The Importance of Using Visuals in EFL
Classrooms
The
Necessity of Visual Aids
For
a long while, education is a must for people all around the world. Education’s importance is unignorable because
every single human being wants to have a better life conditions and this is
possible with taking education. By means
of instruction, a person also becomes notable, so the other people respect
him/her. Moreover, as it is well-known,
education ought to be given to the students at an early age. The reason why it should be given at early
ages is because the learners’ capacity of learning and acquiring the knowledge
are better in this process of their lives. For the students, there are several ways to
learn the knowledge and one of those ways is visuals such as flashcards,
pictures, real objects, videos, charts, blackboards and so on. However, the importance of using visual aids
has not only some causes but also has many effects.
Bringing the external world
into the classroom is the first cause of the importance of using visuals in EFL
classrooms. One of the visuals is
flashcards which show the images of objects.
To illustrate, there is a teacher who tries to teach animals to the
young students. Does this teacher have a chance to bring a whale into the
classroom? Of course, he does not have
any possibility like this. However, he
can describe or he may want students to describe the whale easily by using flashcards. To give another example, if there is a
teacher who gives a lecture in a city where there is no sea, the only way to
teach the sea to the students is possible with again using flashcards, pictures
or videos. Furthermore, there is an
author who has the same idea as me. According to Christine Canning Wilson, it
is said that pictures give a potentiality to the learners to see the objects
that they cannot touch or feel at that time. Thereby, visual images make the
learning more authentic and this helps the students to use proper related
language (Canning-Wilson, 1999).
Videos’
showing the things in an obvious way can be the second cause of the importance
of using visuals in EFL classrooms. It
is better for the teacher to show a video to the students to make them be aware
of the content related to what they are going to be taught in the lesson. For instance, the instructor is teaching EFL
learners how to describe an address to a person who is from another country and
does not know any place in there. In the lesson, the instructor represents a
video which shows the accurate words used when describing a place. By showing the video, the learners are
expected to get the patterns. Also,
after watching it, the instructor may control whether the issue is clear or not
by asking the students to animate the video in the classroom. According to Samir Rammal, it is considered
that videotaped material enables learners much better understanding of implied
issues. Furthermore, it procures a real
sample which may reduce the possibility of EFL learners’ being embarrassed while
they are speaking to the people who are from the target culture (Rammal, 2005).
Nevertheless
having some causes, the importance of using visuals in EFL classrooms has
several effects. To begin with, offering
convenience in vocabulary recognition is one of the effects of visual aids’
necessity. In the lesson, it can be more effective to show pictures of what is
going to be mentioned when compared to just saying the descriptions. With this
style of teaching, the instructor enables students to keep the information in
their minds permanently. For example,
there is a student who is seven years old is confusing the words tomato and potato.
But if these words are taught that
student by indicating pictures, he will easily understand the difference
because he will see that tomato is red and potato is yellow. As a result, the knowledge will be lasting. According to the authors whose names are Shana
K. Carpenter and Kellie M. Olson, it is believed that rather than words,
sensory-semantic patterns suggest that images are more advantageous for memory since they
include a major variety of matchless visual properties (Carpenter and Olson,
2012).
What
is more, real objects’ giving a potential to the learners to use their sense
organs during the learning is another effect of the importance of using visuals
in EFL classrooms. Therefore, the learners comprehend the
knowledge by experiencing the things around them. To exemplify, the teacher is telling his
students that the cotton is something soft and light. At that time, the students try to imagine this
stuff in their minds. However, without
touching it, how can they realize the cotton in an exact way? The answer is that the most influential way
is to test the object on their own.
According to Steph Mastoris, it is thought that being able to feel the things
is one of the most efficient ways of learning and it has lots of pros for the
students. There happens a real
experience which arises through touching the objects. Besides, having a sense of prerogative
access, it is also probable to catch the attention of those who are not
interested in the lesson (Mastoris, 2009).
Taking
everything into account, despite the fact that the importance of using visuals
in EFL classrooms has lots of causes such as bringing the outside world into
the environment of classroom and videos’ representing the things obviously, it
also has various effects namely offering easiness in vocabulary recognition and
real object’ enabling the learners to use their sense organs during the process
of learning. From my standpoint, when
visual aids are used in learning period, the learners understand the subject
better, they become more active and the lesson goes with a swing. As a last
thing, here is a quotation related to the topic which is “A picture is worth a
thousand words.”
REFERENCES
1. Canning-Wilson, C. (June 6, 2012). Using Pictures in EFL and ESL
Classrooms.
Retrieved from http://www.eric.ed.gov/PDFS/ED445526.pdf
2. Rammal, S. (April 12-12,
2005). Using Video in EFL Classroom.
Retrieved from http://www3.telus.net/linguisticsissues/using%20video
3. Carpenter, S. K., & Olson, K. M. (2012). Are pictures
good for learning new vocabulary in a foreign language? Only if you think they
are not. Journal of
Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition, 38, 92-101.
Retrieved from http://www.psychology.iastate.edu/~shacarp/Carpenter_Olson_2011.pdf
4. Mastoris, S. (January, 2009).
Learning through Objects BaLL2.
Retrieved from http://www.gem.org.uk/res/advice/ball/res_lto.php
