A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words

In this post, I explore how teachers can easily incorporate visuals into their curriculum to support English language learners in the classroom.

You could imagine that learning a foreign language is a daunting task. This is particularly true when students find themselves in an immersion classroom not speaking the primary language. Unless language teachers make modifications, English language learners could be sitting in a classroom without an inkling of what is going on.

A few years ago, I had a glimpse of what it was like to be such student. A former professor of mine lectured us about light – in German. She was fluent in German and the rest of us – ESL teacher candidates- were not. So, did we understand what she said? Well, yes and no. When she made modifications, mostly using pictures and gestures, to explain what colors made up the light, we did. When she only lectured us, without visuals, we did not understand the lesson.

There is no doubt that most language learners, whether beginner, intermediate or advanced learners, can benefit from visual aids. Especially, in the early phases of language learning visual aids may be the only way English language learners can decode the language input.

Pictures

Using pictures for presenting nouns, adjectives and action verbs is a great way to support ELLs’ comprehension. There are many ways to include pictures in the lesson. For instance, flashcards and picture dictionaries can be used provided that the teacher has access to them. Pictures in the textbook can be easily incorporated into the lesson plan as well. However, sometimes teachers need to get creative and add their own pictures. To maximize students’ engagement, below are a few tips on how to select pictures:

• Personal pictures: Whenever you can, use pictures of yourself or the school in PowerPoint slides or activities. This will make it more fun for students and it is more likely that words will stick with them.
• Celebrity pictures: You can add celebrity pictures to you PowerPoint, activities or games. It’s guaranteed that high school and middle school students will have a blast and the new words will more likely to stick with them as well.
• Stick Figures: If you have exhausted all your resources, you can always resort to drawing a stick figure or use clip arts. The good news is that it requires minimal preparation!

Timelines

Another way to incorporate visuals is to include timelines in your curriculum. Timelines are especially helpful when teaching tenses. Let’s say you are explaining what future simple is. You could draw a timeline with three sections – past, present, future – to indicate on the timeline when will the event take place.

With more advanced learners, you could compare and contrast various tenses to improve students’ grammatical competence. For instance, you could explain the difference between “I went to the train station yesterday.” (past simple) and “I have been to the train station three times.” (present perfect) using timelines. As a reference point, I often use Murphy’s Grammar in Use textbook has a variety of timelines, and student-friendly explanations of all 12 tenses.

Charts

Charts are another superb way to enhance students’ comprehension in the classroom. For example, you could be teaching superlatives and comparatives by using a bar graph. You could easily explain the meaning of sentences such as “The USA has the highest GDP in the world.” or ” The GDP is higher in the USA than in Italy.” by using a bar graph like below.

All of these strategies to include visual aids can perk up your students’ interest. Not only visual aids help with comprehension, but they can also reduce students’ anxiety. Remember to add pictures, timelines and graphs to your lessons to enhance students’ comprehension whenever you can.