Humanising Language Teaching
Year 6; Issue 1; January 2004

NLP: "Welcome to the Real World"

Primary, secondary and adult

by Teresa Marín Esteve, Spain

It is usually said that there is always a first time for everything in life. That is exactly what I thought when I attended a course on Neuro-Linguistic Programming ( usually known as NLP ) last August at Pilgrims, in the University of Kent in Canterbury. I was a complete beginner and to me NLP was something I was curious about, something that could offer some answer for my job as an English teacher, some “magical formula” to be used for my students and maybe for myself. My trainer was Mario Rinvolucri and, if anyone would have told me that my life and my teaching were going to change from this course onwards, I would have not believed him or her.

Discovering the magic of NLP is like being the protagonist in the film The Matrix where you are simply offered the truth, where you are welcomed to the real world. That is exactly how I feel about NLP: it has shown me a reality that has always been there but which I had never been given the chance to experience before.

It is not only changing my own view of life but, as I have already said, it is also having a really positive influence on my work as an English teacher.

I must confess that after coming back home from the course some questions assulted me constantly like for example: “How am I supposed to apply all this theory to my work?”, “Gosh! I´ve got the impression I´m going to forget all about this NLP stuff if I can´t put it into practice ...” , “What happens if it doesn´t work for my students?” ...

I cannot really say that these doubts have completely disappeared but I can say that ,little by little, I BELIEVE that the magic of NLP can actually come true. I am really conscious that the changes I am experiencing with myself and with my students in class are not big changes but every single little detail in every single day counts. How do I know is it working? Because I can see it in my students´faces, gestures and attitudes. Basically I am not using any “magical formula”, I am just doing things differently like for example teaching vocabulary. Most of my students are Beginners or Elemmentary students so I am using some exercises that Mario gave us to work in class. A really successful and productive activity is the “Picture Group” where I start drawing something on the blackboard and the students complete the rest of the picture with their drawings. While they are drawing I ask them questions in English and ... they understand!! They are also asked to write the names of the things which appear in the drawing. I can see they are really motivated by this activity and they are not worried about grammar but about communicating. They are happy because they are conducting the class themselves and they notice they form part of the class, they are creating a good relationship between them (usually known as Rapport in NLP)and I am happy because they are using the foreign language, something which I found really hard with these students before.

I am also changing my work when dealing with grammar. Instead of teaching the grammar rules directly I propose them games which contain ideas I also learned in the course with Mario. For example I use Memory Games and while the students are thinking I take advantage of this and pay attention to their gestures and eye movements, so it is an indirect way to know which of the representational systems my students mostly use: visual, auditory or kinesthetic. Most of my students are strongly visual and kinesthetic but I will have to observe them more to know them better. As we know, each person is a whole world in itself and we should not categorize our students in one group or another but the representational systems' theory actually helps to get to know your students and, specially, understand their learning needs much better.

I have also started to use relaxation techniques in class, specially when they are really stressed. I think this can really work very well with kinesthetic students. I must admit that some of them found it strange and could not develop the activities properly on the first day. They were embarrassed and could not concentrate but, after a few minutes, I could notice that for most students in the class it worked. This opens a new door for me and although I know I have to prepare these sessions, even though they only take three or five minutes, I am sure it will benefit my students. I consider it will also help to create a better rapport in class so the students will be more conscious of the group.

NLP is also helping me to develop new skills I have realized I must work on like my auditory capacity. I am a convinced visual and kinesthetic teacher and ,even though I have a good auditory capacity for example for music, I do not like preparing Listening activities for class and, in consequence, my students do not get any benefit from my trying to avoid this area where I do not find myself so comfortable. Therefore, day by day, I am trying to make the effort to develop my auditory capacity so I will be able to offer more listening activities to my students and I will also improve my teaching to auditory students.

As Joseph O'Connor puts in his NLP Workbook, Element, 2001: “ If you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you always got. And there is always more” so NLP is helping me to SEE things differently and, in consequence, to change those things. I am really thankful because now I can notice that things in life are not just black or white: why cannot we have a life in colours?