Outline categories) as though they were a list to check off in order. In the same way, you should not try to work your way through a list, eliciting grammar features in a predetermined order. In dealing with a culture and with an unknown language, these strategies are impossible! You won’t know in advance what might be “simple” or “complex,” and the “elicit-by-checklist” method does not follow the best progressions of learning.
* Bite-Sized CLA
The best way to approach culture and language is exposure to them as they fly past you in real-life situations. Then you need strategies to glean and learn what you can from them. But you shouldn’t try to learn everything. You should simply take it as it comes, glean what you are ready for, use learning strategies to internalize this and just leave the rest for later.

In other words, relax! You can always go back and learn more (and more and more) from the same Culture Event, or from subsequent exposures to similar events. It is much more important to simply maintain consistent exposure to real Culture Events and to have an efficient way of storing and retrieving your exposure data later on.

One common mistake in the past has been to think of the sections of the Universal Culture Outline as representing levels of complexity. A learner will plan to start with “Material Culture” because it is “simpler,” and leave “World View” until last, because it is the most “complex.” But in reality, there are very complex aspects to some material objects (how does your computer really work?!!), while there are some very straightforward aspects of a people’s world view (description of weather). To top it off, some of the more complex aspects of a culture often lie in how interpersonal relationships are formed and maintained—in the areas we call “Social Organization” and “Social Control.
* What Cyclic Learning is NOT
You cannot approach the language or culture in a predetermined or linear fashion. Rather than thinking of progressing through the culture universals in this manner:

Cyclic Nature is NOT
Cyclic Nature is NOT


We need to think instead, of Cyclic Learning, as though all aspects of the culture are together as ore in a multi-layered mine. Each time you are exposed to a Culture Event, you can skim off the surface what you are ready to learn at that point. Then each succeeding time, you can go a little deeper.

There are a number of ways in which you will go deeper and deeper in your CLA experience. The following lists are not meant to serve as a strict agenda for elicitation, but to simply illustrate how, as you learn more, you will be able to grasp things at a deeper level. This can help you to be patient with your present progress, and not to overextend yourself.
V Important Progressions of Learning
There are three important progressions of learning in CLA, which also relate to Cyclic Learning. The first is the natural order in which you acquire any new language.
V First there must be comprehension, and mimicry precedes creative production of a language form
* Hear/Comprehend/Respond
* Mimic
* Reproduce by rote
* (then) Reproduce creatively
V Secondly, you will not produce language perfectly right away! Each new word, grammar feature or sentence pattern will be used inconsistently at first. So at any given time you will have errors in your speech—but those errors are a sign of progress! You will move through this progression:
* Unaware of feature
* Comprehend that feature
* Begin to use that feature with partial control (i.e. with occasional errors)
So, producing an error actually means you are ¾ of the way to perfection!
* Gain full control of that feature
V Thirdly, you must progress naturally through to acquisition of the Text Types produced at each proficiency level:
See NTM’s CLA Proficiency Guideline for more detail of the proficiencies for each level
* Words, phrases and memorized bits of language
* Sentences, the ability to question/answer
* Paragraphs, narration and description in past/present/future
* Extended discourse
* What Cyclic Learning IS
Cyclic Learning is simply this: Learning some of what you are ready to learn from a given situation or language text and then moving on. The next time you are in that situation or encounter that language text (or a similar text), you will learn some more, perhaps going a little deeper. Little by little, “line upon line,” is the principle behind Cyclic Learning.

Day by day, you will be exposed to the entire language as it happens, and all of the culture universals may be present in a given Culture Event. But in your early CLA you will learn only those simple, basic things you are ready to learn. Like peeling away the layers of an onion, you will go deeper and deeper through each repeated exposure.

Part of the strategies given in this CLA manual will help you to see that “one tree in the forest,” to focus on the few things you are ready to learn, and not to be overwhelmed by an entire Culture Event or language text. This will also help you avoid “getting stuck.” If you get stuck on something you don’t understand… move on to something else and cycle back to those tough things later.

Cyclic Nature of CLA
Cyclic Nature of CLA

V Some Other Progressions Through Your CLA
As you apply Cyclic Learning to work through your CLA program, you will go through some other natural progressions that take you from simple to complex.
Explained below are six of those progressions to deeper levels.
* From Unnoticed to Fully Compreheded
First of all, in both culture and language you will progress from things being unnoticed, to their being both noticed and fully comprehended. The progression will go something like this:
Unnoticed
Uncomprehended
Assumed to be Understood
Realized Uncomprehended
Actually Comprehended

How does this work?
Unnoticed:
At first, everything will be so new to you that most of what is said and done will go completely unnoticed! That’s okay, and completely normal!

Uncomprehended:
As you progress, you will begin to notice things, but will not understand what is being said or done, much less why it is occurring.

Assumed:
The next step, after learning a little more, is to assume that you fully understand. This is a normal, but potentially dangerous step. You will miss a great deal of the real meaning of the situation if you too quickly relax and stop observing diligently, thinking that you already know it all!

Realized to be Uncomprehended:
Good learners will then notice new things which make them realize that their earlier hypotheses about the language and the culture were incorrect, or at the very least incomplete. So you must remain observant and compare new exposure to what you have already seen and heard, constantly revising your tentative conclusions.

Actually Comprehended:
Eventually you may reach the point where you fully comprehend an aspect of the language or culture. Keep in mind, however, that you can always keep learning!
* From Objects to Underlying Reasons
Here’s another way to look at the cyclic nature of CLA—in progressing from learning the simpler, more obvious parts of language and culture to the deeper levels, you will go from learning about things to learning about abstracts such as reasons. Here’s one possible progression:
Objects
Descriptions
Relations
Actions
Abstractions
Reasons

How does this work?
Objects:
At first you will notice mostly concrete, visible objects present in Culture Events and will glean the words and phrases used to refer to these objects. Learn what—and who— is present in the Culture Event.

