Improving the Praxis of Conversation Club Leaders in a Community of Practice: A Case study in a Self-Access Centre

• Main Authors: Pamela Sigala Villa, Adelina Ruiz-Guerrero, Laura María Zurutuza Roaro
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Kanda University of International Studies 2019-06-01
• Series: Studies in Self-Access Learning Journal
• Subjects: conversation club; self-access centre; community of practice; knowledge management; reflection in action
• Online Access: https://sisaljournal.org/archives/jun19/sigala_et_al/

The role that a conversation club plays in the improvement of foreign language proficiency of its users in a self-access centre varies according to the strategies a conversation club leader applies. This paper reports the changes made by conversation club leaders (CCLs), who formed a community of practice (CoP) under the methodology of Knowledge Management (KM) to become aware of the effective and non-effective practices they employed through recording themselves, sharing their experiences, listening to each other, and analyzing their performance. A total of six conversation club leaders participated in the case study that took place in 2016. The outcome was a series of strategies generated by the CCLs and shared with all new CCLs in the self-access centre.