CASE STUDY 6

Visual aids can be useful for listening comprehension and to elicit some speaking in the FL.
But, what visual material could you use in the FL class? What steps would you follow to
introduce a listening activity in the first level or Primary Education? If you want to improve
your students’ speaking as an essential part of the language, when and how do you consider
a speaking activity should be introduced? How would you deal with diversity in both cases?
Describe and justify your answer.

As an introduction we may say that we, as teachers, must try to find ways of showing, using
and manipulating the language in order to establish a communicative situation in whatever
situation and context, paying more attention to meaning rather than form. Thus, our learners may
use all kinds of strategies to understand and convey meaning in those situations. If we achieve this,
we are helping our learners to develop their communicative competence, as it is established in
article 17 of the Law 3/2020 of Modification of the Organic Law 2/2006 on Education (LOMLOE).
According to the linguists Canale and Swain (1980), this ‘Communicative Competence’
involves at the same time other 5 subcompetences, that is, linguistic, sociolinguistic, discourse,
strategic and sociocultural subcompetences.
As we know, the use of visual support is mainly connected to the ¨strategic
subcompetence¨. Hence, we may find ways to transmit comprehensible input (Krashen) using all
kind of strategies and resources to compensate breakdowns in communication.
There are two types of codes we always use in the communication process.
- Verbal code, It´s a set of rules and signs we combine and use in order to express a message
in a specific language.
- Non verbal code. It doesn´t need a set of linguistic signs. It consists of gestures,
movements, sounds, and any kind of visual support that can help to understand the given
message.
These two codes or strategies are frequently combined in the communication process.
Furthermore, in the FL classroom is very important the use of any kind of visual support to
accompany language, since it is going to help the learners do the proper connections between the
FL and their knowledge from their first language.
If we think of our students’ learning cognitive process regarding the acquisition of a foreign
language and their different learning styles (Howard Gardner), we may see that the more varied
and high-quality input we provide to them, the better understanding and internalisation of the
language will take place in the classroom.
Therefore, there are two main reasons why it is important to actually show the children
what we are teaching through visual aids:
1. Visuals clarify the material being taught. They provide meaning to language.
 2. Visuals make learning more permanent (more than 80% of people are visual learners).
So this tells us that the most effective way to clarify and bring understanding to what is
being taught is to actually show the children. This takes special relevance at the first levels of
Primary Education, where our students’ experience and knowledge of the FL is more limited, and
where we need to provide input appropriate to their age and respect their Silent Period not
expecting from them to produce language until they are ready to do so.
Furthermore, the article 19 of the LOMLOE, states that “oral comprehension and expression
in a FL should be prioritized”, of course, respecting the natural process of second language
acquisition.
The classroom is often called an artificial environment for learning and using a FL, however
we should not forget that the classroom is a real social context, where learners and teachers relate
each other. The teacher’s role should be that of facilitator and director of the learning process, so
s/he must set the context where learning is going to take place.
Now that we have an understanding of why visuals are an effective tool to be used in
teaching, let’s look at some examples of what we can use in our classroom.
There are many resources out there for purchase, but sometimes they are costly and don’t
always cover the lesson we might be teaching.
In most cases some publishing provides the school with resource packages containing
flashcards and posters to show, use and display in the classroom, but again, they may not cover all
the lessons or vocabulary we want to teach.
Among the many resources a teacher can use as visual aids we may consider:
• Flashcards. They are considered the most useful tool in the FL classroom to present, practise
and recycle vocabulary. They might be bought, made by the teacher, or even made by the students.
There are many activities we can do with flashcards such as: introducing vocabulary, playing
memory games, practicing some drills, identification activities, TPR games, etc.
• Crafts. Using a craft as part of the lesson time allows the children to see what they will be
making and how it relates to the lesson. We should make use of any opportunity to motivate
students and participate in the elaboration of didactic materials.
• Puppets. Whether purchased or made puppets, they are a great tool for getting the
children’s immediate attention. Some examples of ways to use puppets in class: Have the puppet
whisper in the teacher’s ear what they want to tell the class and the teacher will convey the
message. Have the puppet dialogue with the teacher about the story. Have a puppet be the main
character in the story and tell about what happened to them in the story.
• Costumes. Costumes can be used to perform a play or dramatization in the FL class and they
are an engaging way to make students actively participate and interact with less inhibition.
• Story Books. They can be used for so much more than just reading a story. We can look for
books with large pictures. Reading the story is not always necessary. The teacher can tell the story
and use the pictures as the visual. Sometimes the story book may not be exactly what the teacher
wants to share, but if the pictures are good, we can use them as visual and tell the story or read
directly from the text, depending on our students’ level and interests. Some stories can even be
projected on a screen or a digital interactive board.
• Alphabet Word Wall. Displaying on a bulletin board the alphabet where we are going to add
in alphabetical order the new words introduced using word labels or even pictures. Thus, our
students will have those words and pictures as a reference to look at any moment throughout the
year. Once they know the words and are not needed we can remove them to place new ones.
• Digital Interactive Board. The introduction of new technologies like this in the classrooms
has facilitated the teacher’s task of elaborating or looking for some materials and resources that
can be now easily projected to show to the students. These digital boards are a great resource to
show pictures, videos, music, games, readings, etc. and make the students participate and interact
using a digital pen.
• Computers. They are the easiest way to present a visual activity where students can do
some task, for example, matching pictures, completing words, sentences, etc.