Descriptions:
At the next level, you will notice and begin to learn descriptive words and phrases (modifiers) used to talk about the objects. Learn how to describe what is present in the Culture Event.

Relations:
Now add kinship terms and relationships, possessives and other ways to describe the simple relationships between people and the objects you have learned about. Learn what the relationship is between people and objects in the Culture Event.

Actions:
By this time you are ready to hear and begin learning to form complete sentences with action (verbs, objects and indirect objects). Learn what is happening in the Culture Event.

Abstractions:
Much later, you will reach the level of abstractions—concepts and topics not physically present. You can now understand and discuss things which exist only in the conversation itself. Learn about intangibles, purely through verbal interaction.

Reasons:
This is the deepest layer—and the most significant, reached after a long time of CLA and faithful participation in the life of the people. Learn why people say and act in the ways that they do.
* From Passive to Active
At first, your part in the Culture Events you are experiencing will be very passive—that of an observer. There are two reasons for this: first of all, you are restricted in how much you can participate because of limited language ability and because of a shallow understanding of the culture—you don’t know how to act. But the second reason is more volitional—you should choose to be a more passive observer (and listener) at first, in order to learn what to say and how to act.

Of course, it is important to have times of “practice,” where you are in control of the conversation and the situation, and in those contexts the focus of attention will be on you, the learner. But those situations should be just that: practice, based on what you have observed and heard in actual real-life Culture Events. So for CLA to be based upon natural language and real culture, the passive comes before the active.
* From Observation to Praticipation
So as you progress in your CLA, your role in various situations and Culture Events will move progressively from pure observation, to more and more active participation.
* From Hearing to Explaining
One way in which your language progress will move from passive to active is by going from hearing to explaining:
Hearing
Comprehending/responding
Mimicry
Answering
Asking
Discussing
Explaining

Here is what is meant by each of these:
Hearing
The easiest and most passive level is hearing. This refers to simply listening to the language.

Comprehending/Responding
Comprehending and reacting or responding appropriately involves more than mere hearing. The utterance must be understood, although the ability to mimic or produce the form might still be lacking.

Mimicry
Mimicry is a little more active than hearing or simply comprehending. To mimic you must process the sounds and physically reproduce them. But mimicry may be done apart from full comprehension; without having a full understanding of the meaning or implications of what you are saying. Mimicry may sometimes involve reproduction of memorized phrases, sentences or even questions which you use for a specific purpose.

Answering
To understand language and be able to answer or otherwise respond appropriately is more complex than mimicry and is also a more active involvement.

Asking
Asking thoughtful questions based on the ongoing conversation (as opposed to memorized questions you plan in advance) is a more complex activity and places you in an even more active role.

Discussing
To engage in the give-and-take of real live discussion, asking and responding appropriately, is almost the most demanding and active level of interaction. The discussion at this level is still limited to known concepts (i.e. known to your audience) and to discussion of Culture Events and values already held by the language community.

Explaining
The act of explaining something new—presenting foreign concepts and ideas, motivating change in thinking and behavior, is the most difficult and active level. Of course, this level is your goal as a church planter who will be presenting God’s truths to the language community.
* From Seeing to Instigating
Parallel to the linguistic development listed above in the area of culture and behavior, your progression from a passive to an active role might follow this sequence:
Seeing
Mimicry
Following Instructions
Participating
Initiating
Instigating

Here is what is meant by each of these:
Seeing
Of course the simplest and most passive activity is seeing. This refers only to observing and noticing what is happening around you, totally apart from any real understanding of its meaning or significance.

Mimicry
To mimic actions and behavior, still without fully understanding the meaning or implications, is a more active and difficult involvement than mere observation.

Following Instructions
A more complex type of mimicry, to follow instructions and do exactly what you are told, is the next level of complexity and a more active way of taking part.

Participating
Being able to participate in ongoing Culture Events, knowing what to do and say without being told, requires an even more active and informed level of involvement.

Initiating
Beyond joining in, to actually be able to properly initiate Culture Events and see them through is almost the most complex and active role you can take.

Instigating
The most demanding and active level of involvement is to instigate action and thought which is new or foreign—and to be able to do this in a culturally appropriate and understandable way. To reach this level is your goal as a church planter.
V Stages of CLA
The CLA program is broken into the time-frames of:
Pre-Entry (research done before you enter the new community)
Warm-Up Period
Stage 1
Stage 2
Stage 3
Stage 4

The Warm-Up Period and the four Stages of CLA are not “levels” of attainment, per se, but rather are periods of time, each involving a different focus and different kinds of activities. In each stage you will be guided to concentrate on specific strategies which are designed to help you reach the next level of proficiency. In this way, the four stages roughly correspond to the CLA Proficiency Levels:
Stage 1 - Working toward Basic Level Proficiency
Stage 2 - Working toward Progressing Level Proficiency
Stage 3 - Working toward Capable Level Proficiency
Stage 4 - Working toward Proficient Level Proficiency

