Suggestopedia (1980s-1990s)

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Suggestopedia (1980s-1990s)
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A short introduction

• stimulates the whole person
• undoes blocks
• goes rapidly forward
• gives creative solutions
• encourages relaxation
• strengthens self-image
• talks to all the senses
• optimizes learning

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A short introduction

• propagates talent
• enhances learning
• dramatizes material
• includes pictures, music and movement
• addresses the whole person

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Background

• Suggestopedia or Multi-Level Learning
• An educational method developed by Bulgarian
  scientist Georgi Lozanov and based on a modern
  understanding of how the human brain works and
  how we learn most effectively.
• It was originally applied mainly in foreign
  language teaching
• It is often claimed that it can teach languages
  approximately three times as quickly as
  conventional methods.

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Background

• It improves physical health, and bring
  substantial benefits in personality and
  motivation (research from Finland).
• It can also effect radical changes in the way
  people approach creative thinking, problems and
  conflict.

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Key Elements of Suggestopedia

• A rich sensory learning environment (pictures,
  colour, music, etc.)
• A positive expectation of success and the use of
  a varied range of methods dramatized texts,
  music, active participation in songs and games,
  etc.

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Four main stages

• 1. Presentation
• 2. First ConcertActive Concert
• 3. Second ConcertPassive Review
• 4. Practice

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Presentation

• A preparatory stage in which students are helped
  to relax and move into a positive frame of mind,
  with the feeling that the learning is going to be
  easy and fun.

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First ConcertActive Concert

• This involves the active presentation of the
  material to be learnt. For example, in a foreign
  language course there might be the dramatic
  reading of a piece of text, accompanied by
  classical music.

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Second ConcertPassive Review

• The students are now invited to relax and listen
  to some Baroque music, with the text being read
  very quietly in the background. The music is
  specially selected to bring the students into the
  optimum mental state for the effortless
  acquisition of the material.

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Practice

• The use of a range of games, puzzles, etc. to
  review and consolidate the learning.

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Function of music

• Gaston (1968) claimed that music can
• (1) facilitate the establishment and maintenance
  of personal relations
• (2) to bring about Increased self-esteem through
  increased self-satisfaction in musical
  performance and
• (3) to use the unique potential of rhythm to
  energize and bring order.

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Function of music

• He use music to relax learners, to structure, to
  pace and to punctuate the presentation of
  linguistic materials.

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Approach
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Theory of Language

• Lozanov (1978) assumes that the only major
  linguistic problems in the language classroom are
  memorization and integration.
• If the students remember the words and patterns
  of the language and integrate them into their
  personalities, the students have acquired the
  language and the teacher has done all that needs
  to be done.

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Theory of Language

• The emphasis on memorization of vocabulary
  pairsa target language item and its native
  language translationsuggests a view of language
  in which lexis is central and lexical translation
  rather than contextualization is stressed.
• Lozanov emphasizes the importance of experiencing
  language material in whole meaningful texts
  (Lozanov 1978 268) and notes that the
  suggestopedia course directs "the student not to
  vocabulary memorization and acquiring

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Theory of Language

• habits of speech, but to acts of communication"
  (Lozanov 1978 109). Lozanov refers most often to
  the language to be learned as "the material."

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Theory of Learning

• Suggestion is at the heart of Suggestopedia.
  Lozanov claims that his method is different from
  hypnosis and other forms of mind control because
  they lack a "desuggestive-suggestive sense" and
  "fail to create a constant set up to reserves
  through concentrative psycho-relaxation" (1978
  267). (Reserves are like human memory banks)
  There are six principal theoretical components
  through which desuggestion and suggestion operate
  and that set up access to reserves.

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Principles and Description

• Authority People remember best and are most
  influenced by information coming from an
  authoritative source.
• Infantilization In the child's role that learner
  takes part in role playing, games, songs, and
  gymnastic exercises that help "the older student
  regain the self-confidence, spontaneity and
  receptivity of the child.

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Principles and Description

• Double-Planedness The learner learns not only
  from the effect of direct instruction but from
  the environment in which the instruction takes
  place. (the bright decor of the classroom, the
  musical background, the shape of the chairs, and
  the personality of the teacher are considered as
  important in instruction as the form of the
  instructional material itself.

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Principles and Description

• Intonation, Rhythm, and Concert
  Pseudo-Passiveness
• Varying the tone and rhythm of presented material
  helps both to avoid boredom through monotony of
  repetition and to dramatize, emotionalize, and
  give meaning to linguistic material.The musical
  background helps to induce a relaxed attitude
  which Lozanov refers to as concert
  pseudo-passiveness.

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Principles and Description

• The type of music is critical to learning
  success. At the institute Lozanov recommends a
  series of slow movements (sixty beats a minute)
  in 4/4 time for Baroque concertos strung together
  into about a half-hour-concert.' He notes that
  in such concerts "the body relaxed, the mind
  became alert" (Ostrander et al. 1 979 74).The
  rate of presentation of material to be learned
  within the rhythmic pattern is keyed to the
  rhythm. Superlearning uses an eight-second cycle
  for

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Principles and Description

• pacing out data at slow intervals.Supporters
  reflect that "the minute is divided into sixty
  seconds and that perhaps there's more to this
  than just an arbitrary division of time."

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Design
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Objectives

• Through the use of background music and
  softly-spoken information students will absorb
  information at a much higher rate than is
  otherwise possible.
• Students will experience the sensation of
  controlled relaxation.
• Attentiveness is manipulated to optimise learning
  and recall.

