A foreign language is defined as a language, which is not native to the speaker and is not spoken in the society. Learning a foreign language enables the speaker to communicate effectively with individuals who are native speakers of the particular foreign language. Moreover, learning of foreign languages enables the individuals to gain access to different cultures. Learning of foreign languages enables individuals to develop linguistic and social skills (Keysar, Hayakawa & An, 2012). Visual tools aid in proper understanding and learning of a foreign language. The different types of visual tools that enable foreign language learning are posters, pictures, illustrations, figures, presentations and videos. Videos however fall into the category of audio-visual tools (Konomi, 2014).
Visual tools enable learning of foreign languages as individuals can correlate the images with the words in their memory (Aryanti & Emzir, 2016). Visual tools not only help in foreign language learning but also enhance the learning experience and ensure student participation in large numbers. This report focuses on the critical appraisal of posters in foreign language teaching. Visual tools help students in writing and speaking in a foreign language. Moreover, it also helps the students to improve their grammar and vocabulary skills in association with the particular foreign language. In addition, visual tools enable the teachers to enhance their teaching experiences and creativity by creating new posters and presentations for the students (Moeller & Catalano, 2015).
This report presents the argument that posters play an important role in foreign language learning. This report focuses on the critical appraisal of poster presentations as an effective visual tool described in five research articles. Each research article is thoroughly criticized based on the effectiveness of its description, research methodologies and conclusions. The report also describes the advantages and limitations of posters described in the selected articles.
Foreign language pedagogy describes the theories and relevant practices that are followed by the teachers from cultural, geographical and political point of views (Kramsch, 2013). Various teaching practices that enhance the vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation and speaking skills are adapted. It also involves the development of new tasks and teaching materials (Nation, 2013). This report critically appraises the research content in five articles describing the role of posters in foreign language learning. These articles are titled: (1) “Poster – A visual stimulus of active learning”, (2) “Teaching Presentation: Improving Oral Output with More Structure”, (3) “The Importance of Vocabulary In Language Learning and how to be taught”, (4) “Students’ Awareness of the Use of Poster, Power Point and Animated Video Presentations: A Case Study of Third Year Students of the Department of English of Batna University” and (5) “Posters, self-directed learning, and L2 vocabulary acquisition”.
This article describes the role of posters in foreign language learning (Zerin & Khan, 2014). Posters are visual tools that enable the presentation of information in a concise manner. This type of visual modality is particularly essential in an academic environment. In a foreign language classroom, students use posters to complete their tasks, present their outcomes and analysis (Neff & Rucynski, 2013). The aim of this study was to determine the effectiveness of posters as a visual aid in the development of speaking skills. The article also aims to determine the importance of posters in engaging the students in active learning in a foreign language classroom. To determine these, the researchers developed three hypotheses. They hypothesized that (1) a positive working environment is developed among students during the course of poster making, (2) posters help in the development of language proficiency and (3) posters enhance the innovation and creative skills that help in foreign language learning. They carried out a small-scale research using quantitative and qualitative methods. A total number of fifty students participated in the research, where they were given a reading material and they had to describe the different themes in a poster format. The researchers used a questionnaire format for data collection. These questionnaires were used to gather the point of view of the students about their development in oral presentations. They represented the results obtained from the questionnaires in the form of bar graphs and pie charts.
The first part of the questionnaire was based on previous experiences of the students, where most of them were found to have experience in poster making. The second questionnaire tried to determine the effectiveness of poster making in foreign language learning. Most of the students agreed that poster presentations help to enhance reading, vocabulary and presentation skills helps to overcome shyness, increases student motivation and activity. The third questionnaire was aimed at determining the preferred format of the students during presentations. According to the students, power point presentations were found to be easier than traditional posters. Moreover, the students were also asked whether their creativity was challenged during poster making. The students reported that their innovation skills were enhanced. Teachers were also asked to about their perspective on this research study. The first question asked the teachers about their views on the student’s involvement in the poster-making task. The teachers showed a very positive attitude about the activity of the students during the task process. Next, the teachers were questioned about any significant changes in the performance of the students after the poster session. The teachers found the students to be more active and confident after the tasks. Lastly, they were asked to give any valuable suggestions to improve the performance of the students. They suggested that the students should be focused more on the deliverance of the presentation rather than on the poster.
