Here is a webinar I hosted in 2014 about using images in the classroom. It is pretty ameteur but a great experience. The YouTube channel is hosted by Barbara Gardener, but I swear that is me mumbling on the video.
Category Archives: Visuals
Visually speaking
Images have always played an important role in media, society and indeed the language-teaching classroom. Different species have been communicating through visual means for as long as time has existed. These images present messages, signals and instruction. Cave paintings were able to capture historical information in order to inform countless generations to come of the customs and wisdom of their cultures. Those primitive etchings on a wall were the beginning of what has now become a visually dependent world. Brand power is everywhere and the amount of semiotics used to communicate meaning has grown exponentially.
The power of the image can not be underestimated and as the proverb goes ‘a picture paints a thousand words’. Those people in the text camp may also chirp that ‘a single word can paint a thousand images’, such as ‘death’. Text is important but in my opinion, no less so than images and indeed society has embraced both forms of media. Walker and White (2013) highlight research conducted by Wood and Hastings (2009) that shows the average person is bombarded with 100,000 words per day and the majority of this verbal input is accompanied by visuals of some kind.
Alan Fletcher (as cited in Goldstein, 2008) said, “Although words and pictures can signify the same thing, the effect they produce can be quite different….”. If we take my ‘death’ example from above, the two mediums potentially have stark differences. To write that someone is dead and for that to be presented visually in some way may evoke contrasting emotional responses.
“Images are ever more powerful and echo in our minds more than a quotation ever could”.
(Goldstein, 2008)
It could be argued that the modern world and technology has created billions of journalists, all capturing significant moments via digital photographs and film; snapping iconic images before a professional can get near. Goldstein (2008) considers that we may have become immune to the power of the image because we have realised how easy it is to do it ourselves both literally and metaphorically.
Mirzoeff (1999) makes the following point:
“Visual culture does not depend on pictures themselves, but the modern tendency to picture or visualise experience…while such visualising has been common throughout the modern period, it has now become all but compulsory.”
It has been claimed that this ‘bombardment’ of information is having a negative impact on societies’ cognitive processes, for example, reading and memory (Walker and White, 2013). Meanwhile the use, and in some ways reliance on images has also led to an understanding of a different form of literacy. Kress and van Leeuwen (2006) point to a visual literacy i.e. a means of analysing images and of uncovering the messages that they convey. Our daily lives are dominated by visual information, nowhere more so than through the colossal dissemination of images through digital technology and online media, and this form of literacy needs to be taken seriously. The pace of information flow in the modern world means it is quicker and easier to communicate a message with an image, be it an emoticon, a digital photo, or a GPS map on a navigation system. There are social network sites that use images as their primary sharing function such as Instagram, or even the emoji only network Emojli. Today’s tech savvy population are on a digitalised diet of images within real and virtual worlds and are experts at accessing, sharing, transforming and communicating images through a variety of mediums (Goldstein, 2008).
This is not limited to technology and social networking. We recognise one another through an array of visual codes, graffiti tags, logos, tattoos and other symbols (Goldstein, 2008). Taking into account all these images, it becomes clear that visual literacy is increasingly important in order to encode and decode the many messages and ideas being communicated. From cave paintings to emoji-only networks in a few thousand years, the only difference being the cave walls can now be seen anywhere in the world on a computer, a phone or even Google glasses.
Take for example this tweet from: https://twitter.com/emojibama. I can understand about 50% of what is trying to say. Does this make me a visual illiterate? John Berger (as cited in Goldstein, 2008) highlights an important point to consider:
“The art of the past no longer exists as it once did. Its authority is lost. In its place there is a language of image. What matters now is who uses that language for what purpose”.
The above image is using a fun medium to express important political messages. It is also using a series of images in a syntactic structure to convey precise semantic translation. If one cannot decode that information then it might as well be a second language script. This highlights an important point about using images in the ELT materials context. An image may well be worth a thousand words, but it is worth a thousand words in hundreds of different languages. It is a fantastic way to aid comprehension, but not necessarily a sure-fire way to language acquisition and learning. There needs to a balance between images for learning and those for contextualisation. Too many images may be distracting or confusing.
