Visuals and texts

The French philosopher Roland Barthes argues that visuals are open to interpretations. However, this interpretation is limited by adding text to the visual in what he calls Anchorage. In this process the text limits the interpretation and directs the reader to the intended meaning of the visual. Look at the humor use of anchorage in this image, the text reveals the purpose of the visual.  In the field of ELT, the connection between the visual and text is different. The visuals are used to elaborate the meaning of the text to the learners. Here the choice of the visuals must cater for the differentiation of learners’ abilities and visual comprehension. Also, the visuals have to effectively reflect or convey the meaning of the text or the subject matter of the lesson. Unfortunately, there are many coursebooks with poor or no visuals at all. Some visuals are used to fill empty spaces decoratively which do not contribute to the learning process.

During the seminar, we learned that the use of visuals in the coursebooks dates to centuries ago. This makes me wonder why there are many coursebooks without visuals aids. We also learned that we live in an age where we are bombarded daily with all sort of images. And the visually literate individual has the ability to encode meaningful visual messages as well as decode them. Having this thought in mind, I came aware of the importance of the connection between the text and the visuals. This idea made me reflect on the task I made with my colleague Grace where we chose to visually analyze two pictures/illustrations from FACE2FACE coursebook.

We discussed first the questions of why, when and how visuals are used. Coming from the saying that a picture is worth a thousand words, we stressed the notion that the connection between the text and the visual increases the learning process. “The more educational materials promote connections between the two methods of coding (visual and verbal), the more learning takes place” (Dubois and Vial, 2000).

We then followed Duchastel’s taxonomy for visual evaluation and its criteria are:

1-affective

2-attentive

3-didactic

4-supportive

5-retentional

My choice was an image of the Indian city Kerala (FACE2FACE 2B p20-21) to evaluate this picture and its connection to the subject matter of the lesson, I applied the criteria proposed by Duchastel.

I believe that the picture is effective is the sense that it attracts the learners’ attention with its vivid colors and contents. The picture consists of a wooden boat in a river surrounded by thick trees which due to their large sizes tend to grab the attention of the viewer. Also, I believe that the picture is attentive in the sense that it motivates the learners to engage with it and try to decode its messages. Also, from a cultural point of view, the city of Kerala and its dwellers had commercial relationships with Kuwait in the past where they, using the wooden boats, used trade with Kuwait and we have similar Indian boats as well. Thus, the picture can initiate cultural topic and the history of the two cities. However, I don’t think the picture is didactic, that is, it doesn’t help in learning the grammatical objectives of the lesson. As for being retentional, the picture is anchored with the text, “I lost my heart in Kerala” the association of the color green in both the picture and the text creates the link between the place in the picture and the word “Kerala”. In other words, the picture assists in memorization of the subject matter because “human capacity for memorising pictures is less degradable than memory for verbal information” (Sless, 1981: 106).

This process of evaluating the visuals in the coursebook allowed me to realize how significant and important the visuals are to the learning process in the field of ELT. Furthermore, the continuous reviewing of the visuals and their relevance to reality is also important for the learning process to be effective.

BARTHES, R., & HEATH, S. (1977). Image, music, text. New York, Hill and Wang.

Dubois, M. & Vial, I. 2000, “Multimedia design: the effects of relating multimodal information”, Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, vol. 16, no. 2, pp. 157-165.

Duchastel, P. C. (1978) Illustrating instructional texts. Educational Technology18 36-39.

Sless, D. (1981) Learning and Visual Communication. London: Halsted Press.