Visual Ethnography Essay

These findings help the translation as well, giving for forms of mental retrieval of the language used via visuals. More paths can lead to tracing the words and the visual represented (Plass, Chu, & Mayer, 1998). Therefore, putting connection to students’ prior knowledge and aided by some pictures or illustrations will make them learn better since they can see the relationship of what they know in the past to the present and at the same time associate the word with pictures.

Considering the different research studies conducted by educators, language experts, and other professionals, it is reasonable to assume that using visual representations can increase language acquisition process since words are not only learned as words but as symbols.

Using pictures significantly helped students score better and make reading more enjoyable and comprehensible. Moreover, the study on the effects of visuals in reading comprehension materials showed that readers remember a text with visuals rather than without visuals, and they generally find that visuals with text to enhance reading comprehension and memory.

In the elementary school, a research project on “Picture Communication Symbols: A Multiliteracies Research Project conducted by Fowler, Husak, Little, and Naylor (2006) at two Vancouver elementary schools found picture communication symbols dominating in their teaching practices at Mt. Pleasant and Renfrew Elementary Schools. The researchers claimed that using picture communication helps students with various abilities in understanding different lessons across the curriculum and develops the four domains in language

Be it reading, writing, vocabulary improvement and text analysis, the use of visuals has a positive impact in learning a language. Although some studies claimed that some results were not really significant, but it proved that a better understanding of the text was evident as well as making the text more interesting to read. Using visual aids abundantly in understanding complicated materials, and using simple graphic organizers, particularly in difficult materials makes it easier to follow the author’s train of thought. It is therefore important that visual representations should not be complicated in order to simplify the texts’ meanings and should not depart student’s attention on some other things. After all, the use of visuals is meant to simplify the lesson and achieve language acquisition better. The use of visual representations has been a great help for ESL teachers, especially for beginning level where everything may be entirely different from the first language