It is nearly impossible to imagine learning environments (in particular language ones) from compulsory education to teacher training that does not make use of flash cards, wall charts, coursebook images, photos, time lines, board drawings, learner-produced artwork and so on (Goldstein, 2008). Walker and White (2013) suggest the following reasons for images to be used to support learning:
- Images and video meet learners’ expectations. We now live in a highly visual culture, in which images are a major vehicle for conveying meaning.
- Images and video give information that can only be provided visually.
- Images and video allow learners to see a context, body language, facial expressions and artefacts. Provides an opportunity to learn about other cultures a ‘hook into’ global culture.
- Images and video bring the real world into the classroom.
- Images and video and provide a quick and economical means of conveying a message.
- Visual materials have an emotional impact
- Visual materials fill the void for language learning between gaps in language knowledge.
These provide concrete assertions for the power of images in learning. However, are images being used in the right way bearing in the mind my comment above about balance? An insightful paper written by David Hill (in Tomlinson, 2013) looks at the use of images in ELT coursebooks. Hill makes comparisons across a series of books and looked at those images that have pedagogical value and those that don’t (AKA “decoration”). Overall, it noted two things: the first is that over recent years there has been a shift from the majority of coursebooks using more illustrated images to using more photographic ones, and that around half of those images are used for decoration. Goldstein (2008) suggests that this might have been brought about by the shift toward a more authentic/semi-authentic communicative approach to ELT. Photos are seen as a useful tool for developing inter-cultural awareness and offer interesting relevant input. However, this attempt to be contemporary in topic and outlook may fail due to the decisions made by others such as designers or publishers, and not the author. Using images in materials is a difficult task because not all images, photographic or illustrated, will be culturally relevant or contextually appropriate. A materials creator or adaptor needs to think about their images carefully. The student needs to come first along with the pedagogical benefits of using an image. What is the right balance? Are decorative images just a space-filling design issue? Harmer (as cited in Hill, 2013) challenges negative perceptions of decorative images by stating that ornamental images (decoration) appeal to certain students and have the power to engage. They are part of the expectations about a coursebook, making them a norm and a comfort to some, and this translates into a learning benefit.This argument makes the debate about decorative images in coursebooks moot.
Hill (2013) makes an interesting distinction between ‘functional’ and ‘stimulate’ images. The former aims to make comprehension of the target language easier, and are explicitly used for teaching lexi or grammar points to facilitate a task. The latter is used to stimulate a mental response, thus creating an interactive situation where students are using their own language and knowledge. Similarly distinctions between images were made by Pit Coder (in Hill, 2013); he divides it into students talking about a picture or talking with a picture and was the first to coin these terms and to acknowledge the difference. Talking about a picture is when you are constrained to what you can see, whereas talking about a picture can lead into a discussion in which learners use language to communicate their own experiences and realities prompted by what is presented in the image.
One way to explore the relationship between image and text is to look at how both are arranged within an overall composition. Kress and Leeuwen (2006) stipulate that images can be read in a similar way to texts; in other words, images not only have meaning in themselves, but they accrue added meaning according to the way they are laid out in relation to other elements, both visual and textual, on the page. This again places a high value on the visual elements of materials and signifies the need for a certain level of visual literacy.
As a materials designer, I must be able to recognise the importance of composition and the relationship between the different textual and visual elements. Composition can be analysed according to these principles:
- Information value
- Salience
- Framing
The first principle defines the various zones within the overall image: left, right, top or bottom, centre, margins. The second is the placement of elements: foreground, background, size, focus, tone etc. The final principle is how certain elements of the image are framed, either implicitly or explicitly. Such an approach can help when considering multi-modal texts such as websites or the pages of a textbook. Asking questions about composition may help to formulate decisions about layout, the semiotic relationship between text and images and their role of conveying a message.
In the seminar on images, my peers and I looked at some coursebooks and materials. We examined the pedagogical and ornamental spread of images that they possessed. The general view in the room was one of support for Hill’s perspective: a large amount of images were photographic, the materials were lacking in white space and were instead filled with decorative images. As Goldstein (2008) rightly proposed, images, in the main, are still being used to support texts that are the main focus of the activity. The pedagogical value of the visual element is under-explored. Image and text should work alongside each other.