For detailed descriptions of the Proficiencies at each Level, see - CLA RESOURCE CLA Proficiency Guideline
For detailed descriptions of the activities involved in Warm-up and when working toward each of the four Proficiency Levels, see CLA Activities - CLA PROGRAM - CLA Activities
* Stages and Time Frames
You may notice that no time frames have been assigned to the Stages in the CLA Manual (e.g. Stage 1=2-3 months.) The reason for this is that there is really no way to predict the time it will take you to complete a stage and reach the next level. There are many reasons for this, but here are the most common:
differences in learner ability, training and dedication
differences in the team situation
the relative difficulty of the language
the relative openness of the culture
the fact that different languages are complex in different areas
differences in communities and learning environments
unexpected delays
* Stages, Levels and Proficiencies
One of the biggest factors is that of language differences. For example, a phonetically difficult language, such as Russian, which also has complex word-level morphology, will slow down comprehension and will delay your ability to mimic or produce even simple phrases. But a phonetically simple language, such as Palawano, which shares a large number of cognates with the trade language Tagalog (which you have already learned), will allow for easier comprehension and a quicker ability to reproduce words and phrases early on. Likewise, a Philippine language with simple structure of equative sentences will allow for easier production of such sentences, even during Stage 1, but a language with complex syntax would not.

A tonal language might delay comprehension and speaking ability in Stage 1 while you get used to the added complexity of sound. But then the simple nature of unaffixed verbs in many tonal languages might speed up your ability to produce simple sentences in Stage 2, while the complexity of word-level grammar might slow you down in Russian or a Philippine language.

This illustrates not only how you might progress at a different rate in different languages, but also how the line between proficiency “levels” can be blurred. Look over the description of the many different proficiencies contained in each of NTM’s CLA Proficiency Levels. There are a number of different kinds of skills involved which may not progress at the same rate. While you must demonstrate all of the proficiencies of Basic Mid to be fully rated at that level, you might also demonstrate some Progressing level proficiencies, depending on your language and situation.

Your consultant can give you input. But for the most part, if you continue with the strategies of a particular stage of CLA until you reach the next level, being able to demonstrate all the proficiencies for that level, you will stay on track.
* Overview of Warm Up and Stages 1-4
Each stage of your CLA is different. In fact, each has a different main Task, Emphasis, and Purpose. So it makes sense that in each stage, you will be doing different things during each step of the Learning Cycle (Plan, Participate, Process and Practice.) See the Program Overview Chart which clearly illustrates this at a glance. CLA SUPPLEMENT Program Overview Chart
* Pre-Entry: Learning All You Can Before Moving In
Do Research Before Moving In. Pre-Entry starts before you move into your allocation—perhaps before you even arrive in your country of service! The Pre-Entry stage is where you research all available sources to learn everything you can about the country, the people, their culture and their language, as well as information about nearby groups. This data must all be treated as tentative, until compared and tested against real-life experience among the people, but will serve as good background information for you. You should continue this research—and the careful cross-checking of information—as long as you work among those people.
V Warm-Up Period: Gaining Familiarity with Sounds and Setting
Visiting informally. Using the trade language and (possibly) memorizing a few greetings or Practical Expressions in the language.
* Goal: noting common events of daily routine, seeing the community warm up to you and feel comfortable with your presence, and training your ears to distinguish the sounds in the language.
* Listen to Sounds and Get Acquainted
Once you are actually among the people, you will take a brief time of two weeks (up to a month, if needed) to get acquainted with your new community and to establish your role as a learner, letting them get acquainted with you. This period will be when you listen to get used to hearing the sounds of the new language, and you will constantly observe to notice some of the people’s daily routine. You should notice many—possibly a hundred or more—common, daily Culture Events, and from those select a list of at least 10 that you will plan to experience as a learner at the very beginning of Stage 1.

Remember a Culture Event is simply any situation, context or piece of life. You will not necessarily be trying to learn anything during this period, but will simply be getting warmed-up and ready to begin learning. For the most part, your speaking will be limited to memorized greetings and a few elicited Survival Expressions and much of your visiting will, of necessity, be done in the trade language. During this Warm-Up period you should do a focused review of your phonetics training.

The Warm-Up period is your initial direct exposure to the new culture and language you are trying to learn, and it is the community’s first impression of you. A good warm-up is vital—don’t think of warm-up as just a meaningless couple of weeks to sharpen your pencils and get your desk arranged while you find out what sounds are in your new language before you “really” begin CLA. This important stage will lay a relational foundation for all your future CLA experience and ministry. This foundation will consist of ear-training (warm-up to sounds), familiarity with the community routine, and the beginning of relationship-building.

It is important to have a friendly, personal, get-acquainted time with your new community without the added element of the immediate and constant use of notebooks, recorders, questions and investigation. Such learning techniques may actually arouse suspicion if you have not already begun to build relationships based on simple personal contact. Let the people be the ones to ask questions (e.g. your purpose in being there). In this way they will be more comfortable with you and your presence in their lives before you begin asking a lot of questions.

You need more than a Phonetic Warm-Up. Since language and culture are inseparable from each other—and from the people who “own” them—you need to think more in terms of getting warmed-up to both the sounds and the customs/community. In other words, you need to follow the tenets of CLA even in this preliminary stage.
V What is the Warm-Up Period?
Warm-up deals with language sounds, the people, the setting and the events going on in the community. Your goal is simply to reach the point where you can now begin actual, active CLA.
* Sizing up the situation
V Getting acquainted with your new community
* Meeting people
* Mapping the local area
* Taking informal local census (by observation only)
V Why have a Warm-Up? Why Not Just Start "Learning"?
* Begin Relationships on the right foot
* Lessen the intensity of your initial CLA experience
* Lay the groundwork for good pronunciation
* How Long Should the Warm-Up Period Last?
Warm-Up should last until you are ready to being CLA—at least a week, but up to a month in some situations. Two weeks might be a good average. As each situation is different, it is impossible to say how long exactly that will take, but a consultant can give you guidance.

