Page 32 - HOW TO TEACH GRAMMAR

Suggestopedia is an effective comprehensible input-based method with a combination of
desuggestion and suggestion to achieve super learning. The most important objective of
Suggestopedia is to motivate students’ mental potential to learn which is obtained by suggestion.
Desuggestion means unloading the memory banks, or reserves, of unwanted or blocking memories.
Suggestion then means loading the memory banks with desired and facilitating memories.

Lazanov (1978) cited in Lica (2008) argued that learners have difficulties in acquiring English
as the second language because of the fear of the students to make mistakes. When the learners are
in this situation, their heart and blood pressure raise. He believes that there is a mental block in the
learners’ brain (affective filter). This filter blocks the input, so the learners have difficulties to acquire
language caused by their fear. The combination of desuggestion and suggestion is to lower the
affective filter and motivate students’ mental potential to learn, it aims to accelerate the process by
which they learn to understand and use the target language for communication to achieve super
learning. This is the final goal of Suggestopedia.

Theory of Language

Lozanov does not articulate a theory of language, nor does it seem he is much concerned with any
particular assumptions regarding language elements and their organization. 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
habits of speech, but to acts of communication” (Lozanov 1978:109). Lozanov refers most often to the
language to be learned as “the material.”

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 some principal theoretical components through which desuggestion
and suggestion operate and that set up access to reserves.

Key Features of Suggestopedia

Comfortable environment

In the Suggestopedia method, the classroom is not the same as common classrooms. In the classroom,
the chairs are arranged semicircle and face the black or white board in order to make the students pay
more attention and get more relaxed. In addition, the light in the classroom is dim in order to make the
students’ mind more relaxed (Xue, 2005).

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