There are also the issues surrounding copyright and use of other peoples’ pictures, mainly from the internet. There is not really enough space and time to cover everything that needs to be addressed for this point, suffice to say that there is a lot to be considered when selecting images for your own materials. This is not for the faint-hearted or those pushed for time! There are some excellent resources out there that are free to use and share due to creative commons (CC) licensing legislation. If it is something that concerns you I would suggest looking for images from sources that are supported by CC.
To summarise, images and visual literacy are a key component when considering materials for language learning. Images cannot be under-estimated in their power to aid comprehension, engage learning, and communicate messages. However, there mustn’t be an over-reliance on images to do the work for you and your materials. The reading for this topic has been invaluable to my understanding and consideration of images as pedagogical tools. An image is a perfect means of encoding and decoding language. What excites me most about images is that they can be a very student-centred method of creating materials. Mobile phones and internet access mean that the opportunity to communicate complex and abstract ideas through this medium is a lot easier. This will enable more explorative language and functions, and promote a more constructivist perspective. The personalised aspect would also aid the quality of acquisition and retention.
References
Goldstein, B. (2008) Working with images, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
Hill, D. A. (2013) The visual element in EFL coursebooks. In: Tomlinson, B., Editor of Compilation. (2013) Developing materials for language teaching, London, Bloomsbury Academic.
Kress, G. & Leeuwen, T. V. (2006) Reading images: the grammar of visual design, Abingdon, Routledge.
Mirzoeff, N. (1999) An introduction to visual culture, New York; London, Routledge.
Walker, A. A. & White, G. A. (2013) Technology enhanced language learning: connecting theory and practice, Oxford, Oxford University Press.
Adapting and Supplementing
It has become increasingly clear that two of the main factors in all aspects of materials creation, development and evaluation are the uniqueness of the learners’ needs and the teaching situation.The sequence and pacing of any lesson is unpredictable, and needs to be flexible. Globally published materials, however, have to treat these localised variables, to some degree, as the same. They de-skill teachers from implementing their own methods and approaches to ELT by employing pre-determined content, order and procedure of use. There are occasional ‘close fits’ for course books, but from my experience this occurs in more specialised learning environments such as examination classes. Most globally-published materials can rarely take into account the differences that can be found between individual students and teachers (Maley, 2011). Teacher differences may include, for example:
- Degree of language proficiency and confidence
- Personality
- Preferred teaching style
Besides creating individualised materials for their own context, the gap between published provision and local need leaves teachers with options of what to do with the materials/resources available to them. Graves (2000) discusses the need to adapt and supplement materials because a coursebook is a fixed material. On a day-to-day level, materials need to change according to the context of use. These changes may stem from the teacher’s approach, goals and objectives, learners’ needs, and the requirements of the context. Graves (2002) uses the analogy of a piano to explain this: a piano provides you with the means for producing music, but it cannot do it on its own. In a similar sense, materials are a instrument for teaching and learning, and the quality of the instrument affects the quality of the music. Graves admits that the analogy falls short because success in teaching with published materials depends on the students who use them and not the one performer playing it.
Maley (2011) highlights that the nature and economics of globally published materials equate to them being created with the intention of reaching, and being used by, the largest possible audience. This obviously poses questions about validity and reliability.
The larger the number of learners being catered for, the more:
- variables in type of learners who use them
- scope for differences
- constraint on teachers for any given pedagogical movement
- distance from some learners capacity
- distance from the teachers and learners sense of relevance
This visual representation, which I have crudely created, attempts to illustrate the issue of globally published materials being used for localised contexts. Published materials are circular solutions for square needs. There will always be an element, whether it is methodology, teaching beliefs, target language, objectives etc, in a ‘one size fits all’ culture of global material design, that will never be able to satisfy all educational demands.
Mcgrath (2002) sets out the options for teachers when presented with published materials:
- To use them as they are
- Refuse to use them completely
- Reject certain sections
- Extend or exploit sections
- Adjust components
It is not often that I will use materials as they are. It is common that I will select one activity or adjust it slightly from the pages of course books or online materials. Online materials are slightly easier to adapt and edit due to their format and will be my first port of call when putting together material for a lesson. Maley (2011) suggests that there are several options to consider when deciding to adapt or supplement materials. These are described as coping strategies.
