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Woland
Joined: 10 May 2006
Location: Seoul
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 Posted: Sat May 20, 2006 6:49 am Post subject: |
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| Just so we�re on the up-and-up, tell us about your experience with NLP. |
I have never paid for or attended an NLP training session. I refuse to waste my money like that.
I have had the experience of sitting through a number of NLP-inspired sessions by "licensed NLP trainers" at various ELT conferences over the years. It was regretably popular during my time in Turkey. I can describe these sessions accurately as 'content-free'. They were full of trite psychobabblistic slogans like "There is no such thing as failure, only feedback" and mindless visualization activities ("Close your eyes. Imagine yourself at the base of a tall staircase...") that did nothing to help me improve my knowledge or teaching ability. They were feel-goodism masquerading as humanism.
Perplexed by its popularity, I have spent a bunch of time in bookstores looking through NLP Books to find an explanation. It can't be literary or academic quality. I found the books simplistic, purveying more trite slogans ("The map is not the territory"), and empirically unsupported. My only guess (apologies to Colbert) is that NLP is designed for people who prefer 'scienciness' to actual science. It is amusing to note that if you look on the page facing the title page of J. O'Connor and I. McDermott's Principles of NLP, you will find a list of "Other titles in this series." These include Principles of Aromatherapy and Principles of Colonic Irrigation. I kid you not. Who knew there were 'principles' of colonic irrigation? I think it is plausible to judge NLP by the company it keeps.
Externally, NLP has the look of earlier scams like est. You pay up for the initial sessions to be fed some feel good jargon and practices that are, as you say, "not verifiable," learning at the same time that if you cough up some more bucks, there's a whole nother level of obscurantism waiting for you. Pay up enough and you can become a practitioner or trainer and take money from others to make up your losses to date. Sounds like a pyramid.
There is no way for me to avoid the contempt that must appear in what I've written above. I also acknowledge I have not addressed any of the specific claims of NLP. But this is hard to do, given its "non-empirical", "non-verifiable", "lack of a central theory" nature (Another word for this is 'anecdotal'). Any refutation is met by NLPers with a "that's not what we meant" or "you just don't understand enough" approach (or, if they really want to get you, charges of positivism). This kind of thing appeals to people who prefer scienciness. I can only hope that what I have pointed out as the basis for my contempt rings true for a number of people.
But really, in the end, if you want to spend your money on this, it is your loss. I find this sad, when you consider that areas of work like Self-Determination Theory, which is truly humanist, has a central theory, is empirically verifiable (indeed, its motivation construct has been verified among ESL students in work by K. Noels of University of Alberta and her colleagues), and for which much material is available free of charge, are being passed over. The practical applications of this work are not difficult to comprehend and easy to apply. The search for self-development needn't be so costly as an NLP seminar.
Last edited by Woland on Mon May 22, 2006 4:41 am; edited 1 time in total |
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Paji eh Wong
Joined: 03 Jun 2003
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| Posted: Sun May 21, 2006 5:48 pm Post subject: |
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| Fair enough. Thanks for answering the question. |
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Paji eh Wong
Joined: 03 Jun 2003
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| Posted: Sat Jul 29, 2006 2:21 am Post subject: |
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Right. So I took the course and I'm glad I did.
I approached it from a personal developement standpoint first and a proffesional developement standpoint second, to the extent that the two are divisible. I think this is the right way to approach NLP for teachers because I think NLP offers things that formal education or methodology doesn't. Things like self knowlegde, communication skills, and a positive way of looking at the world. I know that sounds trite and new-agey, but I'm not sure how else to express it.
I can appreciate Woland's comments about bad trainers. After my 2 week course, I am no where near qualified enough to teach this stuff. I had to sit few a through a few presentations by student-presenters that were not that helpful. I can see this taking an immense amount of practice on my part.
It took me about a week to square away NLP with my formal education in psychology. Its simple, really. They operate on different levels.
Psychology is the scientific study of behaviour and mental processes. Its a study of populations and samples, subject to the constraints of quantitative statistics. That means that it operates at a group level. Psychology the science does not "work" with individuals.
NLP, on the other hand, is a system that operates on an individual level. It looks at people at a subjective, experiential, and qualitative level. Woland said up-thread that NLP was "annecdotal". Yes, it is. Individuals are, by definition, annecdotal. NLP is not scientific, and anyone who says so is misrepresenting it.
I think this has sort of brought me around to a personal definition of NLP. NLP is the study of individual differences.
In a classroom of students, teachers need to be able to interact with individuals through to hundreds of students. I see no reason why NLP and psychology can't coexist in the same classroom. |
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