Análisis de datos de las personas en búsqueda de empleo

teaching were compared to those of control classes receiving conventional teaching. The first experiment was a three-week study with 75 adults, assigned to 3 experimental and 3 control classes, being taught English and French. The second was a two-year experiment in two primary schools. One school was assigned to the experimental condition while the other served as a control condition. In both studies achievement was found to be around 20% higher in the experimental classes. In the primary school experiment, however, Lozanov makes further more dramatic claims regarding achievement, which need to be discussed since they may have been the basis for exaggerated claims about the

effectiveness of Suggestopedia by other sources. A misinterpreted result of the adult experiment by the research committee working on the project also needs to be discussed, since it resulted in a highly exaggerated claim being falsely attributed to Lozanov.

Since the serious flaws of the experimental procedures of the adult study have already been discussed at length by Scovel (1979), we will refer to them only briefly. Lozanov's experimental procedures are poorly described, especially with regard to the assignments of groups, to the method used in the control groups, and to the tests given. Experimental data is poorly presented and sometimes even inaccurately calculated: the result of the 20.5% higher achievement of the experimental groups, for instance, is given as 21.5%

(p.17).

A more serious misinterpretation appears in the claim (p.27) that results in the

experimental groups were 25 times higher than in the controls (Lozanov's book, however, is so poorly organised, and with such large gaps in information, that it may be possible

that a different experiment is being referred to). Scovel (1979:256) attributes this claim to Lozanov:

The strong claims made about the potential benefits of suggestopedy do not come solely from his publishers or disciples, however, they emanate, in fact, from Lozanov himself. In Chapter 2 of the book under review, the claim is made that "As seen from the results obtained in experimental groups, memorisation in learning by the suggestopedic method is accelerated 25 times over that in learning by conventional methods."

This attribution is surprising, not merely because this highly dramatic claim is so far removed from all the others that Lozanov makes, but because it is clear from the text that it is not Lozanov himself who makes the claim but the research committee working on the project.

Naturally the author of a book must be responsible for its contents; in Lozanov's case, however, it is possible that he did not have a chance to proofread the book before its publication in the United States. If Bancroft's (1976) observations are accurate, then it is possible that sections of the book were cut and rearranged without Lozanov's knowledge or approval. This would explain the poor organisation of the book and the missing information. An error such as the above may also have been produced in the translation.

We are here not trying to make excuses for the unscientific nature of Lozanov's

presentation which cannot be denied, we are simply trying to establish which claims have been made about the effects of Suggestopedia and to attribute these to the proper sources.

Further dramatic claims in the literature may be based on another quite uncharacteristic finding which Lozanov himself reports in relation to the primary school experiment. Two schools in two different villages were chosen for this experiment. Some information about the children's reading abilities was given, but no information about the teaching method used in the control school. One school was designated as the experimental school while the other became the control school. One serious flaw in the research design was that the experimental children were taught in homogeneous groups while the control children remained in heterogeneous groups. The experiment was conducted over two years.

For the first year achievement was generally around 20% better (p.325) in the experimental school. The most dramatic finding was reported at the beginning of the second year when children in the experimental group solved 77.39% of problems

presented while the control children solved only 5.28% (p.328). This means that results in the experimental group were 14 times higher than those of the control group. However, this result related to the testing of the second year material in mathematics which had already been covered in the experimental school in the first year, but which could only just have begun to be taught in the control school.

This constitutes an unfair comparison, and it would have been more valid to conclude that materials were covered in half the time and compare results at the end of the second year.

Instead Lozanov reports the results of two other schools, not hitherto mentioned, which appear to refer to similar tests under similar conditions. Here results are 63 times higher for the experimental students. Table 47 (p.330) shows 65.83% for the experimental group and 1.04% for the control group. These findings are so far removed from all others in the book, that the research procedures, especially the basis on which the testing was

conducted, must be seriously questioned.

Lozanov (p.327) claims that the above results were corroborated by a large scale experiment which followed, including a total of 1500 pupils and 146 researchers. No further information on the design, procedure or subject matter for testing is provided for this experiment. The results were that the experimental children who had been taught in a five day week with no homework, assimilated 80.3% of the materials for the first grade and 81% of the materials for the second grade. The control children who had been taught in normal teaching time (presumably one day more per week with the addition of

homework) assimilated 63.3% and 66.4% respectively. We do not know at what stage the second year materials were tested, but it seems more likely this time that tests were given to the control group at the end of the second year. These results hardly support the

dramatic result quoted above. Instead they appear to corroborate the consistent findings of the experimental group performing about 20% better than the control group throughout the comparative experiments reported in Lozanov (1978).

