‘Culturally Relevant Images’ EAL Strategy: Explanation and Rationale

Language is dependent on context. This relationship can take many forms.

For example:

1. A specific word that has multiple meanings. Toast is an example: ‘Can I have some toast?’; ‘I propose a toast’; ‘He was the toast of the town’.
2. Words that gain or lose power depending on who says them. Compare a neighbour and a judge saying: ‘This is the last time’.
3. Phrases that rely on intonation and the situation in which they are said. Consider how the phrase ‘Is that it?’ can vary in meaning.

Another key aspect in the contextualisation of language is culture.

The word ‘restaurant’ may have different connotations for a French person and an English person.

Even within a culture, understanding is likely to differ.

The spoken word ‘bread’ may mean money and sandwiches to one person, breakfast and lineage to another (as in the homophone ‘bred’).

And meanings shift over time. Rake, as in reprobate, is now considered archaic. Yet at one time it was the norm.

Being alive to context and the influence of culture is important.

There are several ways this can help you when working with EAL learners. One of these is using culturally relevant images.

Here you are playing on the cultural connotations learners have developed in their first language.

You are creating context for them.

This can be a shortcut to helping your EAL learners access the meaning of corresponding words in English.

It sometimes requires a bit of research on your part (unless you or a colleague have an existing knowledge of your learner’s culture), but this is easily offset by the assistance it brings, as well as the rapport it helps to create.

Here are two examples of how to do it.

Culturally Relevant Images: Example One

The idea here is that we are looking for prior knowledge learners already possess and using this as a hook onto which we can attach new language and new meaning.

Use a mixture of images on your resources.

Draw some from your usual sources and some from cultural sources with which your EAL learners may already be familiar.

For example, if you are studying heroes as part of a literacy unit of work, and you have EAL learners who are Hindu in your class, you could incorporate pictures of Krishna or Rama.

This will help learners to situate the concept of heroes and to connect the word ‘hero’, as it is written and as it is said, to the mental concepts they already possess.

This contextualisation is a form of scaffolding.

We are bridging from learners’ prior knowledge to the new knowledge we want them to assimilate.

Culturally Relevant images: Example Two

Give learners a list of words in English.

Ask them to translate these into their first language using a bilingual dictionary.

Once they have done this, ask them to connect each word to a picture they are familiar with.

The images could be drawn, cut out of magazines, or printed from the internet.

This task makes use of learners’ existing understanding to help them grasp new words in English.

The pictures they are familiar with will begin to be connected to the English words through the course of the activity.

Here, learners are engaged in self-scaffolding.

Through doing the task, they develop their understanding of the new words, contextualising them in light of their existing knowledge.