Imagine you had decided to use the image that accompanies this post to begin a conversation on tourism with your class. What could you ask? You might try ‘What do visitors to your town like to do?’ or ‘What would you do if there was weather like this on your holiday?’ – in order to generate the answers you would (consciously or unconsciously) be expecting, both questions would require a certain cultural viewpoint. The first would require the learner to recognise a ‘pier’ as a traditional form of British seaside entertainment, the type of thing a holidaymaker might do; the second would require the learner to share your (British) perspective on ‘good’ and ‘bad’ weather – grey skies, drizzle and wind falling into the latter category.

My experiments with infographics put the role of images in the forefront of my mind. My prediction that my students had produced better examples of the language of comparison when describing the infographics turned out to be correct, although admittedly this was only informally put to the test. But it left me thinking about the intended role of images in the context of a formal examination

Canning-Wilson ¹ makes positive comments on how visuals might be used in examinations and cites the way that images can prompt the language of prediction, inference and deduction as support for his claims. In her view, learners are able to draw upon ‘language from their own knowlede and personal experiences’ through engaging with an image. Images in an examination context, from this perspective, are viewed as being facilitative.

Not everyone, however, has such a positive perspective on the issue. Kullman ² sees language teaching materials as having a duel purpose. Whilst he acknowledges their pedagogical role with the benefits that brings, as described by Hewings in the case of images, he sees them as ‘cultural artefacts’. Although Kullman is writing with reference to published course books in general, I believe his comments can be transferred to exam preparation course books, specifically the images within them, as well as the images used in the exams themselves. If we acknowledge the role images play as a component of these ‘cultural artefacts’, we should also ask questions about the nature of the stories the images we choose – or in the case of exam preparation, which are chosen for us – prompt our learners to tell.  

Norton ³ questions whether the identities of learners are truly engaged in the language learning process when this is approach through communicative language teaching and implies that if they are not, we may be asking our students to appropriate an identity that is not their own. Gee ⁴ asserts that language cannot be separated from identity and explains how whenever we produce language, we must adopt a particular perspective on the world:

‘when we speak or write we always take a particular perspective on what the ‘world’ is like. This involves us taking in perspectives on what is ‘normal’ and not; what is ‘acceptable’ and not; what is ‘right’ and not; what is ‘real’ and not; what is ‘the way things are’ and not; what is ‘the way things out to be’ and not; what ‘people like us’ or ‘people like them’ do and don’t; and so on’

Kullman ⁵ points out that in any given culture, ‘certain narratives will be ‘dominant’ whereas others will be ‘secondary or suppressed’. Is it fair to conclude that the images presented by Cambridge in their examinations and preparation materials contain within them a ‘dominant’ narrative? That is, is it a fair to assume that the scenes they depict align much more closely with the lives and experiences of relatively well educated, relatively affluent westerners? And if that is the case, can we further assume that learners are willing or able to embrace the identities encoded in the images they see?And how does this situation impact upon those whose own narratives would fall into the categories of ‘secondary’ or ‘suppressed’?

The implications of this are somewhat at odds with Canning-Wilson’s ⁶  belief in the benefits of images as pertaining to authenticity:

‘Another beneficial reason for using pictures on examinations is authenticity. Visuals can bring today’s world into the language learning environment by serving as an reflection of what exists outside of the foreign or second language classroom. This form of stimuli can allow the learner to analyze his/her own world.’

Students would only benefit from visuals used in the way Canning Wilson ⁷ suggests if they are able to ‘read’ those images in the first place. If a candidate was unable to pick up on the narrative embedded in the picture, they would be unlikely to find themselves with ‘more interpretive responses, patterns and ranges to answer posited exam questions’ – rather, they would likely be confused and unsure of what to say. This is supported by Hewings’ ⁸ research with Vietnamese learners, which would indicate that the difficulties faced interpreting an image situated within a narrative different from your own may be misconstrued as a linguistic failure by teachers or assessors.

Kullman ⁹ points out that we are aware of the need to be concerned with ensuring images do not have the potential to cause offence to learners from a particular background or culture but we should not assume that having achieved this, we have avoided the problems of ‘culturally situated discourse’. This is something that I will have to consider, specifically when I’m preparing learners for Cambridge examinations.