
Are the majority of your students giving up before reaching conversational confidence? Giving students opportunities to communicate is often easier said than done. However, it's not impossible. The CLT method is a tried-and-tested pedagogical model used in foreign language education,and its principles may be helpful for you to understand, if you'd like to encourage students to speak more in the target language. 

**What is CLT?**

Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) or simply the communicative method is a foreign language pedagogical framework that focuses on developing the ability of students to communicate effectively in the target language. This approach to language teaching has its roots in the 1960s and 70s, when researchers began to question the traditional methods of language instruction that focused on grammar and translation. Instead, CLT focuses on the use of authentic materials and real-life situations to teach language skills, with the goal of helping students become proficient communicators in the target language.

**Key Principles**

One of the key principles of the communicative method is the idea that language is a tool for communication, rather than an end in itself. This means that the goal of language instruction is not just to teach students grammar and vocabulary, but to help them use language to communicate effectively in real-life situations. To achieve this goal, the communicative method emphasizes the use of authentic materials and real-life scenarios in language instruction. This can include using authentic texts, audio recordings, and videos in the target language, as well as simulations and role-playing activities that help students practice using the language in a variety of contexts.

**Making Lessons Interactive**

An important aspect of the communicative method is the emphasis on interaction and collaboration in language learning. In short, this means that language instruction should not just involve the teacher lecturing to students. We hear this all the time as teachers, but it may not be obvious to us just how much we're doing the talking. With large classrooms, interactivity is usually best suited to providing activities where students work together among themselves and engaging in conversation with each other in the target language. In the online classroom, this can be done via breakout rooms. If it's a 1:1 setting, then you as the teacher can take the role of a conversation partner. This can help students develop their listening and speaking skills, as well as their ability to understand and use the language in a variety of social contexts.

**Autonomy**

The communicative method is about giving the students a sense of autonomy in their learning by being involved in not only what they say as part of speaking practice, but also in determining what they will learn. It is a combination of self-directed learning and classroom instruction, so that the student begins to take an active role in their own learning. This can be achieved through activities that encourage students to explore the language on their own, such as using online resources or engaging in self-study outside of class. Recommending Youtube videos at their level is a good start, and an app by the name of Polygloss is a fun way to get started on output exercises with a native-speaking peer. By taking an active role in their own learning, students can develop a greater sense of ownership over their language skills and become more motivated to continue learning. 

**Summary**

Overall, Communicative Language Teaching is an approach to language instruction that focuses on developing students’ ability to communicate effectively in the target language. This is achieved through the use of authentic materials and real-life scenarios, an emphasis on interaction and collaboration, and a focus on learner autonomy and motivation. By adopting this approach, language teachers can help their students become proficient communicators in the target language and better equipped to use language in a variety of real-life situations. Give it a go in your own lessons and feel free to leave a comment or feedback via hello(at)pengguin.com


Learning by Talking


A free way to learn a language with real people sounds too good to be true. What’s the catch? Here we go through the basics of a language exchange, so you can decide whether it is something worth incorporating into your language learning routine.

**How does it work?**

The way a language exchange works is by connecting with someone with recriprocal language learning needs. That is, a native or fluent speaker of the language you’re learning, who happens to be also learning the language you’re native or fluent in. That tandem partner effectively becomes your language teacher, and you become theirs. It’s a mutually beneficial relationship.

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**How do you define relationship? I mean, how do I find a language exchange partner?**

It has been said that language exchange fits into the classified section of language learning. In other words, it’s filled with people looking for relationships. This ranges from language exchange partner to a wife/husband and anything in between. It’s a hit or miss but the fact that you have to approach people and engage in multiple back-and-forths in order to find out is a discouraging reality.
Does the prospect of a free language teacher justify all of this trouble?

