Psychopedia, a suggestopedic approach to language learning

Seminar paper from the year 2005 in the subject Didactics - English - Pedagogy, Literature Studies, grade: 1,0, University of Paderborn (Institut für Anglistik), course: Alternative Methods of Language Teaching, language: English, abstract: As our world becomes more and more globalized, the importance of learning a foreign language increases. In Germany English is already taught in elementary school to give the pupils a basic knowledge concerning the English language.

The whole society is involved into a constant change of working and living habits. Changes occur in industry, school and prerequisites to find a job as well as in fam-ily life and personal relationships. This development has got influences on every part of human life and so as well on the sector of education. As a result of this, teachers at school have to adjust their teaching methods to the changing condi-tions of the environment. As a society needs an atmosphere which favours change, it is necessary to be willing to change oneself. Not to change would result in keep-ing the faults which have been made in the past. You need to take the risk of change if the public weal should grow. Change should not only be pretended or take only place at the surface but also on the basis of the assumptions concerning learning .

During the years several methods have been developed to make learning a new and foreign language more and more interesting, easy and efficient. In the begin-ning the most frequent methods were those of pattern drills, grammar exercise as well as the method of translation. These techniques are still used in some kind of schools and in some lessons, but the range of methods which is available for the teacher has grown to a large amount. The first new methods have been for exam-ple those related to the Total Physical Response method, which should not be de-scribed any further in this paper. The approaches which have been developed got more and more creative and are more and more in favor for the individual learning prerequisites of the pupils. Some of these methods are for example the method of the Silent Way, the Psycodramaturgie Linguistique and the suggestopedic ap-proach. The method for language learning, which is the topic of this paper, is a variation of the suggestopedic method which is called Psychopedia.

In the following, there a description of the method of Suggestopedia will be pre-sented, which will be the basis for the description of the psychopedic approach. In the end there will be a conclusion which will include some future references for the use of Psychopedia in today¿s school lessons.