Pictorial Teaching

[OddVisions]

I know mnemonics is often used in order to help with the written Japanese language but I was wondering if picture association might be used in other ways for other languages? For instance, when I was younger, one of the ways I was taught words was through adding pictures together. In other words, a picture of an eye followed by a picture of someone's sore would be the word 'eyesore'.

[zabina12]

Although sounds elementary it could be useful.

Some have good pictographic memories and they might learn new words easier when associated with words. It could be a method that might be helpful for some if not for all.

[OddVisions]

Hmm, maybe we're on to something here? I'll try and see what kind of worksheets I can make as well as what languages would work best with the method. It is very elementary, but elementary is how every language begins. As it evolves it grows more and more beautiful and complex. The language, not the teaching method I want to try. The teaching method is always going to be pretty elementary. I want to use it as a beginners guide. I'm not quite good at explaining things like this though.

[czarina84]

That kind of sounds like Pictionary.   That's an interesting way to learn but how do you convey the meaning?  I know you can teach them the word "eyesore" but how do you let them know the definition?

[Lynk]

That seems like a strange way to do it? However I taught my little brother to read when he was a baby. We had a lot of success with flashcards. I read that people learn to read more by looking at an entire word than by sounding it out, and it worked great! He was a great  reader by the time he was 2 years old!

[3rdeyeguy]

As far as learning goes the more ways the merrier. We are all different and everyone has a method that can be more effective than the next. With that being said this "picture method" you've described is definitely worth a shot. I know from using Rosetta that pictures followed by words have always helped me grasp a new concept.

[pesic87]

Of course! Without any doubt. I as a teacher of English, have been using pictures to teach English to children, also with some grown-ups. Some people are visual, just like I am, and a picture will always stay more stuck to my mind, than a word would.

It is also a great idea to have associations like you mentioned in your post. For instance, what we with sports, was using pictures side by side, or matching them, having sports on one side, and tools people use for the sports, like baseball on one side, and bat on the other picture; tennis on one side and racket on the other, or court, too.

[AExAVF]

Pictorial teaching is very helpful for beginners as well as those who are only starting to learn the language being taught.  Children are taught using various aids and methods to help them.  With repeated usage of pictorial teaching, children will eventually develop their language skills over the years until they move on to the next level where they will be introduced to more complex words as well as reading plain text.  Of course, mentors will still guide their students, but the latter will have to swim or sink on their own.

[OmniHead]

In my experience, I have seen pictorial used very often when it comes to teaching a foreign language, regardless what language this could be.

In fact my sister was taught English with the aid of pictorials since she was attending kindergarten, and my best friend is learn Russian today using them as support learning material.

[agentzero]

I've heard that this is the method Rosetta Stone uses and although I think it's useful, I feel like it's much more aimed at smaller children who don't have that big of a vocabulary of their own language yet. Also, I don't think mnemonics are useful when learning a new language. That method feels really mechanical to me and I think it can be useful when you can't remember a certain complicated rule or an exception to a rule, but being able to 'conquer' the language on a whole would be difficult in my opinion. 

[JasleenKaur]

Teaching methods frequently involve rote learning and copying, which fail to engage and challenge children fully. Yet a few colorful pictures on the walls or some simple, attractive home-made pictorial learning aids can transform a classroom - without costing much.

[takibari]

I remember our teacher used this teaching method when I was in grade school. As I am a visual learner myself, it was helpful tool for me to remember the vocabulary when paired with a picture. As to combining two pictures to form a word, that was also used to teach compound words and to reiterate that a new word can come out if you combine two simple words together.

[Trellum]

My mom taught me to read using that method: the look and say one.  She made her own material, because she was a teacher for a long time and she got first grade  several times, so she often recycled her material   Well, she'd form whole sentences, and instead of writing the word on some cards she draw the the object (when it was possible)  instead of writing the word.  So she made me reach word by word just like that, those cards were useful for building my own sentences.  It was very fun  

[LeesaJohnson]

That's a good idea for teaching kids especially because it helps them to remember for a longer time. 

[GaeilgeGirl]

That would work nicely for nouns and adjectives, but with difficulty for verbs and adverbs.  It would be a nice thing to use with fill-in-the-blank worksheets and such, so that you can integrate grammar and syntax into your studies.  Even as an adult, I find things like that helpful because it adds some concreteness to the abstract words.  On this subject, you know what would be useful?  Coloring books with the word printed below.  With the surge in popularity in adult coloring books, I think it would be great if language learning courses took advantage of this.

[Yoshie]

I like this method and yes it may sound very basic but you have to start somewhere don't you?! Our first stages of learning anything at all were indeed basic so yes I think that this could really help many of us who struggle with the beaten down method of a bunch of words being thrown at us with great expectation that we will easily remember them. I prefer a balance in both words and pictorial material. I find that it most times makes it easier for me to comprehend and memorise the material which keeps me interested. Of course you can use your imagination but sometimes a simple photo or diagram quickens the learning process.

[Victor Leigh]

Yes, I do that very often when I am teaching English as a second language. At the basic level, it's so much easier to just show a picture than to explain what a word means. For example, when I teach numbers, I simply show numbers in the numerical form. That works with whatever the mother tongue of the student might be. No explanation needed. Same with colors. Just a picture of the color plus the word in English for it. Job done. At higher levels, it gets a little bit complicated. I have seen some books which use pictures to explain emotions. I don't think this works too well. Some of the pictures can be ambiguous. For emotions, I find it easy to explain by doing a short sketch. That gives the context to the emotion.

[VinayaSpeaks]

Pictures are very helpful in learning language. Children are taught using picture books and they learn pretty past. To make the children know about cat, it is more helpful to show them the picture of cat instead of explain in words. This is also true with adults. If you are learning English, it is better to show you a picture of cat to help you learn the word cat instead of explain in second language.