Yet the report of the dramatic results together with the sensational claim made by the research committee above, may have been the basis of Ostrander and Schroeder's

(1979:22) claim that "learning can be speeded up by five to fifty times" as an example of what can be achieved by Suggestopedia. Another experiment may have contributed to this claim. This was an experiment (Lozanov 1978:30) in which 1000 unknown words were presented to a group of highly educated professionals and academics in a one day suggestopedic session. Sources quoting this experiment fail to mention that it included 10 days of elaboration on the words and was a one-off experiment, even though Schuster (1978) points this out in his review of Lozanov's 1978 publication. The claim that can therefore be made for this experiment is that 1000 words were learnt in 11 days of intensive teaching. The American publicity release (Scovel 1979:256) for Lozanov's book, however, claimed that 1000 words could be learnt "daily", and according to (Ostrander & Schroeder 1979:43) this achievement could even be improved:

With the Bulgarian approach, 500 words a day was just 'Mach1'. By 1966, a group learned 1000 words in a day, and by 1974, a rate of 1800 words was charted. In 1977, Lozanov reported, some tests showed people capable of absorbing even 3000 words per day.

No experiments with more than 1000 words are known to this author and at no stage does Lozanov claim that even 500 words were being learnt 'per day' which implies that 3500 words could be learnt in a week. Gross distortions of this nature did not enhance the credibility of Suggestopedia as a viable teaching method. Since the book Superlearning was more readily available to the general public than Lozanov's (1978) publication, this claim became falsely associated with Lozanov and with suggestopedic language teaching.

Both Gassner-Roberts (1987) and Schiffler (1987) quote commercial language enterprises which still advertise their courses on the basis of this and similarly exaggerated claims.

This practice has become so widely spread that some language teaching enterprises believe that they have to dissociate themselves from such claims. Hinkelmann (1988:1) writes:

Leider werden über die Superlearning-Methode immer wieder unsinnige Behauptungen aufgestellt und damit Vorurteile geweckt. So wird manchmal behauptet, man könne damit 50 mal schneller oder 1000 Vokabeln pro Tag lernen. Für derartige Behauptungen gibt es jedoch keine wirklichen Beweise.

[Unfortunately there are always nonsensical claims being made about the Superlearning method which evoke prejudices. Sometimes it is claimed that one can learn 50 times faster or 1000 words per day. However, there is no real proof to support such claims.]

Conclusions - Lozanov's research. Lozanov carried out a great deal of research over a long period of time with a large number of subjects looking at many aspects of

suggestopedic instruction. Unfortunately his data is so poorly reported that it is difficult to check the validity of many findings. In general, Lozanov's own claims about the effects of Suggestopedia are not highly dramatic, especially if we take into consideration the favourable conditions in which his experimentation took place. He does, however report isolated and highly uncharacteristic findings in a school experiment which can be interpreted as achievement having been 63 times higher in the experimental group. The only other dramatic claim, that results were 25 times higher in the experimental groups, appears to have been falsely attributed to Lozanov. Neither finding is corroborated anywhere else in Lozanov's research or by other sources. Yet claims of a similarly dramatic nature have appeared in the popular press and in the advertising of some commercial language courses (see Gassner-Roberts 1987, Schiffler 1987).

Having examined Lozanov's research in detail, it can be said with certainty that there is no support whatsoever for claims that learning can be improved by 5 to 50 times or that 1000 words can be learnt daily. There is some indication that achievement may be improved by about 20%, that large amounts of materials may be given, that retention rates and functional use of materials are high, that materials may be learnt in half the normal time in primary schools and that there may be positive effects on the students' psychological and physiological state. These indications are interesting enough to merit further investigation.

Extensive research has already been carried out in the West following Lozanov's (1978) and Ostrander and Schroeder's (1979) publications. We will now examine these studies in detail. In the light of the limitations of Lozanov's research resulting from unsatisfactory research procedures and poorly reported data, an effort will be made to describe studies in as much detail as possible.