The first is simple but not exactly helpful in some contexts. It is suggested to just ‘give it a rest’, in other words, to provide light relief by playing games, watching videos, listening to songs. This is referred to as cosmetic entertainment and are mostly used as warmers and coolers. I do subscribe to the use of adapting materials into a fun and engaging activites but only those that have pedagogical aims. I would have to question the break aspect of Maley’s point. There are many online language games ready available, and video streaming sites such as YouTube are very content rich for materials that can be be supplemented or adapted.
The second is the main crux of this post, i.e. changing the materials in a way that makes them more appropriate for class contexts with regards to their language, level, content, procedure, and type of activity.
Materials can be changed in several different ways:
- Omission – inappropriate, unproductive or even offensive materials.
- Addition – of texts, activities etc in order to compensate for deficiencies.
- Reduction or shorten activities – to give less weight or emphasis
- Extension lengthen – e.g. additional vocab exercises or to add additional dimension
- Rewriting/modification – make a task more communicative for example
- Replacement – use another activity which may be more appropriate
- Reordering – to scaffold in a more appropriate way.
- Branching – to add options to the activity or switch to a more experiential route over an analytical one.
As a teacher becomes more experienced and understands their own beliefs and approaches the more adept they will become at noticing and applying changes to resources. It is also key for a teacher (and I am saying this to myself too) to remember that trialling and experimenting is a valid task to undertake. Adaptions and supplementing materials is not always going to work first time and may need a process of evalaution during and post task. In my post regarding principles and frameworks post I discuss how crucial it is that all materials become part of an evolving process. Over the course of a term I am certain that I will, at some point, choose to use one of the 8 options highhlighted by Maley, and they will invariably be met with varying degrees of success.
Within my teaching context there isn’t a course book specifically given to accompany the curriculum, but there are a large amount of resources that I can select from. This eclectic collection of published material needs to be adapted and supplemented on a lesson to lesson basis. The unstructured approach (semi-materials according to Prahbu) that my institution employs has a knock-on-effect that the faculty feel trusted and encouraged to create, develop, and share their work.
DIY materials are (hopefully) going to be more:
- Localised
- Modern
- Individual
- Personalised
- Humanised
- Supportive of differentiation
- Greater variety
This leads me onto the second consideration for material design as advocated by Prabhu (2001) (as cited in Maley, 2011). Prabhu suggests that there does not need to be a decentralisation of published materials per se, but there does need to be a fundamental shift in the design of materials. The new direction should provide greater flexibility in the decisions about content, order, pace, and procedures. Prabhu sets out three methods for creating those materials:
- Skills Modules: Organise the materials into language skills. These are hard to harmonise because of the different skills needed for different modules.
- Resource Options (more radical option): Use a whole range of resources to create tailor-made materials according to need. This option would be suited to small groups on intensive courses. Working in teams and sharing resources, ideas, materials and techniques would work well. Connectivity and technology has made this a more viable option compared to 2001 when Prahbu first mentioned it.
- Process Option (even more radical): Eradicate pre-developed materials altogether and generate localised content and learning activities. Use project works, community language learning i.e. the learners decide what to learn at their own pace.
It is surprising to see my teaching situation described as ‘more radical’ because it is the status quo for the faculty. The second resource option works very well in my context for both teachers and learners, and has gone a long way to help my own development. The process option mentioned by Prabhu is difficult to imagine in a larger institution and would be more demanding on the faculties’ resources. Material writers should take into consideration the idea of incorporating choice into their design. This can enable those materials to to be adapted more easily for different contexts. This would need to be articulated for any evaluation to aid the understanding of purpose and use of those materials.
Prabhu’s proposal is for a radical rethinking of published materials, where the author passes on at least one of four aspects of control to the teachers:
- Content (what)
- Order (when)
- Pace (how fast)
- Procedure (how)
Prabhu’s proposal is that a range of inputs should be offered without an envisaged use in the classroom. Input for different levels of difficulty and different quantities would leave the teacher to make any final decisions on what to use, how, and for whom. These adapted principles and frameworks for material design can be categorised into two resource options:
Semi-materials
- Single type: skills tasks e.g. listening comprehension, vocabulary development, role-plays possibly from published materials but used at own pace and order of presentation.
