The importance of visual aids in teaching English

Visual aids can be defined in two ways: as a picture or a diagram you show learners to help their understanding, or in a broader sense as anything you show learners in a classroom to do this.

The use of visual aids such as pictures, posters, postcards, word calendars, realia, charts, graphic organizers, picture books, television, videos from iTunes, and computers can help Young Learners easily understand and realize the main points that they have learned in the classroom.

For each visual aid, Young learners have different responses and expressions even because of their different educational and cultural background. Using visual aids can help learners understand the deep meaning of a topic and realize similarities and differences between each topic. As teachers we should face the fact that our students expect their English lesson to be ‘visual’ because language they experience outside the classroom is strictly connected with images, colors and sounds. They possess all important features of effective teaching aid and it is the job of the teachers to facilitate the process of learning the vocabulary using visual materials. The reason may be that they allow Young learners to absorb the information through an additional sensory perception.  

Advantages from using visual aids:

• Helps students understand and remember concepts more easily
• Reduces Teacher Talking Time
• Provides a touchpoint you can refer back to throughout the lesson
• Makes the class more dynamic and fun

If teachers use visual aids regularly, students will expect to learn the next language topic by using visual aids, because each visual aid for them is an interesting learning tool. Facilitating an interesting learning environment can enhance students’ English abilities and this is a major goal for English teachers.
These aids allow students to have a chance to brainstorm and present their ideas or thoughts. They can create their own stories in which there are no right or wrong answers. Furthermore, they can also participate in group work such as paired reading or small group activity. They will have the opportunities to create their own stories that depend on their background experience. In group work they can discuss the similarities and the differences between each person’s interpretation of a picture.
Visual aids help teachers’ presentations and objectives by placing emphasis on whatever is being thought. Clear visual aids multiply learners’ level of understanding of the material presented, and they can send clear messages and clarify points from teachers. Moreover, they can involve the audience by providing a change from one activity to another, and from hearing to seeing. In addition, learners are more fascinated by gestures and movements in the classroom. Also visual aids impact and add interest to a presentation. The can create excitement. Visual aids enable learners to use more than one sense at the same time. One picture could elicit unlimited words.

As for me teaching a second language to 4th and 5th grader students, I use a lot of videos and images when explaining a new topic so it can be meaningful for them. It has certainly helped when we recall a topic they immediately remember the video they saw and they describe it more easily.

Here´s a video that   gives some activities that we as teachers can do to help our teaching strategies when using visual aids... let me know what you think.

Thanks for reading!!!!