It is possible to find a language partner who wishes only that (to be a language partner), who is also fun and interesting, who is also pleasant to listen to, who is also masculine and feminine at the same time, and who dresses well and who does the dishes. Oh no, it seems that we ended up in another type of relationship. I’m not suggesting that’s the only possibility, but the practical transformation of a language learning scene into something more commonly recognisable as a dating platform is grounded in reasons all too human. Reciprocal language exchange works, and there are many examples of successful partnerships spanning years. However, it’s a hit and miss, like everything else in life. All in all, there’s little harm in trying it out to see for yourself and judging how things go with the people you match with.

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**Who benefits most from a language exchange?**

Language exchange can realistically provide some benefits beyond finding yourself in a relationship (if a relationship is something you wanted). For example, if you are already conversationally proficient in the language you are learning, then there is ample space to practice the language with a native speaker, before jumping ship if you think the relationship may be headed elsewhere (if a relationship is something you didn’t want). Another parallel benefit when you are somewhat conversational is that language exchange can help you discern what stage of fluency you are currently at. In other words, it can be a way of progress tracking, by comparing how you fair in conversations between periods of language exchange activity. However, if you are just starting out learning a language, then the most useful aspect of a language exchange is to verify that you have a long way to go before reaching conversational competence.

Let’s explore why the latter case is the general outcome of language exchange. Let’s say that to sign up for a course is to be guaranteed someone will at least read a textbook with you. However, the teacher and the learning environment may be horrendous. It may also be amazing. To participate in a language exchange is no different. You will be guaranteed at least a smidge of language exchange. Perhaps you will say a few lines and they will respond in the language you’re learning. Then the conversation will attempt to go down the path of least resistance. That is, the medium of communication will find the lowest common denominator of comprehensible language between the two partners. This means the language that is spoken better by both parties will predominate. In an exchange between an English speaker and a non-English speaker, this almost invariably leads to English being spoken in an exchange more than the other language. This happens due to the fact that English is taught at most schools around the world. That’s great news if you happen to be learning English in your language exchange, but for many that are English speakers wanting to learn another language as a beginner, it will be a difficult game of tug-of-war to have your fair share of practice time in the target language during a language exchange.

**What are the alternatives to language exchange?**

If you’re looking for a speaking practice, there are a number of platforms that provide non-obligatory language practice. We will compare and contrast the potential alternatives for language practice in a future blog article. For now, we recommend joining our language practice sessions on Pengguin. You can also find people to play AAA games with on the GG language exchange with Games discord server. It does away with many of the pitfalls of language exchange, offering a place to practice languages while playing games as a natural medium of conversation.

Getting the most out of language exchange


In the classic sci-fi action movie, Matrix, Neo, played by Keanu Reeves, learns all the martial arts of the world by downloading it into his brain while he sleeps. So wouldn’t it be cool if you could just fall asleep and learn the language you’ve been working on while you dream? Well, now you can. And, to be honest, you always could.

![Neo learns kung-fu](/assets/images/blog/posts/can-you-learn-a-language-while-sleeping/neo-learns.png)

To say that we learn languages while we sleep is technically true, in that our brain consolidates language learning processes while we sleep. However, to say that we can passively learn languages by listening to an audio recording in the target language while sleeping is only partially true, and that also only in a technical manner. Studies have shown that cueing certain words during sleep, that is, words that were learnt during wakefulness, can have a beneficial effect on subsequent recall. However, note that this refers to words that have been learnt before sleep. You will not be acquiring new words like Neo acquired new kung-fu moves while sleeping.

Generally speaking the more you use a language the stronger the neural paths become, the faster the information is communicated within the brain and the more immediate your recall. This is no simple task because the matching and wiring that must be performed covers disparate domains like phonetics, syntax, comprehension, motor control (that is, the delicate coordination of the muscle movements of the tongue, palate and vocal chords), and all the rest of what communication involves. That’s why the brain does much of this back office organisational activity for sleep, although the strengthening of memory associated with language learning occurs in both wakefulness and sleep. The question is, is it possible to actively learn during sleep by listening to audio recordings and what is the optimum number of hours one should sleep to improve one’s language learning capacity?

