Suggestopedia... presto chango!

Woah!  Talk about a long hiatus... sorry to keep *all* (more like all 2) of you hanging in suspense!  Will I finish my riveting saga on the Emotional Vampire...?  Perhaps another day.  As for right now, I am posting my first discussion response from my Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) Certificate Program.  My official start date was today and it will last 15 weeks... wish me luck!

SUGGESTOPEDIA

The simultaneously mysterious and pseudoscientific appearance of the term suggestopedia immediately caught my attention. Upon a quick search for more information, I came upon OneStopEnglish.com and an article on suggestopedia written by Tim Bowen. Although the exact date of the article is unknown, it seems to be contemporary and was written as reference material for those visiting their website. I understand this is a very limited view of the theory and definitely welcome greater insights into its wonders.

Georgi Lozanov was a Bulgarian educator who developed suggestopedia in the 1970s and claimed that this method would accelerate memorization by up to 25 times the rate of other conventional learning methods.  He claimed that the power of positive suggestion through a relaxed and focused state created the optimum learning environment. This learning method ascribed a parent-child relationship to the teacher and learner, with the learner solely absorbing the lessons as doled out by the teacher.

Central to the method was the presence of music. In fact, lengthy formal dialogues would be read aloud to learners to the accompaniment of music and were known as “concert readings.” Interwoven into memorable pieces of classical music, the teacher’s voice was part of the symphony and learners were expected to absorb and internalize enormous amounts of dialogue and, therefore, building blocks of language, while in a heightened sense of focus, relaxation, and receptivity. At other times, less formal readings were conducted to a less severe regimen of background music. 

There is certainly merit in creating a nurturing physical, mental, and emotional environment for learning, but the operatic suggestopedia practices may be best left in the past. Of course, music can be massively helpful to the learning process sometimes - who doesn't remember singing the 50 States song in elementary school? With that said, although there are many advertisement jingles that I will never, ever be able to remove from my memory (… where you wouldn’t have a gotten a lemon… I wouldn’t have gotten a lemon? ... at Toyota of Orange...), I will have to subscribe to the opinion of the many critics who declare suggestopedia as a method containing no apparent theory of language or learning and produced inconclusive results.

http://www.onestopenglish.com/support/methodology/teaching-approaches/teaching-approaches-what-is-suggestopedia/146499.article