Even though early Stage 1 techniques will involve delayed speaking and listening for comprehension, some languages are more phonetically difficult and will require a longer time of actual Warm-Up before starting Stage 1. Some cultures, or even factors like yearly cycle, weather, etc., may limit your chances to get acquainted, and this might slow you down. Suspicion as to your purpose may require a longer time of initial trust-building in some communities. If you had a longer time of casual exposure in the situation (while doing survey, building a house, etc.,) that may mean you don’t need quite as long of a formal warm-up. All these variables work together.

But overall, a good general guideline should be to allow yourself at least a week or two of full-time, formal Warm-Up;
more, if needed. Ask your consultant for input on this as you plan.
* The Focus on Warm-Up
The focus is on your preparation, your connection with community, getting acquainted and letting your ear get passively accustomed to the sounds of the language. You are not really trying to learn (i.e. memorize) much language, other than a few necessary survival phrases.
* The Learner's Need in Warm-Up
You need an open heart, willing to let people get to know you while you show care for them. You also need open eyes and ears—listening, observing and recording.

A good Warm-Up period will help you to avoid the common errors of mimicking before adequate listening, and memorizing before you are able to mimic well.
V Stage 1: Exploring the Material and Concrete
Exploring Daily Routine Culture Events. Learning by personal experience and limited, controlled strategies such as TPR.
* Goal: comprehension of basic vocabulary (concrete objects in the setting of the CEs, production of words, phrases and memorized bits of language) and overall Basic Level Proficiency.
* Working Toward Basic Level Proficiency
After a good Warm-Up Period, armed with observations and a list of dozens of common everyday CEs, you are now ready for Stage 1 CLA—learning to comprehend a wide variety of vocabulary (mostly concrete nouns, the props of CEs) in a broad base of common situations. For more ideas of the kinds of vocabulary, look at the CLA Proficiency Guideline, Basic Level, Vocabulary. For Culture, note the situation, what is there, who is there and what they do. Don’t spend a lot of time taking detailed notes, as you will be in these situations over and over.

You may need to elicit a few Acquisition Phrases to get you started, but if you can wait to learn these situationally, all the better. Then, armed with your list of 10 daily Culture Events, you will intentionally experience those events several times each, first as Pure Observation. You will observe, take notes, record and take images of what you experience in these Culture Events.

Your learning will focus mostly on the terms for concrete objects found in the situation. Your practice will consist mainly of TPR Exercises (Total Physical Response) done with a native speaker as a Culture/Language Helper (CLH), along with lots of listening to both portions of the recorded audio from the Culture Events you experienced, and some live conversation, as well. The main CLA activity in all your Stage 1 Acquisition Projects will center around TPR Exercises (TEs), supplemented by audio review and Photo Book as tools for reviewing your TEs. Your communicative ability will still be very limited, of course, but you can relax—you are laying a good foundation for what comes next.
V Overview of Stage 1
* A time to learn to comprehend a good range of basic vocabulary (words and phrases) as the building blocks for beginning to speak
* Reaching the point of being able to mimic short utterances
* Your Basic Level (Level 1) goal is to have enough culture and language to begin exploring and learning in the language
* Making an initial, tentative phonetic chart.
* Material/Concrete (The Physical Setting in the Community): “Describing the Situation…” (settings, props and actors)
* The missionary’s preparation for deeper CLA: “Learning to Learn…”
* The Focus of Stage 1
Your ability to communicate or participate is very limited during Stage 1 as you consciously build in this area in order to be ready for Stage 2 activities. But don’t fall into the old trap of elicitation (apart from the situation) and desk study to gain the needed control; you will gain real proficiency if you patiently follow the Stage 1 strategies to gain natural, manageable chunks of culture/language from real Culture Events.

Initially, you will go slowly as you gain facility with the procedures, then you will be able to work up to speed.

After you feel comfortable with the procedures, you should try to do as many Acquisition Projects per week as you can handle. You don’t need to try to maintain all the vocabulary at instant recall at this point.

When acquiring new material or doing a session of review, work in blocks of 10 or 15 minutes with short breaks in between. Fill a good portion of your day (3 hours is a good goal) with active TE acquisition and review with people. Other time can be spent in review done alone with your audio (Listening Collection) and in the minimal processing you will need to do (mostly copying audio to your computer and printing out pictures.)

By way of example, with 3 hours a day spent in active TE elicitation and review, this will give you sixty 15-minute periods during each week. Here’s how you could possibly cover nearly 1,000 words during a six-week Stage 1:

10 Acquisition Projects each week: use TEs to elicit 15 words in each (i.e. 5 or 10 words initially), then Pulling Out once or twice to get a total of 15.

Initial elicitation session for each AP = 15 min

Six additional 10-minute sessions for each AP , Packing Down (review), Pulling Out (adding more words, or a new Frame)

Three 5-minute breaks each hour during your daily 3 hours of TE work

In this way, in a short Stage 1 of a mere 6 weeks, you would have been exposed to, comprehended and interacted with nearly 1,000 words! And this would be an incredible foundation for beginning Stage 2. Any time you encountered one of those words in another context or in a new AP, it would take minimal review to bring it back to the level of recall. Along the way you would also experience as many as 60 Culture Events (at a Stage 1 Level of experience). Your experience would include 90 minutes of active TE and Photo Book activity per day, plus time spent during your times of observation and visiting.
* The Learner's Need in Stage 1
The need is for strategies to control/limit exposure and selection of material, so as not to be overwhelmed, to learn to comprehend vocabulary—the Stage 1 strategies and Acquisition Projects will provide help in this.
* Time Variables in Stage 1
Your focus in Stage 1 is on comprehension of nouns in simple contexts, and moving toward producing simple, mostly memorized phrases. Therefore, factors which affect these skills will increase or decrease the time needed for Stage 1. These would include Difficulty of sounds and sound system, Tone, Complexity of word-level morphology (to less of an extent than you might expect)

Remember to record the final run-through of each TE elicitation and review. Add this to your Listening Collection for review in addition to your 3 hours a day of active TE. Use various Listening Strategies as you listen.