- Collections of ‘raw’ input. Compile a collection of written, spoken or visual texts without specification of how they should be used. The teacher then decides what they would be most apporpriate for grammar awareness, vocabulary in context or comprehension questions etc.
Meta- materials
- These are empty pedagogical procedures such as dictation, role-plays, gap-fills, summary writing and jigsaw listening. The teacher decides the nature of the input and applies the procedure to it, pace, order etc.
Personal Example of adaption
One of the modules in my own context asks the students to listen to a description of a process, make notes and then, in the genre of an academic essay, write about what they heard. Process coursework is aiming to teach and assess the students use of passive grammar, sequence phrases, cause and effect language, and academic receptive and production skills. There is a lot of ground to cover, so the target language and grammar points are normally scaffolded and practised as discrete langague items. This is built up and combined with the different skills needed to complete the task. There are plenty of resources available in my school, either in coursebooks for academic writing, vocabulary or from teacher created materials. The majority of the published material is dry and not engaging for the young adult learners that I am teaching.
Below is an example of the ‘raw’ material, usually printed on a plain white A4 paper, which students will analyse and then write a summary.
It depicts the manufacturing of orange juice. Looking at the suggestions by Prabhu I decided to change the procedure of how I wanted students to engage with this input.
In an attempt to make the input more engaging, I used an online programme called PimPamPum, which is essentially a storyboarding application. It uses Flickr’s archive of online images and allows speech/text bubbles to be added to those images, which lends itself very well to the features of a process description. This, I thought, made the presentation of input more engaging and allowed me to support some of the language features we had previously discussed. It also allowed for more contextualised input through the use of images aiding comprehension. One drawback is the limited visual scope of the whole process. One would have to go through the slides sequentially to get an overall perspective of the scale of the process. The adaption I chose was not only for the procedure of input. The final production task was not a written description, instead I ask my students to create their own PimPamPum storyboards for a different process. Then they would give a 2-3 minute presentation to their peers describing the process. This made the whole task more personalised and relevant to them, it also added a more communicative element.
The adaption of this particular piece of material is more in line with my own principles as articulated throughout this blog. It was an active and engaging task that was relevant to the learners’ needs. Researching and presenting are valuable skills for their studies outside of the classroom. Most importantly, it provided the students with a communicative purpose and an opportunity to practise the target language. Students did mention that Flickr does not always have the images they needed, but for the more creative among them this posed a challenge that they willingly embraced resulting in some interesting visual interpretations.
Overall, It is hard for me not to see adaption as an exciting part of the job in ELT, but this is purely based on my experience and beliefs. Improving my understanding of materials design is one of the reasons that I am on this course. Adaptation and supplementation are all part of the materials evolution and will develop and be redefined on a case by case basis. Ideally, I would like to have the time and resources to create my own materials, like the ones Prabhu describes. To be at a stage where I can use only meta-materials seems like a long-way off. Using published materials and adapting them in a semi-materials way is the position I am in. However, creating frameworks that allow for the evolution of materials that are not just specific for one context but are transferable and pedagogically robust would be advantegous. It is perhaps a cliched conclusion but what I see happening is not revolution against globally published materials.Technology and connectivity has evolved the way teachers look at adaption and supplimentation and is a massive step towards empowering both teachers and learners.
References
Graves, K. (2000) Designing language courses: a guide for teachers, London, Heinle & Heinle.
Maley, A. (2011) Squaring the circle – reconciling materials as constraint with materials as empowerment. In: Tomlinson, B. (2011) Materials development in language teaching, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
Mcgrath, I. (2002) Materials Evaluation and Design for Language Teaching. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press
Gamification
My use of this post is two-fold . One, I am interested in infographics as a ‘new’ way to present information that is both informative and visually engaging, and the second reason is that I am very interested in gamification in ELT.
Created by Knewton and Column Five Media
The use of infographics is a really good way to demonstrate data and ideas. There are sites such as infogr.am where you can build your own infographic. I produce a very rough guide to the NNES and NES debate as part of my Teacher Development module on this course. It was failry intuitive and fun to do. It is another option beyond the death by power point. The use of visuals is excellent and really gets your audience and students attention https://infogr.am/the_nest_nnest_debate