Desuggestopedia

Desuggestopedia

Juan Carlos Gmez Gmez

Tecnichal Bilingual, Cicle IV Professor Elmer Guardado Octuber 21, 2013

Desuggestopedia

DESUGGESTOPEDIA A REVIEW OF LITERATURE This method is focus in that language learning can occur at a much faster rate than ordinarily transpires. Georgi Lozanov he is the originator of Desuggestopedia he was a Bulgarian Psychiatrist and educator. Georgi Lozanov (1988), Foreign Language Teachers Suggestopedic Manual. Dr. Georgi Lozanov of the Institute of Suggestology in Sofia, Bulgaria is, together with his colleagues, the originator of these techniques and he asserts that we set up psychological barriers to learning. SUGGESTOLOGY is the study of the power of suggestion which can be verbal, non-verbal, conscious or unconscious. The artful use of suggestion as a means of facilitating the learning and communication process is, of course, and has always been, a part of nearly all effective teaching and persuasive communication. Not until the past twenty years, however, has the phenomenon of suggestion begun to be methodically researched and tested as to how it can and does affect learning. At the centre of these developments is the work of Lozanov. For more than 20 years he has been experimenting with accelerative approaches to learning, has founded the Institute of Suggestology in Sofia, Bulgaria. But there are drawn some conclusions in addressing the following questions: 1-What is de-suggestupedia? 2-What are the goals of teachers who use Desuggestopedia? 3-.What is the teachers role/students role? 4- What are the techniques of Desuggestopedia that we can use in the classroom? What is de-suggestupedia? Suggest => Desuggest Desuggest is the opposite of suggest. This method puts importance on desuggesting limitations on learning.

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It is an approach to education whose primary objective is to tap the extraordinary reserve capacities we all possess but rarely if ever use. This method utilises techniques from many sources of research into how best we can learn. The Bulgarian scientist, Dr. Georgi Lozanov, for example, has demonstrated that through a carefully orchestrated learning environment including most importantly a specially-trained teacher, the learning process can be accelerated by a factor of three to ten times enjoyably. Such results are possible through the proper use of suggestion. The suggestive-desuggestive process allows students to go beyond previously held beliefs and self-limiting concepts concerning the learning process and learn great quantities of material with easy and enjoyment. Dr.Georgy Lozanov defined theDESUGGESTUPEDIAof this way Learning is a matter of attitude, not aptitude. This method puts importance on desuggesting limitations on learning. The theory applied positive suggestion in teaching when it was developed in the 1970s. However, as improved, it has focused more on desuggestive learning and now is often called desuggestopedia. Suggestopedia is used in six major foreignlanguage teaching methods known to language teaching experts (the oldest being the grammar translation method.) The name of Suggestopedia is from the words suggestion and pedagogy. Many discussions and misunderstanding have caused this name because people connect the words suggestion to hypnosis. There are many different definitions for the word suggestion. When Dr. Lozanov chose this word, he was thinking about the English meaning: TO SUGGEST = TO OFFER, TO PROPOSE (BUT THE STUDENTS ARE FREE TO CHOOSE). Defining this method for a successful classroom atmosphere, Lozanov maintain some elements that should be present: Psychological: a nurturing, supportive atmosphere in which the student feels free to try out the new information, be inventive with it, make mistakes without being put down, and, in general, enjoy the learning experience. Educational: The material should be presented in a structured fashion, combining the Big Picture, Analysis and Synthesis. Every moment should be a didactic experience even when

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the learning process is not that apparent. Artistic: The classroom should not be cluttered with too many posters and unnecessary objects, otherwise we dont see them. We go into overwhelm. Good quality pictures should be displayed and changed every few days. Music can be played as the students enter the room, and during the breaks. Plants and flowers add to a pleasant atmosphere. If the chairs are arranged in a U-shape, there is a better communication possible between the teacher and students and among the students themselves Music: After conducting numerous controlled experiments using a wide variety of music, Lozanov concluded that music of the Classical and Early Romantic periods was most effective for the first presentation of material to be learned. The music of Hayden, Mozart and Beethoven is dramatic, emotionally engaging, and ordered, harmoniously structured. It stimulates, invites alertness, and its harmony and order evoke ease and relaxation. For the second concert presentation of material Lozanov found that Baroque music was especially suited. The music of Bach, Handel, Vivaldi, Telemann, Corelli (among others) has a less personal, more rigorously structured quality, providing a background of order and regularity which supports very well the more straight-forward. What are the goals of teachers who use Desuggestopedia? The goals of the teachers: Teachers hope to accelerate the process by which students learn to use a foreign language for everyday communication. In order to do this, more of the students mental powers must be tapped. This is accomplished by desuggesting the psychological barriers learners bring with them to the learning situation and using techniques to activate the paraconscious part of the mind, just below the fullyconscious mind. (Page 81)Help students eradicate and overcome the barriers to learning and to Increase the communicative ability of the students.

