How to become a Suggestopedic Teacher:

Hi Guys,

Today I want to talk about a fairly famous method of learning a language but one that is frequently misunderstood or deemed to complicated or outdated to be practical in today's classrooms.

I want to try and dispel that notion for those who have heard of Suggestopedia and introduce it to those of you who haven't.

Unfortunately in most teacher training around Indonesia not much energy is put into studying and appreciating the different methods that have been used over the years to teach language. A lot of the time courses go into the theory of the different methods but often with a critical eye and by critical I mean 'criticizing' not 'important' which I think is an important differentiation

Suggestopedia rocked the industry when it was first released by it's creator and developer Georgi Lozanov. Unfortunately a mysterious and suspenseful curtain (an iron curtain to be precise) was drawn over the method before Dr. Lozanov could teach any practical application of the method. This curtain was only lifted momentarily when Dr. Lozanov was allowed by the Bulgarian government to go to the USA to share his method with Bobbi DePorter. He would not get many other chances to sit down in peace and share his method until the Berlin wall fell (signaling an end to the USSR) and he and his family were able to settle in Austria after hopscotching their way across Europe.

By that time though, the method had lost momentum amongst the Language Acquisition community and was perhaps considered old news. The uniqueness of the Suggestopedia method was perhaps also a great contribute to it's fall from popularity. Like TPR Suggestopedia did not rely on textbooks to work and thus probably wasn't accepted that widely in the formal education community.

This has been a reoccurring plague of thinking that has killed or hindered many good methods for language acquisition and even our basic concept of 'how we acquire languages' has fallen flat on it's face many times because Textbooks and most Summative Tests of 'knowledge' force teachers into a box (but we will discuss that more another day).

For now let's go over the basics of Suggestopedia. Firstly Suggestopedia is based on the concept of suggestion, some people may know it as hypnosis or NLP (Nuero Linguistic Programing). Basically Dr. Lozanov knew about how negative suggestion can seriously affect the brains ability to absorb language and information. An unideal state of mind such as being in a state of worry, stress or discomfort can also have a negative affect. After Dr. Lozanov, Prof. Dr. James Asher and then Prof. Steven Krashen also came to the same conclusions that the brains Affective Filter can hinder the ability for us to absorb a target language. I have discussed this before in my article 'Break Down the Barriers to Learning a New Language'.

What Suggestopedia does is give us a routine, environment and attitude as teachers to lower the Affective Filter and optimize our students state of mind for maximal learning ability. Sounds pretty good? Well we can perhaps discuss the theory of it some other time or in person if your really interested but I'm probably right when I assume it will probably bore you and you want to see practical examples and ways to apply it in your classroom right now. Okay so here we go!

Lesson One

Step one: New Identities (this is done at the beginning of a new course. Step Two-Six will be repeated several times in a course, Step One is only done once)

To improve students motivation and to help them get 'in the zone' they accept new identities which they will use for the duration of the course. This also assists in the students understanding the culture of the language as these new identities represent individuals who are native speakers of the target language.

Step Two: Presentation of Text

I have seen this done in two ways. the first using a dramatic scene where the teacher will act out the text. The second where the teacher hands out a the text, translated but with the translation in the left column and the target language in the right (according to Lonny Goldman this is because the brain has a natural urge to look to the right of the text as we do in reading) and then reads it in a dramatized voice. In both cases the students should be completely relaxed, without pressure to memorize anything and with classical baroque music playing in the background.

Lesson Two

Step Three: The Activation Phase

The Activation Phase will be the next lesson after the Presentation of Text Phase. Students are required to of taken the text home to read before bed and first thing after getting up in the morning. They are now ready for the Activation Phase. In the activation phase, up to 12 activities playing around with the language can be done in a hour. These activities are not always completed but sometimes finished half-way through (we can see reasons for this through psychological studies that show that people remember tasks more when they haven't been completed). These activities are also all masked as fun games or tasks that have no relation to to Language Learning or Acquisition at all (this is to keep the brain relaxed and 'in the zone').

Step Four: The Passive Concert

The Passive Concert takes place at the end of a Activation Phase lesson. Here the students relax completely while they listen to the text being read in a soothing and calm way. It is preferable that they are in a reclining position and listening the baroque or 'Alpha State' sounds. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the 'Alpha State' it is a state where the brains activity is at an optimum activity for absorbing knowledge, you can read more about it here: 'Alpha Waves'.

Lesson Three


Step Five: The Adaption Phase

The Adaption Phase is where the students now play around with the text they have been hearing. Here are some examples of Adamption Phase activities from Lonny Goldman's Website:

'a. Oral Comprehension.  The whole class listens to a tape, and then breaks up into groups of three or four students per group. Each group receives a bundle of cut-up paragraphs, all of which, together, constitute the entire text just heard. The different groups can put the paragraphs into the right order first. When a group thinks it has won, the teacher replays the tape to check whether the order is right (more hidden oral practice!).

b. Written Comprehension.  Each student receives a different newspaper clipping and quickly reads it. Then, in pairs, the students tell their partners about their particular article. The teacher now collects all the articles and puts them down on the ground (or pins them up on a wall). The students then mill about, looking at all the articles to identify which one their partner had.

c. Written Expression.  Students must create something in writing based on a situation in the text. This might be an advertisement for a nice restaurant, an exotic tour proposed by a travel agency, a funny newscast, etc.' 

