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Practical Application Of N.L.P. in the Classroom

Speaker: Bonnie Tsai
Moderator: Jenny Johnson
Date: Wednesday 21 February 2001

We now know that the potential of the human brain to learn is unlimited. To tap into this potential, the reserves of the mind must be engaged and brought into the conscious learning process. These reserves are filled with the continual and consistent perceiving and processing that takes place in the multisensory levels of learning-especially the visual, the auditory, and the kinesthetic.

There is a real need to supply learners with a multi-sensory environment where the human mind can be nurtured. Quite simply we grow our brains in relation to what we experience and learn.

At the foundation of this principle is the concept that learning takes place best when there is the presence of joy and the absence of tension and stress. In this state the learner not only assimilates information more effectively retaining more of what is learned but can process substantially more information in a shorter period of time.

Bonnie Tsai is a freelance teacher and trainer. Her work takes her around the world running teacher-training courses. She is associated with Pilgrims in Canterbury.

She has been trained in such humanistic approaches as Suggestopedia, Psychodramaturgie Linguistic and N.L.P. Bonnie is a Master practitioner in N.L.P. and gives workshops regularly on N.L.P. and its application in the classroom. Bonnie feels that this is an exciting time to be a teacher because it is a time in which we are learning so much about how we learn. For her, the most fascinating thing about teaching are the people she works with. If you take care of the people they will learn. This has led Bonnie to work extensively with students of all ages with learning difficulties often arising from lack of motivation and low self-esteem.

MODERATOR> Hello everybody. Welcome to today's richmondpark chat. We have Bonnie Tsai with us. Hi Bonnie. How are you? Where are you?

SPEAKER_bonnie Tsai> Hello. I'm in Toulouse . . . at home for a change.

MODERATOR> Bonnie's going to talk to us about NLP in the classroom. OK Bonnie, here's the first question

MA Martin> Does N.L.P. work with students of all ages?

SPEAKER_bonnie Tsai> A good definition of NLP is that it is about how we receive information, store information and retrieve it and we do it through several of our senses so it follows that yes it "works" for all ages

MODERATOR> A question from Bambu, asking you to go further into this definition, Bonnie.

Bambu> I would like to know what is NPL all about.

SPEAKER_bonnie Tsai> Well N stands for neuro - that is our neurological system - and linguistic for the fact that as humans we have developed a highly complex system of language - and programming is how the two interact.

MODERATOR> So each of us is programmed in a different way?

SPEAKER_bonnie Tsai> Our senses - what we see hear and feel - is what lets us interrupt our reality and make sense of what is going on around us. So yes, each of us is unique

MODERATOR> The terms visual, auditory and kinesthetic are linked to NLP - can you say a bit about that?

SPEAKER_bonnie Tsai> Well we talk about VAKOG but it's true that we use mostly our visual, our auditory sense and our kinesthetic, which is what we feel inside but also what we can touch, manipulate or move. In teaching, if we want to be sure to communicate with all our students, we need to use visual stimulus, auditory stimulus, and of course lots of movement - and why not tasting and smelling things.

Bambu> So how we do relate to that system?

SPEAKER_bonnie Tsai> Hi Bambu. Well, most probably you have one primary or preferred sense, one secondary, and one which is weaker... This is a broad generality. But it means that when you are learning new information or trying to recall stuff, like for a test, you will use one or two or your senses to do so.

MODERATOR> Two questions about age now.

Bambu> Is age a factor to keep in mind?

LULO> I would like to know how can I use this method (NLP) with very young students (3-8 years)

SPEAKER_bonnie Tsai> YES indeed. Tiny babies are very gustatory, putting things in their mouths. Young children tend towards kinesthetic. Teenagers are in a auditory phase, which is why they are often hard to teach. People who do well in school generally develop their visual modality because visual people do better in our KIND OF SCHOOLS!

MODERATOR> Itacas agrees with this.

itacas> Pupils aged 11-12 are more auditory than visual. How can this affect learning and how can we develop other modalities?