**Audio during sleep may backfire.**

Listening to new material while sleeping has no effect on their recall later. It ma, however, lead to poorer quality sleep which may disturb the ability to memorise content learned while awake. In fact, a recent study revealed that cuing words during sleep had two potential effects. For those who spent more time in rapid-eye-movement sleep cycle during sleep while the audio was played, they were able to remember those words better. However, for those who spent more time in the slow-wave sleep cycle, their memory of the cued words were worse than words that were not cued during sleep. This suggests that listening to words during the slow-wave sleep cycle may make disrupt or disorganise the connections associated with that word. The researchers theorise that slow-wave sleep may be responsible for consolidating memory and that being exposed to an auditory cue during that sensitive time may destabilise a new memory and contaminate it by connecting it with unassociated information.

When considering how long one should sleep to ensure best language learning outcomes, we should note that both rapid-eye-movement sleep (REM) and slow-wave sleep (SWS) are vital to memory associated with language acquisition. The brain is constantly seeking to balance stability and openness to new infromation, also known as plasticity. We can conceive of SWS as time for allowing modification of existing memory. It allows new memory to get associated with other information. REM then consolidates this memory and integrates it with long-term memory.

Since both REM and SWS are considered deeper sleep stages, one would do best for their language learning endeavours by establishing good sleep habits. It takes between 10 minutes to 40 minutes to enter into SWS sleep, and it may take up to 90 minutes to have prolonged periods of REM sleep. Anyone trying to learn a language and trying alternative sleep cycles may not be doing their langauge learning a service, although if there is a way to hack the system to optimise the ratio of SWS and REM for learning, please share your insights in the comments.

When I started learning Italian I noticed that instead of saying “ora” or “adesso”, which is Italian for “now”, I would repeatedly say “ima” (今) which is its translation in Japanese. I had stopped learning Japanese more than 10 years before, but my brain had softcoded ima with the notion of how-to-say-now-in-a-foreign-language. In order to disassociate this, I had to practise Italian for quite a lot longer, and I imagine sleep had a lot to do this process. If you’ve been noticing you are not learning as well as you’d like, perhaps you are not getting enough sleep to allow for new memory formation. Ensure you sleep well and enjoy the journey to long-term fluency.

![Neo learns kung-fu](/assets/images/blog/posts/can-you-learn-a-language-while-sleeping/kate-stone-matheson.webp)

Can you learn a language while sleeping?



According to this economist’s article, only 1% of U.S. high school students reach high-level fluency in a foreign language from their high school language program. The author goes on to argue that it would be better for the U.S.A. to abandon high school foreign language classes altogether. So what is responsible for such a poor statistic? The attitude of those involved (the board of education, teachers and pupils) or the pedagogical method itself?

![Neo learns kung-fu](/assets/images/blog/posts/can-you-learn-a-foreign-language-in-high-school/kenny-eliason.webp)

From the board of education’s perspective, the immediate goal of foreign language education is simply to give students an exposure to foreign languages, and from the school’s perspective the course is conducted and used to grade and rank students. Students, however, are not always privy to these short-term goals held by their superiors.

That’s why students who wish to reach fluency and who dutiful follow the course material, are left disappointed with their foreign language education despite performing the best in them. To say that this discrepency in fluency and grades arises from both poor expectation management on the part of the education program and the actual pedagogical methods employed by the program.

In terms of expectation management, many students learn a language in order to actually speak the language and to be able to live in that country if the need or opportunity were to arise. The choice is therefore to decide, either to burst this bubble, explaining that the high school course is only an introduction, and perfect scores in exams would never be enough for the students to reach fluency, or the education board can review the curriculum to provide a more immersive foreign language environment that can lead to multilingual students by the end of the high school program.

The third alternative, of course, is to abandon foreign language education altogether. This might be a reality given English speaking countries’ distinct disadvantage of perceived self-sufficiency. However, at least in such a case, students would not be left disappointed at the end of the high school program with their education. It’s unjust to the student who dedicated time and energy to completing the text-book exercises only to find out two years later that they cannot hold a 2-minute conversation with a native speaker they met online.