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Learning Objectives

• Left and right brain integration will be enhanced
  through the power of suggestion, music,
  relaxation, deep breathing, metaphors and guided
  imagery.
• Self-image will be improved.
• The students will have a positive attitude
  towards learning.
• Suggestopedia aims to deliver advanced
  conversational proficiency quickly. Teachers
  place a high value on vocabulary recall,
  memorization

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Learning Objectives

• of vocabulary pairs continues to be seen as an
  important goal of the suggestopedic method.
• To memorize large amounts of target language
  vocabulary.
• To be able to understand target language at the
  appropriate level through the teacher's
  presentation of the language material (gestures
  and intonation.)

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Language Objectives

• To be able to translate target language
  vocabulary into ones native language.
• To be able to gain meaning in the written form of
  the target language.
• To be able to communicate confidently in the
  target language (at the designated level.)
• To be able to apply the language in useful,
  'real-life' settings.

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The syllabus

• A Suggestopedia course lasts thirty days and
  consists of ten units of study, classes are held
  four hours a day, six days a week.
• The central focus of each unit is a dialogue
  consisting of 1,200 words or so, with an
  accompanying vocabulary list and grammatical
  commentary. The dialogues are graded by lexis and
  grammar.

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The syllabus

• Students are given a new name in the second
  language and a new biography in the second
  culture with which they are to operate for the
  duration of the course.
• Written tests are also given throughout the
  course, and the performance are reviewed on the
  final day of the course.

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Types of learning and teaching activities

• Activities in the syllabus include imitation,
  question and answer, and role playnot activities
  "that other language teachers would consider to
  be out of the ordinary" (Stevick 1976 157).
• Activities more original to Suggestopedia are the
  listening activities, which concern the text and
  text vocabulary of each unittypically part of
  the "pre-session phase," which takes place on the
  first day of a new unit.

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Types of learning and teaching activities

• The students first look at and discuss a new text
  with the teacher. In the second reading, students
  relax comfortably in reclining chairs and listen
  to the teacher read the text in a certain way.

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Learner Roles (Relaxer, True-Believer)

• Students volunteer for a suggestopedic course,
  but having volunteered, they are expected to be
  committed to the class and its activities.
• Students are expected to tolerate and in fact
  encourage their own infantilization.
• Groups of learners are ideally socially
  homogeneous, 12 in number, and divided equally
  between men and women.
• Learners sit in a circle, which encourages
  face-to-face exchange and activity participation.

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Teacher Roles (Auto-hypnotist,Authority Figure)

• To create situations in which learners are most
  suggestible and then to present linguistic
  material in a way most likely to encourage
  positive reception and retention by learners.
• Lozanov lists several expected teacher behaviors
  as follows
• 1. Show absolute confidence in the method.
• 2. Display fastidious conduct in manners and
  dress.
• 3. Organize properly, and strictly observe the
  initial stages of the teaching processthis
  includes

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Teacher roles

• choice and play of music, as well as punctuality.
• 4. Maintain a solemn attitude towards the
  session.
• 5. Give tests and respond tactfully to poor
  papers (if any).
• 6. Stress global rather than analytical attitudes
  towards material.
• 7. Maintain a modest enthusiasm.

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The role of instructional materials

• Materials consist of direct support materials,
  primarily text and tape, and indirect support
  materials, including classroom fixtures and
  music.

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Procedure

• As with other methods we have examined, there are
  variants both historical and individual in the
  actual conduct of Suggestopedia classes.

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Suggestopedia apprentices uses the Learning
Hypothesis

• I will learn because I was accepted
• I am now a native speaker, I can speak and
  understand the language
• I learned the text during the concert session, I
  know the language.
• The material is getting easier, I must be
  learning.
• I have successfully graduated from a language
  course, I can use the language.

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Drawbacks

• Teachers following Lozanov's suggestopaedic
  methods need to be skilled in singing, acting and
  psychotherapeutic techniques.
• Not much authentic material (potentially).

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Conclusion

• Suggestopedia also received a scathing review in
  the TESOL Quarterly, a journal of somewhat more
  restricted circulation than Parade (Scovel 1979).
• Scovel takes special issue with Lozanov's use
  (and misuse) of scholarly citations,
  terminological jargon, and experimental data and
  states that a careful reading of Suggestology
  and Outlines of Suggestopedy reveals that there
  is precious little in suggestology which is
  scientific" (1979 257).

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Why Suggestion

• The teacher uses both verbal and non-verbal ways
  to communicate the learning hypothesis (X) I am
  doing this, so (Y) I am learning the language
  (X) I did, so (Y) I can use the language. This is
  a necessary and continuous part of suggestopedic
  teaching.

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Why Desuggestion

• Suggestopedia sees the negative suggestions (Oh,
  it is too late for me, I am too old, or How can
  I remember that amount? Nobody can!) from the
  social-suggestive norm as inhibiting human
  potential and believes teachers can free their
  students natural potential by replacing existing
• Desuggestopedia (the name of this method changed
  from Suggestopedia to Desuggestopedia to
  emphasize the importance on desuggesting
  limitations on learning),

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Why Desuggestion-Suggestion

• Negative suggestions with positive suggestions.
  This is called the desuggestive-suggestive
  process (Lozanov, 1978, pp. 252-258).

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