Chapter 4 - A do-it-yourself guide

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A do-it-yourself guide	179

  b. An accelerated learning language course therefore builds the basic 2,000 words into, say, 12 different "plays" or scenes - like a 12-act drama.10
  c: An attractive workbook helps. On some pages the script for each act is written in both English and, say, French line by line. But no sentence is longer than seven words, because your short-term memory can absorb information easiest in "seven bit" bites. That's why phone numbers are generally easy to remember; over seven digits, and they switch to a separate area code. Teachers call this principle "chunking."
  d. Many acts involve you as a visitor to a new country, and weave a story around the typical events a tourist would find. So the workbook also illustrates each act with pictures - stimulating the visual sense.
  e. Each scene is also recorded on an audio tape, in the foreign language, so the student can learn by listening while reading the foreign language and visualizing it.
  f. Before starting each lesson, the student plays relaxing music from a special tape - through headphones - and follows suggestions for breathing and relaxation exercises. The aim is to tune out other distracting thoughts, and to place the brain in a state of "relaxed alertness" - so the new language can "float" into the brain.
  g. That's where music plays its three-part role: (1) it helps you relax; (2) it activates your right-brain to receive the new information; and (3) it helps move the information into your long-term memory-storage banks. Lozanov* teachers believe a well-orchestrated music concert can in effect do most of the teaching in a greatly-reduced time.11 The student first listens to the words of the foreign language while reading the text, with specific music in the background - and the words read in time and tone to the music. The first "active concert" is then followed by a so-called "passive" concert, in which the student sits with

* There is much more depth to the Lozanov method of teaching and learning than we can cover in this brief introduction to the technique. Music selection, in particular, is critical for the "active" and "passive" Concerts. In chapter nine, we link the main principles of Lozanov with many other proven techniques, but for those experimenting with music in preparing their own accelerated learning programs, we strongly recommend studying the music principles first. In a new program, The Music Revolution, for publication in 1999, Dr. Jeannette Vos has selected scores of tracks for a complete guide to using music in education. These are on six separate CDs, and the accompanying workbook gives detailed instructions as to how to use each track.

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