We know that good curriculums do exist and long-term sustainable goals can make successful high school language programs. There are countless countries that have long-term language programs that work. Belgium, Germany and Finland are good examples. However, growing up in Australia, I studied high school Japanese for 5 years and despite enjoying the class and indeed even with the great relationships I had with the teachers, I can say I never reached a tiny bit of competence in Japanese listening and speaking. I can read some Hiragana and Katakana but that’s it. The same applies to most of my colleagues. Universities do the same, so they’re not completely off the hook, but perhaps no one is deluded enough to expect fluency after taking a couple of courses in university.

Pengguin is offering to be a guide to fill in the gaps that high school could never give. An immersion experience that can only be found in the friendlist of online communities. Since we are all language learners, each user is patient with others. We are here to learn, not only to play, so it is a place where mutual help is provided for while having fun. Waiting for the curriculum to change is like waiting for the Catholic Church to abandon priestly celibacy. Pengguin aims to disrupt language learning, both the attitude and the pedagogical form, and in this way it will make polyglots of the world, including English speaking nations, one game at a time.

Can you learn a foreign language in High School?


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Language immersion can be incredibly effective and fun, and yet on many occasions, it can be painful and even utterly humiliating. What is the best way to properly navigate the language immersion experience? How do you ensure you are sustaining growth pain and not suffering potential injury?

We spoke previous about the benefits of language learning via immersion, and about the fundamental conditions that create an effective immersion experience. One of those conditions mentioned being an open and unrushed attitude to learning. However, even with the most open attitude, going into immersion can be like going into battle. That is, a battle with one’s own ego.

One of the reasons that language learning is so difficult is how often a positive experience of understanding or responding correctly in the target langauge is accompanied by a negative experience when not being able to understand or when what you say is not comprehended. Negative experiences can produce a feeling of incompetence, and if repeated often enough may result in loss of motivation.

The motivation to return to an immersive environment is obviously vital to benefiting from it, since its fruits are only realised by long-term engagement. This is why living in the country where the language is spoken has its advantages in that there is a lower threshold of motivation required to continue learning the language. However, even in such cases, a lack of motivation can mean never reaching fluency.

A good way to distinguish healthy growth pains and potential injury is to conceive of a growing plant. I recently learnt of syntropic farming which creates sustainable cultivation of natural produce by leveraging organic processes of forests. To begin such a farm, resilient trees must be planted and pruned. The trees respond to pruning by growing deeper roots and ultimately exhibit accelerated growth. After a while, pruning is unnecessary because the tree naturally reaches its mature stature. Mature trees then become a supportive structure to other plants within its boundary.

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In the same way, we can conceive of the pains of growing in language immersion as being pruned. One reason why language classes are so popular is that you find yourself with students of similar level and it is a comfortable place to be. Immersion is for the ambitious, who truly want to reach fluency. Infrastructure is required to ensure injuries and more sustainable growth. A vital aspect of the analogy of pruning to growth pains in language learning is the importance of the one who does the pruning. A benevolent, gentle pruner is critical to the tree’s accelerated growth. A violent cutting of branches will do more harm than good.

In your immersive journey, you will benefit from being accompanied by a native speaker who is like the good pruner, who corrects you with the right intention, in a non-judgmental way. Someone who is patient and willing to help you. The pain of embarassment associated with making mistakes, whether it be grammatical errors, the wrong vocabulary or improper pronunciation, is mitigated by a friendly pruner.

At the same time, overreliance on patience and friendliness is not sustainable. We wish to enable a sustainable growth environment by creating an ecosystem where native speakers, fluent speakers, intermediate speakers and beginners can interact in a way where everyone flourishes. This is where syntropic agriculture helps to visualise how one native speaker acts as the emergent supporter of various other levels of learners who grow around the native speaker and down the levels where each learner helps other learners.