• Tablets. In some schools, we may luckily find this resource to show the students in a more
interactive way some education apps with sets of flashcards or pictures, stories, games, etc.
• Posters. It is important in a FL classroom to display some posters for a period of time, at
least until we finish a certain unit, to help the student make connections and recall vocabulary or
structures.
• Maps. They are a great way to teach the students locate and find something on a drawing or
land representation. They can be used all year long to show the students, for example, where some
English-speaking countries are located.
• Realia. Real objects, especially if they are from the English-speaking countries, are a good
resource to teach vocabulary and use it in a meaningful context in the FL classroom.
As we can see, all of these resources provide an excellent way to visually introduce and
practice language in the FL class. However, we may not forget that in order to make our student
listen to and understand the language we want to focus on, we should follow the next stages:
Pre-listening activities: These activities will help the teacher activate vocabulary on the
topic of the listening activity and give an opportunity for previous understanding to the learner.
Some of the activities we could carry out are: answering before-questions of a general and specific
nature, looking at visual aids (photos, flashcards, drawings, a book cover, etc.) related to the topic
to orientate future listening and predict what the text will be about, completing a table or
questionnaire about previous information, reading a short summary of the material to be heard,
relating some information to personal own experiences, and the like.
While-listening activities: These activities are related to the identification of the information
being transmitted, the number, sex, or nature of the speakers, their attitude, the context, etc. while
the learner is listening to a given oral text. These type of activities may be done completing a form
or a table (e.g. bingo, puzzles, etc.), indicating a route on a plan or map, filling incomplete
(‘gapped’) texts with information obtained in the listening task, re-ordering the jumbled picture,
words or sentences (sequencing), answering ‘true/false’ questions or ‘multiple-choice’
comprehension questions, reacting to the oral text in an appropriate way, for example, performing
some physical action (TPR), pointing to some object, singing and acting out a song, etc., and so on.
Post-listening activities: Once our students have listened, they can develop some activities
with the information received. These can help them to consolidate the vocabulary learned and give
them an opportunity to practise oral social interaction (Littlewood: Communicative Activities).
Thus, some of the activities we could develop with our students after having listened to the oral
message can be: preparing a ‘role-play’ related to the information received, singing and performing
a song with all the class or in groups, completing a simple diagram or questionnaire, matching
words with pictures, drawing a sequence from the listening activity, describing some of the
characters they have just listened to, among others.
As we can see, it is not always possible to determine exactly which activities may take place
while listening, and which after the act of listening has finished. However, what is clear is that
pupils need to listen to some English (from the teacher, video, computer, etc.) before expecting
them to produce their oral productions.
Naturally the process of oral production (speaking) emerges after the so-called “silent
period” and children should not be pushed to speak before they do not feel ready for it.
Meanwhile, we will provide them with the necessary input and linguistic samples, utterances and
vocabulary in our speech or discourse through different methods and activities such as the well-
known TPR, playing simple games, singing songs, telling stories, and so on.
Once our students feel encouraged to make some oral production, we should distinguish
between practice and communication, or as Littlewood entitles them, pre-communicative and
communicative activities. During the first lessons, we will have to implement different oral
activities to reinforce the linguistic patterns and vocabulary they have been introduced very
recently at the beginning of the unit, focusing on accuracy. Besides, these sessions will be teacher-
controlled and pedagogical rather than communicative. A clear example would be implementing
drills to encourage children to repeat and acquire the new structures.
However, as Wilkins (1972) states, language is an instrument to communicate. We use any
language mainly to express and exchange meanings in context rather than learning an abstract
system of grammatical rules. So, as time lessons go by, we will have to provide our students with
enough opportunities to use the language. Thus, the activities proposed in the FL class, once we
have reached this stage, must have a clearly communicative purpose, which means that students
should have a reason for speaking, such as role plays.
Considering the students with special needs we, as FL teachers, should adapt every single
activity to these children, keeping contact with the rest of the teachers at school who also work
with them and providing as many opportunities as possible to make them feel integrated in the
classroom.
 The evaluation will be through systematic and direct observation of the children about their
interests, motivation, participation, and respect to their classmates and to the different cultures
during all the teaching and learning process.
Feedback provides our students knowledge about how successful their performance has
been. We should try to foster both types, even at the same time. For example, in pre-
communicative activities, the teacher will provide feedback relating to linguistic form. In
communicative activities, the teacher will need to provide communicative feedback.

As a conclusion, we can say that visuals are a great tool for seeing and understanding the FL
providing a meaningful context. They allow children the time they need to process in their minds
what is the meaning of a word, and sometimes what they are being asked to do. They do not
disappear into thin air to be forgotten as spoken words or hand gestures do. Visual aids should be
always used in conjunction with other forms of communication situations such as speech, signing,
performing physical action or showing any kind of response or interaction from the part of the
student.
The references we used to elaborate this case study are:
- Law 3/2020 of Modification of the Organic Law 2/2006 on Education (LOMLOE)

- Royal Decree 126/2014, which establishes the Primary Education Curriculum.

- Decree 198/2014, establishing the Primary Education Curriculum in the Region of Murcia.

- Decree 97/2015, establishing the Primary Education Curriculum in Andalusia.

- Brewster, J., Ellis, G. And Girard, D. (1992) The Primary English Teacher’s Guide. London:
Penguin English.

- Littlewood, W. (1991) Communicative Language Teaching. An Introduction. Cambridge,

- Krashen, S. (1987) Principles and Practice in Second Language Acquisition. Prentice-Hall