Georgi Lozanov developed the teaching method of Suggestopedia to tap into students' vast untapped mental capacities through suggestion and relaxation. His approach aimed to help students overcome limiting beliefs about learning through techniques like classical music, role playing, and indirect suggestion to create an environment where learning is easy, fun, and maximizes retention. Key aspects included preparing students psychologically, presenting material through concerts with music, and follow up practice to consolidate learning.

1. Well aware that methods directly
involving yoga and hypnosis were not
generally applicable or acceptable, he
continued seeking universally
acceptable means to tap the vast
mental reserve capacities of the human
mind we all have but which are rarely
used. Suggestion proved to be the key.

3. Suggestopedia
Superlearning
Brain Friendly Learning
Accelerated Learning
Georgi Lozanov

4. Georgi
Lozanov
Born: July 22, 1926; Died: May 6, 2012
Sofia, Bulgaria
Medical doctor specialized in psychiatry
and psychotherapy
Had a passion for understanding how human beings learn
Established the Suggestology Research Institute in Sofia to
put his new system of teaching into practice

5. Lozanov asked
himself…
• What message do we give
our learners? That learning is
easy and fun? Or that what
1 we are teaching is so difficult
they will never master the
subject?

6. Lozanov asked
himself…
• What beliefs do learners
2 bring with them about what
is possible for them to
accomplish?

7. Lozanov asked
himself…
• How can teachers help
learners move beyond their
3 limiting beliefs and discover
their full human potential?

8. Concepts and Features

9. Mental Reserve Capacities (MRC)
We all possess considerable
mental reserves which we
rarely if ever tap under
normal circumstances.

10. • Examples:
– the ability to learn rapidly and recall with ease
large quantities or material,
– solve problems with great rapidity and
spontaneous ease,
– respond to complex stimuli with facility and
creativity. The primary objective is to tap into
the MRC.
5 ~ 10%

11. Psychological Set-up
Our response to every stimuli is complex, involving
unconscious processes which become automatic
responses.
The responses tend to be automatic and typical for
them - the result of an inner, unconscious
disposition or set-up, which is the product of
automatized, conditioned responses.
Our inner set-up operates when we encounter any
situation - entering a school, consulting a
physician- as examples.

12. Our unconscious set-up is extremely basic and
important to our behaviour and to our
survival –
and it can be extremely limiting, for it can
imprison us in unconscious, consistently
patterned responses which prevent us from
experiencing and exploring other alternatives
- which might be far more desirable and
beneficial to us.

13. Prevailing social norms, instilled in
us by all our social institutions,
including family and schools, are
the main carriers and enforcers of
the beliefs and responses which
contribute to the formation of our
inner set-up.

14. Only when a teacher or a doctor is able
to penetrate the set-up, engage it in a
way which allows it to be accepting
and open to extensions and
transformation does the real potential
of a student/patient begin to open up.

15. Suggestion
• Suggestion is the direct to the
set-up.
• Suggestion is the key which Lozanov
found to penetrate through the “set-
up” and stimulate the mental reserve
capacities.

16. • Even more, through suggestion we can
facilitate the creation of new, richer
patterns of conscious/unconscious
responses or new (set-ups).
• It creates and utilises such types of set-
ups which would free and activate the
reserve capacities of the human being

17. Suggestion
• DIRECT
• Direct suggestions are directed to conscious
processes, i.e., what one says that can and will
occur in the learning experience, suggestions
which can be made in printed
announcements, orally by the teacher, and/or
by text materials.

18. Suggestion
• INDIRECT
• Indirect suggestion is largely unconsciously
perceived.
• It is always present in any communication and
involves many levels and degrees of subtlety.
• Lozanov speaks of it as the second plane of
communication and considers it to encompass
all those communication factors outside our
conscious awareness

19. • Examples: voice tone, facial expression, body
posture and movement, speech tempo,
rhythms, accent, etc.
• Other important indirect suggestive effects
result from room arrangement, decor, lighting,
noise level, institutional setting - for all these
factors are communicative stimuli

20. Anti-Suggestive Barriers
• The first task of suggestology and
suggestopedia is to remove
people‘s prior conditioning to de-
suggest, to find the way to escape
the social norm and open the way
to development of the personality.