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The environment that Pengguin wishes to foster is not only a place to communicate with native speakers, but an environment where all community members are supportive of each other. In this way we want to create a sustainable ecosystem where native speakers and learners interact in a way that maintains the motivation of the learners and assists them to engage with language learning frequently and for a long time until self-sustaining mature stature is reached. Mature language learners can then help others and keep the cycle going. We’re coming together to make polyglots of all people. Let’s make the best language learning immersion environment for everyone, one immersion game at a time.

Growth pains in language learning


**Is going to the gym and bouldering related to language learning?**

This blog article breaks the foray into language hack, but I think you will enjoy it just the same. I’m writing this from Berlin where I was recently invited to go indoor bouldering for the first time and I’m glad to say I found it very satisfying. Since it had so many similarities to what Pengguin eventually wishes to offer, I had to write something about it. It’s normal to get burnt out in language learning and yet it doesn’t have to be. I think the language learning community can learn something or two from bouldering.

A little about Bouldering from my brief experience: it’s an exercise where you start off the ground with two hands on the starting rock(s). Each “course” is complete when you reach the top. The difficulty of each course is marked by colours or numbers so that you have a reasonable expectation of whether you will reach the top, and you can track your progress.

When deciding to follow my new friend to the bouldering centre, my expectation was similar to that of visiting a new gym. The aim was to get a workout in, and indeed it was a workout, but bouldering was so much more. Both the gym and bouldering provides you with immediate feedback regarding your abilitites. You can either bench your weight or not, and you will find out immediately by trying it. It’s the same in bouldering, the feedback regards how far you can make it towards the top. Smashing your personal best in bench press is satisfying and so is reaching the top in bouldering after multiple attempts. It’s a process of trial and error where the satisfaction is literally tangible.

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Trial and error is the process by which one improves in bouldering. With the help of a trainer you can get some important tips and try out the manoeuvres . You can also learn a lot simply by observing the more experienced climbers. In starting out with language learning, you need to grasp some basic concepts and practise putting together a few phrases with the new grammatical notions and vocabulary acquired. Just as indoor bouldering provides a safe environment to where you can practice and improve incrementally towards your goal of mastery.

The bouldering centre had a soft mattress-like floor to soften the landing when jumping down and to ensure a safer fall. There were many times when I almost lost my grip and I saw a number of people falling off the walls and landing on their backs. No one laughs at anyone who falls because everyone has been there; everyone at the bouldering cerntre has either fallen off or have been extremely close to falling. This is why speaking practise in a controlled space is a good environment to test your skills. The danger of embarrassment is mitigated because everyone is learning.

On the other hand, the reality of “danger” makes the challenge extra exciting. Social engagement in the lagnauge you have een learning is a challenge. There is the danger that you will get stuck midway when trying to express something. Mixing up words and saying something ridiculous is part and parcel of language learning! I’ve seen this happen with a German friend who during a ceremonious dinner farewelling him responded with, “I’ve really appreciated your hostility” instead of “hospitality”. The room burst out with laughter. It was all in good spirits as everyone liked him. However, I’ve made a similar mistake when speaking up in theology class among German natives, and for better or worse, there was no laughter, just a simple, “Alright then, as we were saying…” Talk about embarrassing!

The benefit of a controlled enviornment of immersion is simply that: you are in more control. There’s less repercussions for errors, and your journey to fluency can progress steadily along realistic expectations. Yet immersion implies the conversation with native speakers and other learners is still real, which is to say there is still opportunity to make a fool of oneself. The challenge of the arena makes it just that much more exciting.

After controlled immersion, spending time writing down and revising what you learnt will help you master that aspect of the language. This is like working on a particular aspect of your body so that you can grow as a boulderer. For example, you can work on flexibility and strength at the gym. For language learniers, it’s helpful to work on weak spots through flash-cards and grammar revision. However, if you don’t engage in immersion experiences, you may not know what language skills you are lacking in.