Print out your photos and use your Photo Book for review out with the people, in your office with a CLH, and alone with your Listening Collection.

At the final review session for a particular AP, also record a short text about the objects learned, the situation, the actions of the Frames, etc., to stretch your comprehension. Add these texts to your Listening Collection. For example, after doing an AP where you learned the names of 15 common kitchen utensils, you could elicit one of the following texts: “Tell me about these items,” or “Tell me what these are used for.”

The text can even accomplish some Pulling Out by adding other Frames: “What are the colors/parts/shapes of these objects…?” etc.
V Stage 2: Exploring the Human and Social
Working toward Progressing Level Proficiency. Exploring any Culture Events. Learning by personal experience, and by use of TPR, role play and short texts about the activity in those events.
* Goal: comprehension of everyday speech, production of sentences, ability to do Q/A and overall Progressing Level Proficiency.
* Working Toward Prograssing Level Proficiency
After the broad exposure of a good Stage 1 you are ready for Stage 2. The experience of dozens of Culture Events and the vocabulary you learned during Stage 1 will serve as the foundation for Stage 2.

Now you will begin to experience a variety of Culture Events, focusing on descriptions and relationships between people, and between people and objects. You will continue to learn more verbs as well. You will grow a great deal in your ability to comprehend and to communicate during this stage. The bulk of your learning will still be focused directly on elements found in the Culture Events you are experiencing but your practice will add ever- increasing amounts of real conversation. Language will be sentence-level, as you discover and master all the basic grammar forms. You will also go back over material collected in previous Culture Events and learn new things at a deeper level.
* Overview of Stage 2
Stage 2 is broad, communicative exposure to daily life, participating in life and conversation as much as possible.
* The Focus of Stage 2
The focus is on Human/Social (Life in the Community):
“Learning in the Situation…” (noting relationships, actions, patterns, what people are doing)
Here you are learning mostly what can be observed, only able to do limited questioning toward the end of Stage 2.
The focus is still very much on life as it happens (very culture derived), learning to speak in sentences while getting an even broader (and only slightly deeper) exposure to all of life. It is in stages 3 and 4 that you go after depth.
* The Learner's Need in Stage 2
The need is for strategies to glean comprehensible simple sentences from situations and recorded language, strategies to practice those patterns, strategies to gradually broaden experience without spreading too thin.

Photo book is an even more helpful tool here. Photos showing a whole scene of action, or people doing various actions, etc., will be good for review.

More texts should be elicited about each CE and added to the listening collection. For stretching comprehension and getting culture, get some commentary type texts about each CE when possible.

After a few weeks in stage 2, learners should start using the text production cycle to begin trying to produce their own texts of these types.

More “practice” time can be simple conversation as this stage progresses. More culture observation can be noted, including some clips of texts.

Role play, TPR Exercises, dialogue, and other Acquisition Techniques such as Memorized Monologue and Dialogue with Variations come into play increasingly as stage 2 progresses.
* Time Variables in Stage 2
Your focus in Stage 2 is one of comprehension and production of most basic sentence patterns. Therefore, factors which affect these skills will increase or decrease the time needed for Stage 2. These would include: Complexity of word-level morphology (especially verbs), and Complexity of sentence-level syntax
V Stage 3: Exploring the Implicit
Working toward Capable Level Proficiency. Exploring any Culture Events which are at least like ones you have experienced personally. Learning more in the language now through longer texts, extensive conversation and Ethnographic Interview.
* Goal: comprehension of most speech, production of organized paragraphs, and overall Capable Level Proficiency.
* Working Toward Capable Level Proficiency
By now your ability to comprehend, converse and ask questions has improved. You will continue to experience new Culture Events, but now you will also elicit texts about these and similar events—after the fact—and begin to ask questions about those events and about the content of the texts. Practice will consist almost entirely of live, interactive conversation where you explore the lives of people you are getting to know and listening to complete texts to build comprehension. Why wait until this point to do significant amount of interview? The reason is that an Emic, Inductive Approach is the best way to gain an insider’s perspective.
* Overview of Stage 3
Stage 3 is broad, communicative exposure to daily life and the life history of people, participating in life and extended conversation as much as possible.

You will be building on the foundation laid in Stages 1 and 2—going after longer texts and using the text production cycle to learn how to produce paragraph-level texts. You will be using TPR Exercise steps 8-9 as a way to push comprehension and production in a focused way—working on particular forms and in particular situations. This is all a basis for gaining needed ability to do the main tasks.

Ethnographic Interviews are the main course of this Stage—talking to many people about themselves and letting them talk about their life and culture, comparing this information with other interviews, CEs, etc.

Let the text production cycle, with the comparison to native texts, show areas that need work. You can go back to Stage 2 TPR Exercise steps to work on any of these, if needed. Lots and lots and lots of listening and lots of interactive conversation in the Ethnographic Interview will be the most helpful here.
* The Focus of Stage 3
The focus is on Implicit (thought in the Community, history and background): “Learning from the Situation” / “Learning verbally” (alternatives, thoughts, attitudes).

