Terry Mahony - Making Your words Work: Using NLP to improve communication, learning & behaviour

We have known for some time that learning (making sense of their experience) is at its best for most children when they are interacting socially and that language and communication is the key to successful learning. Children solve practical tasks with the help of their speech as well as with their hands and eyes.

L S Vygotsky, Thought and Language

Much research has taken place in the last few decades that shows the power of words in shaping peoples worlds However, as with all research, there is a time lag between the discovery of new ideas and relationships and their application in the classroom. A number of books have been written exploring the educational applications of neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) techniques in classrooms, mainly in the area of accelerated learning. However, NLP does have a wider application, because it is a model of human communication and behaviour that comprises three broad elements:

1. Gaining rapport and communicating with another person;
2. Effective ways of gathering information about the mental world of another person;
3. Strategies for promoting behavioural change.

As such it is ideally suited for managing classroom behaviour, especially as it uses both conscious and unconscious ways of relating to and communicating with another person. In particular, it has developed ideas and techniques that will allow you to identify and describe patterns in the verbal and nonverbal behaviour of children. This book explores the NLP ideas relating language to behaviour. Language and communication are the basis of successful learning for children. My belief that the forms of language a teacher uses shape the behaviour and therefore the learning of the children in the classroom prompted this description of the ideas and teaching techniques advocated in this book. Its purpose is to get you a classroom where behaviour supports your childrens learning.

Learning in classrooms is mediated by the teacher and this mediation is language-based. This book is about ensuring that the language you use increases your pupils capacity to learn. Carefully chosen language can actively create the mental images and neurological pathways in the brain of the child to produce the desired learning. I have taken the findings of NLP that can be applied to behaviour and converted them into practical ways of talking and behaving in the classroom.

All experienced teachers have watched or listened to an exchange between a student teacher and a pupil and recognised that turning point in the conversation when conflict becomes inevitable, triggered by the students inappropriate verbal response to the pupil. I want all teachers to have at their command the widest repertoire of linguistic tools so that they can alter the direction of any exchange with a pupil to move it away from conflict and towards the restoration of a learning climate in the classroom.

In 1994, a UK government circular stated that behavioural problems with children were often engendered or worsened by the environment, including schools or teachers responses. Stop for a moment and remember an exchange with a pupil that didnt go the way you wanted it to. Was your response to the situation as good as it could have been? What did you say that worsened the situation? Now think of being able to communicate with just the right language to get the positive outcome you intended. This is what the NLP language patterns contained in this book can help you to do. The book will show you how to use these patterns in such a way that you will be able to improve the behaviours of the pupils you teach. They are easily learned ways of talking that you can develop into an unconscious competence in your classroom. With your new competence will come reduced levels of tension and noticeable shifts in the climate of the classroom. Just as different colours have been shown to affect mood, so specific language patterns, vocabulary and ways of talking can shift the emotional state of the listener.

Just think of your own internal dialogue in different situations. What do you say to yourself to wind yourself up from a feeling of mild irritation, through annoyance, to full-blown anger? Equally, just recall what you say in your head to calm yourself down or move into a state of feeling pleased with yourself. We each have our own internal dialogues which affect our mood or emotional state. Some of these have been installed in our behaviour for such a long time that we have probably forgotten the experience that first prompted them. More importantly, they act like preprogrammed tapes that begin to run in our minds ear when something triggers them. These messages in turn generate a behavioural response that can sometimes be dysfunctional when we are dealing with a childs misbehaviour. Recognising your own self-talk tapes from the past and learning to create more appropriate ones is a key emotional-skill development for all teachers.

This book is structured with the reader, and what we know about personal learning, in mind. It falls into four sections appropriate to your learning preference:

Part I covers the bottom right-hand side of the diagram in Figure ( i ): the what of the book, its main ideas and the background research that have led to the development of these techniques. Chapter One contains the ideas and concepts underpinning neuro-linguistic programming. It gives a brief history and background to the development of NLP as well as a description of its main tenets and how you can implement them into the classroom. This will give you an overview of the field and allow you to decide which ideas can help you most in your classroom. Although this book focuses on the use of the linguistic devices of NLP, the Bibliography lists those authors who have described how these and other powerful NLP techniques can help you enhance childrens learning.

Chapter Two contains recent thinking in brain research applied in the classroom. It is a short wander through some of the key findings of the research of the last decade into the brains structure and functioning, as well as the ideas on the use of specific language in modifying behaviour.

Part II (the top right-hand quadrant) explores why you will want to read and learn about these ideas. It surveys some of the current behavioural problems and practices in school. It explores what implications these may have for childrens learning and behaviour. Much of this work has yet to be really tried and tested in the classroom. What findings do you think you can use and change your teaching approach? You can be the experimenter and see the effect of some of the ideas in improving childrens learning.

Figure (i) : Reading this book

Part III covers the bottom left-hand side of the diagram, the how of the different techniques and how they are used to gain different goals with the same outcome better behaviour. This section contains a survey of the words, phrases and scripts of the different NLP approaches to use in the classroom, together with ways of strengthening some of the more common current strategies. Chapter Five has practical examples and conversational scripts of the patterns in use. Simply choose a script or a technique and ask yourself if you can remember an occasion when it could have improved the outcome of a confrontation with a pupil.