Examination of the effects of subject anxiety and task difficulty on the outcome of SALT (Suggestive Accelerative Learning and Teaching) techniques

A noteworthy feature of studies of SALT and suggestopedia is inconsistent results. Both theory and evidence suggest that these techniques may be beneficial to high anxiety learners learning a difficult task but detrimental to low anxiety learners on an easy task. This mix of results may account for many of the inconsistent results in the literature. Thus the role of anxiety is of considerable importance because it may provide an account of damaging inconsistencies and because it may indicate appropriate areas of application. Therefore the present study examined the impact of SALT techniques on the learning of high and low anxiety learners, given both an easy and a difficult task. The results did not support the main hypothesis: overall the SALT techniques produced results which were inferior to conventional learning techniques. Further, SALT techniques were not superior at any level of anxiety or task difficulty. Thus, the present study confirmed the common failure to find SALT techniques superior to conventional learning. Disadvantages of the SALT techniques were identified and suggested that the method may do better with considerably more learner familiarity with the method.