Here you are learning what cannot be merely observed. Many questions must be asked; still all are related to specific Culture Events.
* The Learner's Need in Stage 3
The need is for strategies of effective question/interview and text analysis; using the language to learn.
V Stage 4: Exploring the Abstract
Working toward Proficient Level Proficiency. Exploring any Culture Events and abstract topics. Learning through lengthy texts, and extensive conversation and Ethnographic Interview.
* Goal: comprehension of any speech, production of extended discourse, and overall Proficient Level Proficiency.
* Working Toward Proficient Level Proficiency
In this final stage you will still continue to investigate new and previously- experienced Culture Events. But now you will also launch out into elicitation and exploration of Culture Events and topics which you have not personally experienced, including abstract topics. Practice will continue as in Stage 3. You will seek to fill in gaps in your knowledge of the culture and language, conducting your investigation with more of an “insider’s perspective,” based on your exposure during Stages 1 through 3.
* Overview of Stage 4
Stage 4 is focused, intentional investigation, going beneath the surface, discovering what still needs to be learned.
* The Focus of Stage 4
The focus is on the Abstract (Filling Gaps and Applying to Ministry): “Intentional Investigation apart from a specific Situation” / “Learning abstractly” (gaps, synthesis, reasons, motives, themes).

Here you are investigating concepts and questions which are raised based upon everything you have learned so far; exploration goes into abstract, not always tied to one specific Culture Event.
* The Learner's Need in Stage 4
The need is for analysis of what is known to focus investigation on what is yet unknown; synthesis into patterns and themes.
V Building a Wide Base for CLA
As a learner, you will need to avoid the mistake of doing a few Acquisition Projects in one Stage and then immediately (prematurely) trying to go too far with them in ways that are related to the next Stage and not appropriate or profitable for your current level. You can “do” this (or think you’re doing it) but you’re not really following a good Proficiency-Measured progression. It is a false sense of progress. If you experience few Culture Events and over-process or over-practice them, you will be building a narrow base for your CLA, and will find your that understanding and ability in both Culture and Language will suffer.

A wide base can be built by exploring many, many Culture Events during each stage, as well as cycling back to them and gaining more from them. This will give benefit in terms of broad experiential exposure to the culture (not limited to a few areas), wider range of vocabulary (not limited to only a few semantic domains), and will also give a broad base in both language and CULTURE upon which to build in the next Stage.

As you move through the CLA program, you will progress gradually through activities designed to be profitable for your proficiency level. Two of the CLA Tenets, Culture-Derived and Proficiency-Measured, require that you as a learner get out into real life and learn from actual situations, and that you do so in a way appropriate to your level, which is where Cyclic Learning (a vital part of Proficiency-Measured) comes in.

The recommended activities for different Stages will tell you how to take advantage of a Culture Event at your current level. These activities are defined by proficiency levels—described in the CLA Proficiency Guidelines— what can I expect to learn from this CE now?! Sometimes Stage 1 activities may seem artificial, yet they are still Culture-Derived in that the vocabulary learned is associated directly with Culture Events, even though you are not trying to learn what people normally say in the situation (too advanced) or even how to speak in sentences which describe the actions of the CE (still too advanced.) As you progress, you will move more quickly into natural interaction if you concentrate on building a good foundation in early CLA.
* Building Blocks
Activities at any point will guide you to gain BUILDING BLOCKS for the next Stage/Level. This is why it is very important to follow the progression of using the text types learned in one Stage when working toward the text types of the next level:

Basic Level: Learn nouns and verbs (the props and actions in the CE).
Progressing Level: Learn to produce sentences USING those very nouns and verbs.
Capable Level: Learn to produce paragraphs USING those sentences and that vocabulary.
Proficient Level: Then learn to produce extended discourse, stringing together any and everything previously learned.

So, as you take part in CLA activities each day, try to keep in mind the things that will keep everything in balance:
using the correct text type for your level,
building on what you have already learned,
and getting as much actual interaction with the culture (people) as possible.

This will give you a broad base for your CLA—a good foundation for genuinely becoming a part of your new culture, and having a functioning role in it.
V Participant Observation
* What is Participant Observation?
Participant-Observation will be an important part of your CLA program. It will not be the only perspective by which you operate, but when put in its proper place, you will get the best possible entrance into the language and culture.

Participant observation is an approach to gathering information about people, and allows you to thoroughly explore all aspects of a culture. It is a technique which is easy to understand and which, after some practice, nearly anyone who can look, listen, speak and write, can use in order to get fairly well acquainted with a people and their culture.

In the past, this technique has not been connected with language learning, but because the events you will be participating in will involve people, it is to be expected that someone will be talking. As this program stresses, you cannot separate culture and language. You will be able to collect a very natural kind of language data, and that data will be surrounded by “in- situation” culture observations, joined with your own personal experience.