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What is the teachers role/students role? The teacher is the authority in the classroom. In order for the method to be successful, the students must trust and respect her. The students will retain information better from someone in whom they have confidence since they will be more responsive to her desuggesting their limitations and suggesting how easy it will be for them to succeed. Once the students trust the teacher, they can feel more secure. If they feel secure, they can be more spontaneous and less inhibited. The students should pay attention to the professor and the students must follow the teachers instruction enjoying in the new identity freely. What are the techniques of Desuggestopedia that we can use in the classroom? In Desuggestopedia, there are some techniques that we can use in the classroom: Classroom set-up: the challenge for the teacher is to create a classroom environment which is bright and cheerful. This was accomplished in the classroom we visited where the walls were decorated with scenes from a country where the target language is spoken. These conditions are not always possible. However, the teacher should try to provide an environment as positive as possible. Peripheral learning: The students learn English not only from direct instruction but also from indirect instruction. It is encouraged through the presence in the learning environment of posters and decoration featuring the target language and various grammatical information. They are changed from time to time. By doing this, the students can learn many things indirectly in the classroom or outside classroom. The teacher may or may not call attention to the posters. For example, students can produce simple sentence by using the posters or grammatical information on the wall. Positive suggestion: It is the teacher`s responsibility to orchestrate the suggestive factors in a learning situation, by helping students break down the barriers to learning that they bring with them. Teacher can do this through direct and indirect means. Direct suggestion appeals to the students` consciousness by telling the students that they are going to be successful. But indirect suggestion appeals to the students` subconscious, is actually the more powerful of the two. It was achieved

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through the dialogue, Be self-confident. Choose a new identity: The students choose a target language name and a new occupation. As the course continuous, the students have an opportunity to develop a whole biography about their fictional selves. Role play: Students are asked to pretend temporarily that they are someone else and to perform in the target language as if they were that person. They are often asked to create their own lines relevant to the situation. First concert (active concert): The two concerts are components of the receptive phase of the lesson. In the first concert, the teacher reads the dialog in the target language. Music is played. After a few minutes, the teacher begins a slow, dramatic reading and synchronized in intonation with the music. Second concert (passive concert): In the second phase, the students are asked to put their script aside. They simply listen as the teacher reads the dialog at the normal rate of speed. The teacher is seated and reads with musical accompaniment. The content governs the way the teacher reads the script, not the music. Primary activation: This technique follows components of the active phase of the lesson. Students playfully reread the target language dialog out loud, as individuals or in group. In the lesson we observed, three groups of students read parts of the dialog in a particular manner: the first group, sadly; the next, angrily; the last, cheerfully. Creative adaptation: The students engage in various activities designed to help them learn the new material and use it spontaneously. Activities particularly recommended for this phase include singing, dancing, dramatization and games. The important thing is that the activities are varied and do not allow the students to focus on the form of the linguistic message, just the communicative intent. In conclusion the reason for our inefficiency, Lozanov asserts, is that we set up psychological barriers to learning: we fear that we will be unable to perform, that we will be limited in our ability to learn, that we will fail. One result is that we do not use the full mental powers that we have; we maybe use just five to ten percent of our mental capacity and Desuggestopedia has being developed to help students eliminate the feeling that they cannot be successful or the negative association they may have toward studying and thus, to help them overcome the barriers to learning and Generally, students would not be able to believe that they could be successful in learning language. This lack of motivation has made students do not have confidence to speak in the target language, because they do not want to make mistakes.

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The first experiment utilizing the theory of Suggestology and Suggestupedia applications in the United States was in the teaching of Russian at Cleveland State College by Mariana Kurkov in 1970. While seldom reported in the literature, she taught an experimental class in Russian using elements of suggestupedia which had been pieced together from her professional reading. Teacher will find different situation and different types of students in learning. Therefore, teacher should be creative and smart in choosing and using different types of methods in teaching different skill of language. Teacher can use Suggestopedia as teaching method in their teaching. Using Suggestopedia is very interesting but challenging to do. It can be seen from some considerations. In one side it has some benefits, but on the other side it also has some weaknesses. In addition, the key factors of effective teaching are not the approaches and methods in language teaching themselves but the teachers deliberate selection of different approaches and methods and the devoted practice of putting theories into real teaching activities in a corresponding social-cultural context. It is a fact that no approach or method is perfect. However, there is no end for teacher to seek the perfection of the approaches and methods in language teaching. The language teaching method known as Suggestopedia provides some valuable insights into the power of cognition and creates techniques that make students feel comfortable, relaxed and suggestible to the material being learned. Lozanovs Suggestopedia is: Not Hypnosis: Lozanov, once a hypnotist himself, now strongly opposes against use of hypnosis. He has realized the danger of hypnosis and being hypnotized (Lozanov 1978). In the process of refining his own Suggestopedia with Evelina Gateva, he has removed all elements that may induce hypnotical states of mind. Lozanov defines hypnotic situation as being taken ones freedom and creativity away by a hypnotic dictator. Every teaching method that uses order, guidance, Monotonous intonation and monotonous rhythm may cause hypnotic states. Not Superlearning: The authors of Superlearning have ever been trained