21. This is perhaps the greatest
problem suggestology is
confronted with, since the person
must be ‗convinced‘ that his
potential capacity is far above
what he thinks it is.

22. The individual protects himself
with psychological barriers,
according to Dr. Lozanov, just
as the organism protects itself
from physiological barriers

23. mental
spiritual
physical
Main Concern

24. Stages of Suggestopedia
1. Presentation
2. First Concert—―Active Concert‖
3. Second Concert—―Passive Review‖
4. Practice

25. Presentation
• A preparatory stage in which
students are helped to relax and
move into a positive frame of
mind, with the feeling that the
learning is going to be easy and
fun.

26. First Concert–“Active Concert”
• This involves the active
presentation of the material to be
learnt. For example, in a foreign
language course there might be
the dramatic reading of a piece of
text, accompanied by classical
music.

27. Second Concert–“Passive
Review”
• The students are now invited to relax
and listen to some Baroque music,
with the text being read very quietly in
the background. The music is
specially selected to bring the
students into the optimum mental
state for the effortless acquisition of
the material.

28. Practice
• The use of a range of games,
puzzles, etc. to review and
consolidate the learning.

29. music
Learning is a
pleasurable,
games natural art
process
role
playing

30. Learner Roles (Relaxer, True-
Believer)
• Students volunteer for a
suggestopedic course, but having
volunteered, they are expected to be
committed to the class and its
activities.
• Students are expected to tolerate and
in fact encourage their own
―infantilization.‖

31. Infantilization
• In the child's role that learner
takes part in role playing, games,
songs, and gymnastic exercises
that help "the older student regain
the self-confidence, spontaneity
and receptivity of the child.

32. Learner Roles (Relaxer, True-
Believer)
• Groups of learners are ideally socially
homogeneous, 12 in number, and
divided equally between men and
women.
• Learners sit in a circle, which
encourages face-to-face exchange
and activity participation.

33. Teacher Roles (Auto-hypnotist,
Authority Figure)
• To create situations in which
learners are most suggestible
and then to present linguistic
material in a way most likely
to encourage positive
reception and retention by
learners.

34. Teacher Roles (Auto-hypnotist,
Authority Figure)
Lozanov lists several expected teacher
behaviors as follows:
1. Show absolute confidence in the method.
2. Display fastidious conduct in manners and
dress.
3. Organize properly, and strictly observe the
initial stages of the teaching process—this
includes choice and play of music, as well
as punctuality.

35. Teacher Roles (Auto-hypnotist,
Authority Figure)
4. Maintain a solemn attitude towards the
session.
5. Give tests and respond tactfully to poor
papers (if any).
6. Maintain a modest enthusiasm.

36. The role of instructional materials
• Materials consist of direct
support materials, primarily
text and tape, and indirect
support materials, including
classroom fixtures and music.

37. Suggestopedia apprentices use the
Learning Hypothesis
• I will learn because I was accepted
• I am now a native speaker, I can speak and
understand the language
• I learned the text during the concert session, I know
the language.
• The material is getting easier, I must be learning.
• I have successfully graduated from a language course,
I can use the language.

38. What are the benefits of this
approach?
• You will address the learning needs and
styles of every student in your class.
• You will guarantee a higher and faster
success rate among learners.
• You will increase retention and recall of
material and long-term memory.

39. What are the benefits of this
approach?
• You will instill higher confidence and self-
esteem in your learners.
• You will promote the creativity as well as the
learning and social competence of your
students.
• You will create a pleasant, cooperative and
fun learning environment in your classroom.

40. What are the benefits of this
approach?
• You will have motivated students coming
to your classes -- students who have
rediscovered the joy of learning.
And --
• … motivated students make motivated
teachers!!