Participant observation requires you to become part of the scene, part of the situation, where layer upon layer of information is available. Other basic methods such as library research, interviewing, and questionnaires do not present culture and language information in their natural setting, but by becoming part of the scene, you will gain a thorough personal knowledge of a person, a people, a situation, or a topic in context. Genuine participant observation is only possible in-situation, that is, in the real daily life of the culture. Unlike a more detached, research-from-the-office approach, participant observation also requires vulnerability—being willing to humble yourself and be corrected, to go out and speak and risk being laughed at or ignored, and to keep trying.
V As a Participant-Observer, You
* don’t merely interview, research or talk about situations
* don’t create situations
* don’t merely observe situations
* observe and participate in… naturally-occurring situations
* add language element in both participation and observation aspects (CLA tenets)
V By Definition, You Are
* a PARTICIPANT
if you ride the bus for the purpose of getting from one place to another
* an OBSERVER
if you ride the bus, with no particular place to go, for the purpose of learning about bus riders
* an OBSERVING PARTICIPANT
if you ride the bus for the purpose of going from one place to another, and while you are riding, you happen to learn something about bus riders
* a PARTICIPANT-OBSERVER
if, needing to go from one place to another, you choose to ride the bus for the purpose of learning something about bus riders
* These are not all of equal value, nor should they have the same place in your program.
A mere participant is the least effective way for you to gain fluency and to learn the culture. And by participating without being properly acculturated first, you will be participating as an outsider, without knowing how things should be done.

Simply being an observer is less likely to get you into trouble. You need more than your observation, which will be interpreted through your outsider’s grid, but observation is the place to begin.

Being a participant-observer is the best role to adopt. But you must grow into this. The best technique is for you to start with Pure Observation (being an observer/learner only) in new situations, and gradually become more of an active Participant-Observer, which is still a learner, as you come to know the way to act in that situation.

There are a few dangers of doing Participant-Observation without any Pure Observation first:
you don’t wait to learn which situations you should not participate in
you skew the situation by being a part of it
you inadvertently participate in inappropriate ways

Of course the reality is that there are times when you will find it difficult to do Pure Observation (having the “fly-on-the-wall” perspective). But many times you can do this, if you work to get your new community used to your occasional role as observer.

The main thing is not to default to the traditional mode, always making yourself the focus of every situation or trying to participate before you know how, or if it is even proper for you to do so. You will experience no natural Culture Events if every situation becomes centered around you, your notebook, your questions and your faltering attempts at communication and your bumbling efforts at participation. So the bottom line is that you need both—you must have Pure Observation, and Participant-Observation.
V Pure Observation Followed by Participant-Observation
* Observe first and see what is happening in your community (the first kind of Pure Observation). What do they do every day? When do they have “free” time in their homes or other venues?
* Then Plan (part of the Learning Cycle), perhaps together with a CLH, on what Culture Events you will experience and investigate.
* Now, as much as possible, experience those Culture Events as an observer, at first (Pure Observation). Notice the “what” and the “who,” the actions and what is being said. Record some of this data (both Field Notes and audio), unskewed by your questioning, elicitation and active participation.
* Next Process the data from your first exposure, if need be.
* Then go back into the situation of the same Culture Event and be a Participant-Observer. Now Participate by eliciting language and doing Acquisition Projects in—or based upon—the Culture Event; also join in and be a part as much as you can. Process that information as well.
* Lastly, go back into the situation and Participate as a form of Practice. But even as you elicit and practice, you should be observing and gleaning new information from the situation, picking up cues from people’s responses, etc. So you see that the Participant-Observer mindset should be with you all the time, no matter what mode you are operating in.
* Technique for Participant-Observation
When you go into a Culture Event as a Participant-Observer, you need to keep different kinds of data separate. You cannot mix your objective observations with your subjective reactions and questions. One way to do this is to divide your Field Notes into two columns. See an example in: CLA TOOLBOX Participant-Observation Field Notes.

If you are using CLAware, NTM’s CLA software, you can enter your observation notes and recordings of native participants under each Culture Event.
V Learning Styles & CLA
A major issue which is related to the CLA Supporting Principles of “Situationally-Adapted,” “Learner-Motivated” and “Consultant-Guided” is that of “Learning Styles.” Understanding the uniqueness of each CLA situation and the differences in individual learners is very helpful to the CLA consultant or coach. Unfortunately, there is a lot of misunderstanding related to the concept of learning styles—and a little knowledge misapplied can often create problems while solving others.
V Misunderstandings Regarding Learning Styles
Misunderstandings Regarding Learning Styles Here are some common errors in applying knowledge of Learning Styles to those involved in CLA:
* Over-simplification
* Only considering one particular scheme of describing Learning Styles
* Giving too much credence to short, subjective “testing” schemes
* Applying a single label to a learner
* Over-application
* Assuming that the determined style is the only way an individual
will/can learn
* Assuming that language is acquired in the same way that other
knowledge is learned
* Not encouraging learners to stretch outside their preferred style
* It's Not That Simple
There is actually no single, universally accepted list of Learning Styles. There are, in fact, numerous lists and ways of describing the characteristics of learners, and each is helpful in revealing some of the complex differences between individuals. Many of these schemes provide a list of binary variables (e.g. “global” vs. “analytic”), but in reality, most learners are neither one nor the other, but fall rather somewhere on a continuum between the two polar opposites. Other Learning Style schemes simply give a list of 4 (or 5, or 6…) characteristics. Again, no one can be labeled exclusively by a single category. Human beings have been created as extremely complex creatures and nowhere is this more striking than in issues related to the mind, personality, language and learning.

The best way to benefit from insight into Learning Styles is to work with a consultant who knows you and your program. The consultant should use a variety of testing instruments and should observe you in your CLA—noting what you are doing, what works best for you, what frustrates you and what really motivates you. Then, working together over time, through trial and error and by drawing upon the consultant’s experience, your CLA program can be adjusted to be the most efficient for you as a unique individual.
* Learning Styles Are Not Exclusive
It is a mistake to think that anyone learns exclusively from any one type of input. Learning Style labels such as “visual learner,” “energetic learner,” etc., are very helpful as we seek to understand how to facilitate CLA, but it is a mistake to think that anyone learns exclusively from any one type of input or mental activity. It is important to understand that Learning Styles relate only to a learner’s default “preference” and “comfort level,” and to types of input and activity that facilitate a particular individual’s learning.