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by Lozanov. The book was written with limited information acquired from a short observation of Lozanovs experimental research. Hence, there is a lot of misunderstandings in the book. Not NLP (NeuroLinguistic Programming): Lozanov denies any kind of manipulation on ones personality, even if it would program however positive or optimistic way of thinking. Suggestopedia see programming Is a product of dictation and manipulation that, like hypnosis, inhibits freedom of personality. Not using a reclining chair, or a sofa: A Suggestopedia class uses a room with a central round table and ordinary chairs surrounding the table. It never uses reclining chairs to lay down students and make them listen to a teachers voice. Such an activity may cause hypnotic states. Not using visualization exercise: Lozanov calls such an exercise as guided fantasy. He regards this kind of guided fantasy in which people are forced to visualize some image is hypnosis. Not using slow baroque music in the concert reading: Suggestopedia uses baroque music pieces in the second or passive concert session. However it never uses a slow baroque or a music piece written as adagio. It is simply because Suggestopedia does not want students to fall asleep in the concert session. Rather, it uses faster and livelier pieces to stimulate a whole brain. In the first or active concert session, it uses even more lively pieces of classical music. The music list includes a quite dramatic piece such as Beethovens piano concerto No. 5. Not using rap music in the concert reading: Suggestopedia uses the power of the selected (scientifically proven) pieces of classical music because of its artistically harmonized colorful melody, rhythm, and emotion that stimulates all levels of mind as it changes from time to time. Music dominated by a monotonous rhythm and beat, such as rap music, may cause hypnotic states. Not only a group of teaching techniques: Teaching techniques are meaningless if applied without full comprehension of the theory. For example, giving a set of concert reading sessions in the traditional setting language classroom doesnt work. Not able to teach without a teacher: Suggestopedia uses a lot of emotion in the classroom to stimulate all levels of human personality

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that works in coordination of consciousness and paraconsciousness. Self study can never receive such a global stimuli. Not selling tapes, CDs, Videos, and bio-feedback devices or any mechanical materials as such: Dr. Lozanov denies all the mechanical stimuli. Monotonous and meaningless stimuli generated by a machine that can cause hypnotic states. The intended purpose of Suggestopedia was to enhance learning by lowering the affective filter of learners. Suggestopedia is a system for liberation, the liberation from the preliminary negative concept regarding the difficulties in the process of learning that is established throughout their life in the society. Desuggestopedia focuses more on liberation as Lozanov describes desuggestive learning as free, without a mildest pressure, liberation of previously suggested programs to restrict intelligence and spontaneous acquisition of knowledge, skills and habits. The method implements this by working not only on the conscious level of human mind but also on the subconscious level, the minds reserves. Since it works on the reserves in human mind and brain, which are said to have unlimited capacities, one can teach more than other method can teach in the same amount of time. How to Teach using Suggestopedia: Traditional books cannot be used in a Suggestopedic class since they fail to present the content and grammar following the function of the human brain. The way they present information is not according to the real way the human brain processes information. The whole book has to be adapted to be used in a Suggestopedic class. It is hard work but the final result is worth it. In Brazil, there is a teacher who developed a whole teacher training course to apply and use Suggestopedia using traditional books. He teaches how to adapt and create a new Suggestopedic book to be used in Suggestopedic classes. The training also teaches the teachers how to conduct an intensive course in English or in any other foreign language using the newest development of Suggestopedia Desuggestopedia.

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REFERENCES (Freeman, 2000)

(Caskey, 1980)

(Maple, 1996)

(Schiffler, 2013)

(Junior, 2010)

(Toscano, 2009)

Desuggestopedia LESSON PLAN

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Teaching Methods.

Activities Principles of the Method. This method puts importance on desuggesting limitations on learning and accelerate the learning; is focus on the skills of listening, speaking and reading so the lexical part is considered the most important. We can also infer from the concert sessions that among the language skills listening is of great importance. Speaking communicatively is also deemed to be significant. Reading is carried out just by voicing the text dramatically. Techniqu es. Teacher Students Timin g

Resources

Desuggestopedia

-Greeting. -Follow step by -Primary step. activation -Give indication -The s students -Make the playfully - Explain procedure that reread the to the teacher target students explained you. language about dialog out primary loud, as activation individual and how s or in to use it. groups. . Read the dialog in particular manner: sadly, angrily, and cheerfully.

5 mints. -Projector. -marker -extra pages

5 mints.