‘Pictures for Meaning’ EAL Strategy: Explanation and Rationale

If you’re familiar with the content of an image, you can decode it.

You can start make sense of what it means, why it’s being used, and what its purpose is.

Images circumvent the necessary prior learning that language demands.

Any learner can benefit from pictures signifying what is being studied.

EAL learners can use pictures to access the learning even if they are not yet able to access the language.

They act as a supplement to what is written on your resources and what you say in your lessons. They contextualise learning.

Pictures can show the meaning of specific words or situate a topic more broadly.

You can select them to tap into the prior experience of your EAL learners, or you can choose them with the intention of showing your EAL learners something new.

Here are three examples of how you can use images to create meaning for your EAL learners.

Pictures for Meaning: Example One

Imagine you are teaching a lesson on writing, looking at different genres.

This is a great opportunity to use pictures.

You could display appropriate images on your whiteboard, each one signifying a different genre.

These will help all learners, but they are also a ‘way-in’ for your EAL learners.

If they are at an early stage of their language development, the images act as clues, helping them understand what is happening and giving them context for writing an appropriate genre-story in their first language.

If the learners are more advanced, the images support retention of the key terms and help them confirm that they have correctly understood what they’ve seen and heard.

Either way, the addition of images requires minimal effort from us as the teacher but adds a significant amount in terms of creating meaning for our EAL learners (and others).

Pictures for Meaning: Example Two

When introducing a range of new words, produce a worksheet for EAL learners in which each word is accompanied by an illustrative picture.

Leave space alongside for learners to write definitions, the equivalent words from their first language, or simple sentences based around each of the new words.

If you sue this technique over time, you can help your EAL learners build up a visual glossary that they can then refer to.

It’s also worth noting that illustrative pictures may also help other learners memorise keywords more quickly.

For example, imagine introducing the word ‘serendipity’ to a group of learners and, at the same time, showing a picture of two people bumping into each other.

As soon as you do this, learners have a visual memory to place alongside their visual memorisation of the written word and their auditory memorisation of the spoken word, aiding subsequent recall.

Pictures for Meaning: Example Three

Identify certain pictures you can use repeatedly.

For example, if you are studying religious festivals, and the unit looks at a wide variety, you could have the same general image across different lessons.

This creates continuity for an EAL learner and makes it clear that what is being taught relates to previous lessons.

Another technique is to use images to signify different parts of the lesson, for example the start, middle, and end.

This sounds basic, but it can help learners to familiarise themselves with how your lessons are structured and what to expect.

Imagine an EAL learner who is at the very early stages of English language development.

If they keep seeing the same images at the same points in your lessons, it creates a context of its own that the learner can hang onto and use to make predictions about future lessons (for example: ‘I’ve seen the first image, so I’m expecting to see the second image soon, meaning we’re part way through the lesson’).

Pictures for Meaning: Further Developments To Try

Ask your EAL learners to draw you pictures of important words in their own language, and then to talk to you about these.

Involve other learners by asking them what pictures they think might usefully illustrate ideas or concepts. This is a good way to develop creative thinking, beyond anything else.

Use a series of images to illustrate a process or the effect one thing can have on something else. For example, a sequence of three images showing the effect of putting water in a freezer.

For a young EAL learner with limited English, a sequence of pictures like this is immediately comprehensible in a way that speech isn’t yet.