So being a so-called “visual learner” does not mean that an individual cannot learn anything by hearing. This is a good thing, since language is a spoken phenomenon! However, it is true that a visual learner will be more comfortable, and will learn more quickly, if the sounds of language are accompanied by visual input. So knowledge of Learning Styles can help to enhance and supplement the learning experience, but they should not dictate a single mode of learning.

Additionally, being a “visual learner” does not dictate a need to “see it in writing” to learn language. There are many other types of visual input which are effective in CLA, and visual learners should take advantage of those, as well. Much of our perceived dependence on written form is learned behavior, engrained in us since kindergarten. But reading and writing involve another whole level of mental activity, and can actually complicate and slow down early language learning.

Finally, remember that “learning” language is quite a different mental exercise from learning other subjects. For example, when you learn the facts, dates and events of history, your language, which you already know, is the actual medium for learning and remembering. That is quite a different kind of learning situation than that of gaining language fluency in the first place, whether in a first or second language.
* A Multi-Style Approach is Best
The best use of knowledge about learning styles is for a consultant to help you to implement a “Multi-Style” approach to CLA—to work within your own preferred style and to seek other types of input, as well. The more types of input you receive, and the more kinds of mental activity in which you can be engaged at the same time, the better.

A great deal of CLA research confirms the principle that the more fully the entire learner is engaged in any activity, the more learning will take place. So the most important thing is for you to seek to have a rich CLA learning environment as much as possible, where you are seeing, hearing, touching, doing, analyzing, interacting, etc., all at once. As much as possible, try to avoid using CLA activities that involve only one or two of your senses or only one type of thought or activity.

Read on to see an expanded explanation of learning styles and their misuse, and to learn the advantages of a multi-style approach to CLA. There are pitfalls that can be avoided by not functioning within any single style during CLA. Look at following link for a list of Multi-Style Strategies you can implement in your CLA.
V Several Schemes for Describing Learning Styles
Four Types of Learners
* Relational (or Meaning-Oriented) Learners Motivated by real interaction; interested in meaningful and interactive activities such as real communication, building relationships, etc.
* Analytical (or Theory-Oriented) Learners Motivated by analytical problem-solving; more interested in grammar, rules, and how the language works in and of itself.
* Structured (or Solution-Oriented) Learners Motivated by learning to do things with language; more interested in a well-organized schedule and activities with a clear goal as the intended learning objective.
* Energetic (or Activity-Oriented) Learners Motivated by activity, movement and fun; more interested in physical activity, unstructured times of interaction and learning which are done in real-life situations. (Carol Orwig, SIL, Lingua Links)
V Twenty-One Learning Style and Personality Variables
Here is another list, showing a number of variables. Each learner would be a unique combination of where they fell on the continuum between each set of opposites.
* global (or “right-brained”) vs. analytic (or “left-brained”)
* field-dependent (big-picture) vs. field-independent (focuses on details)
* field-sensitive (learns from situation) vs. field-insensitive (distracted by situation)
* feeling-oriented vs. thinking-oriented
* impulsive vs. reflective
* intuitive-random vs. concrete-sequential
* open-oriented vs. closure-oriented
* extroverted vs. introverted
V input preferences:
(Oxford et al, 1992:441)
* visual (seeing)
* auditory (hearing)
* tactile (touching)
* kinesthetic (doing and moving)
* hands-on (combination of tactile and kinesthetic)
V Multiple Intelligences
Here is another scheme for describing different kinds of aptitude—note that any individual can possess a unique combination of these (Gardner, 1983)
* Linguistic intelligence ("word smart")
* Logical-mathematical intelligence ("number/reasoning smart")
* Spatial intelligence ("picture smart")
* Bodily-kinesthetic intelligence ("body smart")
* Musical intelligence ("music smart")
* Interpersonal intelligence ("people smart")
* Intropersonal intelligence ("self smart")
* Naturalist intelligence ("nature smart")
V Eight Variables of Personality Type
Myers and Briggs list these 4 sets of variables, which give a total of sixteen personality types. Each learner would not only fall into one of these types, but would have a unique profile based on the degree of preference (e.g. if 100% introversion was a “0” and extroversion a “10,” an individual could fall anywhere on that continuum)
(Kiersey, 1984)
(Myers/Briggs “Please Understand Me”)
* Introversion vs. Extroversion
* Intuition vs. Sensation
* Thinking vs. Feeling
* Perception vs. Judging
* Learning Strategies
In addition to all the variables listed above, there are a wide variety of learning strategies which learners may apply (either naturally or with coaching.) (R-Oxford)
V Positive Characteristics of Learners
Some of the key attributes which will help anyone succeed in CLA:
* Ability to monitor own performance
* Ability to organize and plan
* Ability to switch, flex, or stretch beyond their learning style(s)
* Tolerance for ambiguity
* Autonomy (less need for direction or instruction)
* Openness to new ideas and experience
* Ability to see patterns
* Willingness to use wide variety of methods and techniques
* Willingness to spend time in natural contexts
* Humility
* Intuition
* Motivation
* Good short-term memory
* Ability to “recall” sounds, sensations and other sensory experiences
* Having already learned another language
* Questioning mindset (not making assumptions, taking nothing for granted)
* “I-can-do-it” mindset
* Sociability, interest in people, willingness to use the language in real communication
* Desire and ability to think/reflect about language input and their own production
* Use of many good learning strategies
* Use of many sources of information (multiple CLHs, and other sources)
* Willingness to make errors
* Willingness to take risks