Accelerated Learning Testimonials

The 13 and 14 year olds at Bridley Moor comprehensive school, Redditch, Hereford & Worcester, are enjoying the latest teaching technique.

They call it accelerated learning and it has been bought in a discount deal straight from the Sunday supplement adverts which promise rapid confidence in foreign languages.

The results have been so spectacular that the 950 -pupil school is considering adapting the system to other subjects.

The children in form 9Y1 are racing ahead of classes which use more traditional methods.

Their teacher, deputy head Mrs. Val Duffy-Cross, said: 'Many staff started off being skeptical, but some are surprised, even shocked, by the progress these youngsters are making.'

Mr. Harradine said: 'Although we are using the method only for German, we will be looking at introducing it fully into the curriculum.' Under the system, marketed by an Aylesbury firm, the pupils begin listening to a German play, a mundane story about boy meeting girl and going shopping.

They can follow it from a textbook which has the English translation on the left hand page and the original German in bold type on the right.

This is called the 'comfort factor' because pupils do not have to skip to the back of the book or a dictionary to find out what words mean.

Later, with Bach, Handel or Vivaldi playing in the background, the children listen to more of the play and watch a sequence of cartoon strip images which illustrate it.

"Baroque music is used because its 60 beats to the minute are particularly soothing "say Accelerated Learning Systems, the firm behind the technique.

In another lesson, the pupils are encouraged to place their heads in their hands on their desks, close their eyes and not concentrate to hard on the background tapes of words and music.

'We all know how you sometimes learn the words to a particular song without even trying.'

The $199.95 system is mostly sold to business men who want to learn language fast, but Form 9Y1 loves it. Robert Poyner, 14, said: 'It's excellent. We are learning quicker and are up to the standard of the year above.'

Accelerating their learning

She said many students could be failing to reach their full potential simply because they lacked technique to use all their brain power.

"The accelerated learning program allows students to discover which areas are their strongest forms of intelligence and then teaches learning techniques which use those intelligences." she said.

The program explores the use of the more creative right side of the brain rather than the traditional intellectual left side.

This year the school tested the program with its foreign language students. A control group of German students continued learning vocabulary as normal, while a second group used a variety of new techniques.

These included labeling objects in the classroom in German and incorporating relaxation techniques at the start of the class.

The end result was that in the same space of time the control group had learned 20 words, the trial group had mastered 400.

Sandgate District High School students will embark on a revolutionary new learning program next year.

They will be the first State school students in Queensland to make use of the accelerated your learning program.

The program encourages students to discover the way they learn best and then develop a systematic approach to learning. Teacher librarian Elizabeth Burridge said: "The students learn to take control of their learning and when they feel more in control, they tend to do better."

Ms. Burridge said the program was developed after a study of successful learners showed they used a clear and common pattern to the way they approached their learning tasks.

The program also blasts another myth that intelligence is fixed and unchanging.

"There are seven different intelligences and each person combines these intelligences in different ways with the result that intellects are as different and fingerprints." Ms. Burridge said.

Northside Chronicle December 18th, 1993 (Australia)