Abstract
The paper aims to show how suggestopedia, a dynamic, full of life class game, can become a way of delivering advanced conversational competence quickly. What makes this game interesting and attractive is that learning occurs through suggestion while the students are in a deeply relaxed state which is induced by music. The instructor should choose what kind of music he/she considers suitable for the topic which is introduced. Although the goal is understanding and not memorisation, the students are required to master prodigious vocabulary lists. This type of game implies initiatives, questions and answers, role play, listening exercises under deep relaxation.
From the psychological point of view, and related to the ways of learning, the game matches perfectly with two of the four types of learners, namely: the Player and the Feeler. The Player is the student who likes being with people and enjoys variety and change, prefers listening and speaking to reading and writing, prefers playing games and working in groups to writing exercises, prefers competition and excitement to practice and homework, prefers trying lots of different activities to doing long projects, enjoys participating and performing, hates doing the same thing lesson after lesson, would like to do different things all the time. He/she enjoys vocabulary race. The Feeler is a good language learner who loves interacting and group and pair work and is interested in talking about emotions and personal topics. He/she enjoys being with people and learns through cooperation, prefers taking part in discussions to studying rules and doing exercises, like reading, role play and drama, is very sensitive to criticism and needs individual feedback and prefers speaking to writing.
Suggestopedia must maintain a passive state among the students and also allow the materials to work on them rather than vice-versa.
The instructor’s role is to create situations in which the students are most suggestible and present materials in a way most likely to encourage positive reception and retention. The instructor must emanate authority and confidence.
The texts used should have force, literary quality and interesting characters.
What we are going to do is to offer two sample lesson plans, one based on a literay text, the other one on a detective short story in order to prove how suggestopedia works like a way of learning. |