  -Lonny Goldman

Step Six: The Grammar Phase

This is the only time in the course where grammar is consciously examined. That being so, it's only grammar they they already subconsciously have an understanding of through the text. This phase is usually done in a similar fashion to the Activation Phase in that students play games with the grammar structures in a fun and stress free environment.



 Okay Guys! Well I hope you enjoyed reading about Suggestopedia. As you can see it's actually very in line with what we have learnt about how the brain works in the last 25 years. It is also in line with Steven Krashen's 5 hypotheses of Language Acquisition. So why don't you give it a try some time?

Even if you can't follow the above steps that's know problem because being a suggestopedic teacher doesn't mean you follow a formula, it just means you understand the power of suggestion or 'desuggestion' (desuggesting negative feelings and filters)  and you make sure your lessons all harness it's power.

If you'd like to see some suggetopedic lessons in action you can watch this movie series from Lonny Goldman (a practitioner of Suggestopedia from the USA):

Or you can visit his website at: http://www.new-renaissance.eenet.ee/lonny/


Until next time, keep improving your lessons and striving for that 100% success rate!

-Hugh

How to build a Language Switch in Students

Hi Guys,

It's been a while since my last post but I'm glad to see that my page views are steadily going up. It means that the effort I put into my blog isn't wasted. So please if you like the blog, recomend it on google or facebook, thanks.

Today I want to write about building a 'language switch' in student's. What is a language switch you may ask? Well for those who don't know yet, a language switch refers to the ability to be able to think in the target language. The benefits of being able to think in the target language are very obvious but I feel it's still important for us to remind ourselves of them before we go on. The first and foremost benefit though is of course the 'snowball effect' which I will talk about later and the next is 'smoothness in speech and comprehension'.

Smoothness in speech and comprehension (AKA Proficiency):

Have you ever heard somebody talk half in their mother tongue and the target language at the same time? That is called inter-language. Another phenomenon is people replacing thoughts with 'ah eh errr' which is a normal habit (authough a bad one) for native speakers but for an L2 speaker it can be disastrous. As by the time they find the words they are looking for, the moment is lost. The reason for those 'ahs ehs and errs' is usually because the L2 speaker is going through their own language first and then structuring the L2 which creates many problems.

To quote one L2 learner from Argentina studying in America he said "...at first I tried to find similarities in the grammar of my own language and English, but then I realized that it wasn't working. For me to speak English well I had to learn English directly, not through my mother tongue...".

Some things that show a language switch is in effect are:

• People dreaming in the L2
• People playing out conversations in their head in the L2
• Spontaneous production of the L2
• An effort to switch back into the L1 (accidentally speaking in the L2 to an L1 speaker)
• Effortless production and comprehension of vocabulary and grammar already learner

The 'Snowball Effect':

The snowball effect as its name suggests is where the student's L2 ability and scope gets better only through the momentum of the amount of L2 already acquired.
The best example of the snowball effect can be seen in a Total Immersion School. A Total Immersion School is a school where all subjects are taught in the target language and the target language is the language used on campus. If you are interested in finding out more about Total immersion Schools you can google 'The French Immersion Program in Canada' Immersion Schools have been running in Canada since the 1950s.
In an immersion school students see an immediate need to use the language and use the L2 they already know to navigate in their surroundings. This is by far the most natural and best way to learn a language as they are living and breathing it on a daily basis and have no way around it. Even doing a simple activity in class like building a cardboard castle or exploring a new concept in science can be a language acquisition experience.
The second example of the Snowball Effect is of students who once they have a language switch in place, explore English by themselves in their free time. This is done through, books, comics, TV programs, Movies, Songs, Twitter, Facebook, Online Games, Offline games (in English) etc. and most of the time the students aren't doing these activities because they are interested in learning, but because they are interested in the medium and activity.
So if we aren't teaching at a Total Immersion School how can we Build the Student's Language Switch?
The easiest way I've found to develop a language switch and meet our claim of 100% success is to use the Total Physical Response approach (TPR). First developed by Dr. Prof. James Asher it is by far the most effective method I've found for students of all learning abilities.
Many teachers have turned their noses up at TPR because they feel it teaches a limited scope of the language, which is true. Then again though, to develop a language switch, love for the language, confidence in learning and an impressive amount of vocabulary, we don't need a broad scope. We need a scope that is practical, real and can be used/understood right away by the students.
Here is a demonstration video of the first lesson in a TPR course, where the instructor is teaching Indonesian:

As we can see from the video the students are having fun, aren't stressed at all, immediately begin to comprehend and store the language and aren't pushed to speak at all. There is no failure and immense success shown in this lesson.
Dr. James Asher described the factors for language acquisition (which he modeled of how a child acquires their first language):
1. A Stress-Free Environment (in alignment with Krashen's 'Affective Filter Theory')
2. Comprehensible Input
3. The Right to Remain Silent
When the students are ready they will speak up by themselves, and they will even be raring for the challenge when the time comes. That time however is different for different students, forcing them to come out of their shell too soon can sometimes set them up for failure and leads to them shutting themselves off.
That's all I have time for today, I hope to continue this article another time where I will give information about the 'steps of TPR' (of in full are not well known) and perhaps some more tactics for developing a language switch in students.
Thanks for reading guys and don't forget if you have any questions you can comment here or post them up on our facebook group page.
Until next time, peace out and let's change some lives!
-Hugh