A Comparative Study of Teaching Japanese in the Audio‐Lingual Method and the Counseling‐Learning Approach

variables (Brown, Busch, Ely, Schuman, Scovel), suggesting that they merit the serious attention of language professionals. Ely (15), for example, has conducted research on students' situation-specific constructs: language class discomfort, language class risktaking, and language class sociability in first-year Spanish. The results of the study reveal that risktaking is a positive predictor of students' voluntary classroom participation. Ely concludes (14: p. 23): "Apparently, before some students can be expected to take linguistic risks, they must be made to feel more psychologically comfortable and safe in their learning environment." In the past ten or fifteen years, psychologists and language professionals have been studying "the right concatenation of psychological factors" (Schumann) in order to produce more successful second language learners. Curran saw the need for understanding language learners not only cognitively by affectively as well. The Counseling-Learning (CL) approach he devised (11, 12) recognizes the need for ego permeability achieved through reduced inhibitions. Adopting the mode of a counseling situation, especially "client-centered therapy," for language instruction, Curran referred to the student as a "language client" and to the teacher who is equipped with linguistic resources and a counselor's empathic attitude as a "language counselor." To break down inhibitions, Curran created a learning situation characterized by warmth and acceptance. The role of the language counselor is to communicate empathy for the learner's threatened state, ". . . to aid him linguistically, and then slowly to enable him to arrive at his own increasingly independent language adequacy" (11: p. 82). Curran's thinking and practice have been receiving enthusiastic reviews and reactions from language professionals, but not without reservations (Brown, Taylor, 31). One of the most frequently voiced concerns is how to put the approach to use in regular classrooms. Few empirical studies have been conducted to prove the applicability of CL in regular language classrooms. LaFarga conducted an experiment in which members of a group speaking four foreign languages (French, German, Spanish, and Italian) studied under group counseling conditions. After a nine-month period, students in the experimental group had acquired almost as much language competence in all four languages as the control group did in one language. The experiment also showed evidence of increased positive self-regard among experimental group members. Gallagher evaluated CL compared to a traditional approach in terms of language achievement, personal orientation, and change in attitude toward second-language learning. A unique aspect of this study was that the experimental group studied both Spanish and German while the control group studied either one or the other. The analysis and data indicated no significant difference in gain for either the experimental or the control group with regard to reading comprehension and knowledge of grammar. For listening and speaking skills, however, the experimental group in each target language scored significantly higher than the control group. On affective scores, the experiThe Modern Language Journal, 73, ii (1989) 0026-7902/89/0002/169 $1.50/0 ?1989 The Modern Language Journal