SPEAKER_bonnie Tsai> People who do well in school are generally strong in the visual modality. Auditory people need to hear it, so story-telling, songs, jazz chants, reading out loud, drills. These guys like to hear their own voice, so recording them speaking, pronunciation work. But a good teacher will be sure to work in all the modalities. The problem comes in the fact that we tend to work or teach in our strongest modalities.

Martin> What about totally unmotivated students?

SPEAKER_bonnie Tsai> Lack of motivation is often caused by low self-esteem. Being aware of NLP helps the teacher to understand that to be successful in school, different students need a teacher who can speak to them in different languages. Some need to see it CLEARLY. Some need to hear it clear as a bell. To get to grips or get a handle on learning, others need to touch it or feel it. So we need to communicate with students in different ways.

Yolanda> Will that automatically increase their motivation?

Sue> Yes, how do you KNOW motivation "increases"?

SPEAKER_bonnie Tsai> Have you ever wondered why it's so easy to teach some students and so hard to teach others? It's not interesting to be in a class where you can't move if moving is a necessary element for learning. It's not fun to be in a class where there is nothing to look at if you need visual stimulus.

Bambu> Sensorial, sociogenetic and personal limitations do make a difference.

SPEAKER_bonnie Tsai> Yes, Bambu, you are right. But what if you could make it better for these students?

Sue> in your introduction you mentioned "joy". How can we create joy in the classroom?

SPEAKER_bonnie Tsai> Students do feel joy when they are learning. Human beings are made to learn. I think we can do more to make students enjoy learning by giving them success.

MODERATOR> That's a nice thought, Bonnie. Itacas has a comment

itacas> Communication is not only message but also a means of delivering meaning. It's not a question, but only a reflection about the importance to convey meaning through different modalities to get as many students as we can.

SPEAKER_bonnie Tsai> Hello Itacas. Yes this is called the meta-message in NLP speak. That is, we can say something with words but our body language can convey a different meaning. We call it a lie. Communication depends more on the meta message than on the verbal message.

Bambu> What kinds of "feedback" are important?

SPEAKER_bonnie Tsai> Students need constant feedback on how they are doing and what they can do to make it better. Let tell you of an experience . . . One hot summer I had a group of 17 and 18 year old students. They were terrible, rude to me, to each other. They looked and acted bored. So one day I mirrored them - that is their meta language. Everything they did, I did. After about an hour, one said: "What's wrong with the teacher? She looks terrible. Wow, this strange behaviour". Finally, after a while, one of them said: "She is being us". Behaviour improved after that. They hadn't realized how they LOOKED; AND APPEARANCE WAS IMPORTANT TO THESE STUDENTS. With body language we communicate more then we can imagine.

MODERATOR> Yes, a salutory tale, absolutely right about their self-image!

SPEAKER_bonnie Tsai> It is without doubt the little things we do with our eyes, our face, our shoulders, that tell people what we really think of them.

MODERATOR> We have another question from itacas

itacas> How should the teacher's assessment/evalution change in relation to NLP practice?

SPEAKER_bonnie Tsai> You really ask good questions . . . Well, think about the way we test or evaluate students. Remember I said visual people do better at school? What I didn't say was - it's because they are better at pen and paper tests. Because visual people can retrieve information randomly and much more quickly, they have a big advantage at test time. Maybe we should think about performance-based evaluation which would mean that auditory and kinesthetic people would get a fair deal.

MODERATOR> We have one final question.

Bambu> Can you recommend any books for learning more about NPL?

SPEAKER_bonnie Tsai> Contact www.saffire press for Jane Revell and Susan Norman's wonderful books. And this summer at Pilgrims, I will be running a course called, NLP for Teachers.

itacas> Jane Revell was my teacher in Canterbury.

SPEAKER_bonnie Tsai> You were lucky. She's just LOVELY

Bambu> A web site?

SPEAKER_bonnie Tsai> www.pilgrims.co.uk

MODERATOR> Thank you very much for being with us, Bonnie. I hope your course goes well and I hope to meet you in person soon!