The social element was also something I didn’t expect. At a regular gym, most people are in-and-out doing their daily exercise with their ear-phones in. I have admired some pretty epic squats by others at the gym, but bouldering was far more social in an interesting way. Even if one is climbing on his or her own, anyone can observe. I found it entertaining to watch others climb. Bouldering is the display of flexibility, agility, intelligence and expertise. Not to say it’s all about flexing, but it can be quite a show. Gathering together to practice has this benefit. To admire and to learn from each other. Pengguin is building a language community, where respect and safety are highly respected. With time, we can help each other pick up skills, work towards fluency and survive any language learning blues! More on that next time. For now, enjoy flexing your language skills!

Physical training and language learning


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Immersion is the most authentic and natural way to learn a language. However, immersion somehow carries the connotation of being an all-or-nothing experience. It’s either flying yourself to a foreign country and just trying to speak with the locals, or it’s not immersion. However, that’s not necessarily the best way to conceive of immersion.

# Immersion as a Child:

The fact that most of us learned to speak our native tongue through immersion, without grammar exercises or textbooks, shouldn’t surprise us. Nor should the fact that we as adults can emulate the same results by attempting to learn a language completely via immersion. However, we must recognise that it also takes yearsssss for a child to learn a language. Of course, we would do well to emulate the child’s open and unrushed attitude to learning, as noted in our first blog. However, immersion learning for adults is influenced by other factors beyond time and attitude.

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A child’s immersion experience is characterised by the availability of native speaker guides, namely parents or guardians and their circle of friends. Such guides also exist for adult learners of languages, although they don’t usually take the form of 24h service providers who wash you and feed you. A classroom teacher and/or textbook can help tremendously when starting out learning a language as an adult, and a self-imposed immersion program doesn’t have to preclude such useful aids, even if it disqualifies the learner from the title of “supreme auto-didact”. The important thing is to be doing the learning, and not always the didacting.

# The Main Player in Immersion
Once we recognize the conditions required to achieve an immersion experience as adult, that is, the time, the attitude and a guide, we can now consider true key player in immersion, and why immersion proves to be the most effective, natural and authentic way to learn a language.

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You have guessed it, the main player in the immersion industry is the human brain. The human brain is designed for language learning. In fact, we have a whole part of the brain dedicated to understanding speech and another part dedicated to speech production. Moreover, the brain is a supercharged pattern-recognition machine. Sure, it’s not always accurate, but the brain loves detecting patterns and solving puzzles.

Speaking of puzzles, the final piece in this one is recognising that the brain requires a healthy form of dopamine to drive the activity performed. This is why we recommend tempered immersion experiences. Start at the shallow end and slowly go deeper. At Pengguin, we want to emulate the experience provided by child language educators at Speak Like a Native. For years, they have been teaching children foreign languages through play; something they call Guided Language Participation (GLP). We’ll delve into Pengguin’s method further in upcoming blogs, so stay tuned!



Immersion without being Overwhelmed


## Introduction

Is there a hack to language learning? Is it possible to download all that data into the brain, just as we all learnt our native tongue effortlessly as a child?

Well, there are some Youtubers and websites pointing to the possibility of learning a language in a matter of days.

If a hack to language learning exists, what does it look like? And beyond the method, why do so many of us want to learn a language quickly rather than slowly?

## Impressively Titled Youtube Videos
If you’re a language learner, you have probably been bombared by the Youtube algorithm suggesting videos like, “Watch me learn a language in 7 days”, or “Fluent in Mandarin in a month”. Perhaps it’s precisely because the claims are so ridiculous, but every now and again, it’s actually quite tempting to watch one of these videos. We don’t want to shake off that tiny sliver of hope that points to the possibility of someone, somewhere in the world, finding a way to hack language learning forever.

The problem with simply dedicating time to language learning is familiar to anyone who has completed a high school program. If efficient methods exist, why not spread the love?

Well, without simplifying the problem at hand too much, let me simply state that half the problem lies in the attitude towards time.