Visuals

This week we looked at images and the effect of visuals on learning. Whilst I feel visuals are important, I feel it is hard to comment on the intricacies of this area of study. Therefore, for this post I am going to highlight a few key points made during the seminar and apply them to my teaching experience. But overall, I feel many of the points are obvious and it is clear to me that people see and read things differently due to cultural and experiential knowledge (Hill, 2003). Furthermore, whilst the literature I have read has spoken about visual literacy as a learnt knowledge (Hill, 2003), I feel it is hard to have any fixed understanding on this matter as we are in a global environment and technological development within every country has meant that our world is constantly changing. And as a result, the age at which people are becoming visually literate, I feel, is getting younger. Brumberger (2011) describes the continuum of visual literacy: there are certain images that require a deeper level of visual literacy skills than others, such as graphs. For these types of visuals, visual literacy needs to be developed as a skill. However, asking a student to describe what they see and imagine as the context the image is surrounded by is far more simplistic and in a language classroom this can promote language development. I am not saying that we are going to end up having the same interpretation of an image but I think as we grow closer we will have a better understanding, as a learner or teacher, of the many interpretations available with an image.

A picture can speak a thousand words, but only to some

If the right image is chosen, there are countless opportunities for language production and directions for the lesson to go in. However, it appears that this isn’t the case with many visuals in textbooks.

When I started teaching, 9 years ago, the textbooks and materials on offer very commonly used images of popular culture and many illustrations as page “decoration” (Hill, 2003, p176). Today trends have moved away from this use of imagery, and for good reason, as popular culture can isolate students who are not exposed to that particular cultural set. However, it still seems that there is use for these images; for example, in a cultural class about England. But, as teacher, I tend to steer clear of these types of images as there is only so much a student can say about them with or without the cultural knowledge.

What seems more appropriate now are images that can be interpreted by any student from any country. A good example of this are the pictures used in the ‘Life’ coursebooks by Cengage (Stephenson, Dummett & Hughes, 2012). Images from the National Geographic archive have been used and they are from all around the world.

These images do speak a thousand words and they also offer the teacher multiple directions for the students to move into. For example, there is an image of a house in USA and the owners have placed all their belongings they kept inside the house in the front garden and the family are sat among the objects. At a glance, one very easy lesson could be to look at all the vocabulary associated with the objects. But the photo itself is an unusual one and after a short amount of time looking at it the viewer most probably starts asking questions regarding the situation and the reasons for the photo. This one image has countless possible tasks and potential for language focuses. It is in these types of images that students may grow curious and begin to develop questions regarding the image.

It is in these types of images that I can understand the versatility and potential of using pictures to learn a language. Firstly, these types of visuals can generate sets of target language. Secondly, they can produce exercises that are focused on student production without relying on the individuals’ receptive skills first (reading and listening). But most importantly it can increase student engagement. As a teacher, I have always used images as a tool for generating interest and focusing the students on a topic or language function.

Are we using images to their full potential?

In my classroom, no. All language institutions I have worked in do not allow teachers to print in colour, except on very rare occasions. Therefore, I have always been limited to the coloured photos in the coursebook unless I choose to print at my own cost. This small administrative detail has meant that my choice of images to use in class have nearly always been based on whether the pictures print well in black and white. As a result, pictures like the one described above are not possible materials if printed in black and white.

Aside from the organisational restraints, there are copyright laws that are even more restricting. The laws are complicated and difficult to understand which, as a busy teacher, may put off some teachers from using images as part of the learning process.

However, if those two areas of restraint were disregarded, it seems that in an EFL classroom there is a lot of opportunity to use images to enhance or focus learning and it seems that teachers are using images to improve the classroom experience. But, in my opinion, it seems that the publishing industry has only recently realised this when it comes to textbooks. Now you can find publishers partnering with large organisations that have substantial archives of images. This development is filtering into the classroom and hopefully is set to stay.

Finally, another key area of development is technology in classrooms. This has enabled teachers to move away from the organisational limitations in many language learning establishments as the images can be easily present in colour on a projector screen.

References

Brumberger, E. (2011) Visual Literacy and the Digital Native: An Examination of the Millennial Learner. Journal of Visual Literacy 30 (1): pp.19-47.

Hill, D.A. (2013) The visual element in EFL coursebooks. In: Tomlinson, B. (ed). Developing Materials for Language Teaching. London: Bloomsbury.

Stephenson, H., Dummett, P. and Hughes, J. (2012) Life Intermediate Workbook. United States: National Geographic Learning.