Using visuals in teaching is highly important. Jensen stated that between 80–90% of all information absorbed by the brain is visual. In humans, about 70% of all sensory receptors are in the eyes. Audiovisual aids, which also contain sounds, are essential tools in the teaching–learning process because they not only clarify understanding but also challenge the mind, arouse curiosity and interest, and help students focus. They are an effective way to entertain students while teaching them more efficiently.
Audiovisual aids such as sound recordings, movies, videos, presentations, and songs are instructional tools used to enhance students’ understanding. In language teaching, they play an important role in improving learners’ comprehension of a foreign language. This type of material allows students to listen and watch content through images and recordings, offering an interactive learning experience. Moreover, audiovisual materials represent an inspirational teaching technique because they engage students’ interest in a thought-provoking, entertaining, and relaxing way, stimulate curiosity and motivation, and improve imagination. Ideas presented graphically are easier to understand and remember than those presented only through words. Vision is the best understood of all the senses.
Eye-opening research shows that human eyes can register up to 36,000 visual messages per hour and that we can grasp a visual scene in less than one tenth of a second. Visual information is absorbed faster than textual information: it takes about 150 milliseconds for a symbol to be processed and another 100 milliseconds to attach meaning to it. By comparison, reading 20–25 words takes around six seconds. Graphics also facilitate communication by boosting comprehension, recall, and retention. Visual clues help decode text, attract attention, and increase the likelihood that information will be remembered.
How Do We Learn with Audiovisual Materials?
Patricia Wolfe, in her book Brain Matters, explains that although humans can process kinesthetic and auditory information, we take in more information visually than through any other sense. The visual components of memory are particularly strong because the eyes contain about 70% of the body’s sensory receptors and send millions of signals every second to the brain.
The Criteria of Filtering Audiovisual Information
1. Novelty, curiosity
Our ancestors survived if they were alert to every new stimulus in the environment. The human brain is wired to pay attention to the unusual, the unique. Teachers can benefit from this phenomenon by using surprise as an obvious element in the lessons, by finding new, fresh approaches in teaching. Tennagers are very curious, and this innate interest for everything that is unknown for them can be exploited usefully.
2. The Intensity of Stimuli
The more colourful, real life like, funnier, interesting, emotion stirring an image is, the more attention will it attract.
3. Realism
Pictures are more challenging to the mind when they were taken in real-life situations. Authenticity, originality suggest that the subject they are learning is real.
4. Movement
In most cases people are more attentive to something that is moving. Viewers are more open to a video than a still picture, it is more fulfilling to watch it.
5. Meaning
The brain compares sensory stimuli with information already present in the mind. In this way the new information makes sense. On the contrary, if people have no background knowledge, no idea of something, it is not only boring, but almost impossible to pay attention to it. It is meaningless, like reading a book in an unknown language.
6. 3D over 2D
3D visuals, like realia, authentic objects are better than two dimensional, simplified images. Using objects from real life or from the real world are much better than simple pictures. Realias are more interesting, because they can be touched, smelled, weighed, tasted etc.
7. Emotion
Pictures enhance or affect emotions and attitudes. Emotions influence decision-making: „(Emotions) play an essential role in decision making, perception, learning, and more … they influence the very mechanisms of rational thinking.”
8. Accompanying texts
It is better if we combine visuals with text, they together will have a communicative power that neither singularly possesses. „Pictures interact with text to produce levels of comprehension and memory that can exceed what is produced by text alone.” Without graphics, an idea may be lost in a sea of words. Without words, a graphic may be lost to ambiguity.
Most experts agree that audiovisual materials greatly support foreign language learning. According to Wright, many media and visual presentation styles are useful for language learners, while Wilson emphasizes that students enjoy learning through video. Audiovisual materials are indispensable in our teaching-lerning process. Besides motivating students, and supporting the development of all language skills, they boost vocabulary. If we use thoughtfully, we create meaningful learning experiences, and make language learning more enjoyable.
References
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Wilson, J. (2008). How to Teach Listening.
Wolfe, P. (2001). Brain Matters. ASCD, p. 152.
Wright. (1976). The Use of Video as an Audio-Visual Material in Foreign Language.