“If one wants to reach younger people at an earlier age to shape their minds in a critical way, you really need to know how ideas and emotions are expressed visually”- Martin Scorsese
Visual teaching is a template for all instructional strategies. Since vision develops rapidly in the infant and so, it soon evolves into the dominant means through which children learn about their world. In general student population is made up of 65% visual learners, 30 percent auditory learners, and 5 percent kinesthetic learners. Visual teaching concept involves visual images as a basic unit for a language, visual teaching can be defined as the ability to understand and create visual messages to enhance the learning. Visual teaching mainly focuses on the growth and expansion of educational programs that stimulate students’ abilities to assess and produce a visual language, as well as enhancement of students’ reading and writing skills through the use of visual teaching strategies.
The generation of students now moving into and through our educational system is by far the most visually stimulated generation. Children now live in a visual world and the ability to read visual images is becoming a vital skill. Visual images are fast becoming the most predominant form of communication and language learning. Visual literacy supports classroom practices in many ways across the curriculum. Visual teaching helps to paving way for visually challenged children and for normal children as well. Visual teaching is the boon in the digital age for teaching and learning process. Visual teaching strengthens the language learning which ultimately helps in learning of other subjects and languages. It gives the base to students as well as teachers for brain based learning. It’s a way to enhance the brain based learning by giving students the right platform. Visual teaching connect the student’s sensory representation to a verbal or written label which in turn activated the both the hemispheres of the brain. This ultimately enhanced the recall and application of the language taught.
This current approach is interdisciplinary approach which utilizes the- multiple intelligence, lateral thinking skills, utilizes the visual cortex for retention, using color and music as a teaching tools. Differentiated curriculum is the visual approach to altering the content, process and products of language learning. Mind Maps, graphic organizers moulds visual language into learning skills. For visual teaching of languages, teacher creates lesson plans and activities that reflect the six methods of visual language learning-investigate, chronicle, express, communicate, inspire and envision. Thus teacher avoids passive learning experiences by bridging ‘seeing’ and ‘doing’ using above activities and methods and responds to student image handling skills and their effectiveness in language learning. In visual teaching, teacher is an educator who embraces the effects of visual stimulation on brain development and utilizes imagery which are appropriate to enhance learning. Imagery communicated in an emotional and pre- rational style can bypass students logical thought which invokes the part of child brain that assembles symbols and visual elements into stories. The teacher while teaching actively encourage students to decode still images, such as documentary or advertising photography and moving images such as dramatic or comic television programs and films in a particular language. Thus visual quest is the main idea to evaluate the student’s behavior and problems. It can help to reduce the dropouts rates of students due to language problem. As India is the multilingual country so to shrink the problem of language learning and to increase the student’s achievement visual teaching is excellent approach.