However, there are certain limitations of the methodology adapted in this article. Firstly, fifty is a very small number in order to obtain a reproducible result. It is better to engage all the students of the university at the same time. Moreover, the survey needs to be conducted more than once, in order to determine the progress of the students. Moreover, this study did not involve the comparative study between other visual modalities and posters, in order to find out whether poster making is the best approach for foreign language learning. Finally, it should be noted that proper language teaching plays a very important role in facilitating language learning (Hall & Cook, 2012). However, this study did not determine whether posters also play an important role in enhancing the teaching skills of the instructors. It did not assess the creativity of the teachers needed during poster making and presentation. There is also a discrepancy in the results. In figure 1, the pie chart suggests that 92% of the students have previous experience in making posters; however, the text indicates that 82% of the participants did not engage in poster presentations previously.
According to the study, the students found poster presentation to be highly engaging, enhanced their vocabulary and presentation skills. Moreover, it also enhanced their analytical skills, helped to develop their creativity and innovation skills. It also motivated the students and made them more confident. However, they found power point presentations to be more effective in language development than posters. They provided the advantages for both the visual tools. For power point presentation, they described that adding pictures and videos helped them to understand the language, it was easier to represent, it helps in creating a connection between the speaker and the audiences, and it attracts the attention of the audiences with the use of slides carrying information and pictures (Oommen, 2012). The students also described the advantages of posters. They found posters to enhance their vocabulary, help them to carry out-group activities, increases activity, and helps in expressing their ideas through presentation. They also learned to organize information and present them in a concise manner (Quinn, Lee & Valdés, 2012).
This article focuses on the benefits of poster presentations in second language teaching and learning (Wilson & Brooks, 2014). It helps to develop a framework for poster presentations that would benefit teachers and students in foreign or second language development. Oral presentations help to improve presentation and communication skills and helps in interaction (De Grez, Valcke & Roozen, 2012). Other researchers believe that oral presentations can remove the gap between language use and study. Oral presentations are student centered and help to improve reading, writing and speaking skills required in foreign language learning. However, some of the limitations involve the loss of valuable time in making presentations with negligible pedagogical value. Proper planning is required for making effective presentations that attract attention of students. Oral presentations are itself boring because of the fact that presenting a fact requires a sufficient amount of time, as a result, leading to boredom for the other students (Moore, 2013).
The presentation framework involved the meeting of specific goals. These goals were focused on delivery skills and content. Academic presentation involves the use of posters to provide a visual aid for the presentations. The article describes the advantages of posters over that of power point presentations. Firstly, poster presentations reduce the stress level associated with power point presentations, secondly, posters can be presented multiple times which enhances the interaction between presenters and the audience and finally, it enhances creativity and research skills (Safaeia & Bulca, 2013). However, this article did not provide any limitations of using poster presentations. Moreover, they did not use any research methodologies to determine the usefulness of poster presentations in language learning. They provided a comparative account of poster and power point presentations; however, there are other visual aids that help in language learning like videos, charts, flow charts and illustrations, which require attention.
This article focuses on the importance of vocabulary in foreign language learning (Alqahtani, 2015). Vocabulary is a very important tool for foreign language learners. Vocabulary is a collection of words of a particular language that enables proper communication and sentence construction in that language (Nagy & Townsend, 2012). Limited knowledge of vocabulary impedes communication. There is a distinct correlation between foreign language use and vocabulary. Vocabulary plays a very important role in all aspects of language skills. These language skills involve reading, writing, speaking and listening. Successful usage of foreign or second languages requires the need of extensive vocabulary in that particular language. Lack of vocabulary knowledge is a huge concern for foreign or second language learners.
This article reports the use of various techniques for teaching vocabulary of a particular language. The techniques adapted by the teachers to enhance the vocabulary of the students depend on certain factors like the content, availability of time and its importance to the learners. These techniques involve the use of visual aids like objects, pictures, posters, illustrations, diagrams, among others. These visual aids in vocabulary development as individuals can relate words with pictures, thereby helping them to memorize foreign words. They also help the learners to determine the meaning of the words, thereby enabling them to memorize through visualization. Pictures also enable the learners to link words with their meaning. This article focuses on the various forms of pictures like posters, charts, photographs, magazine pictures, among others. Other techniques that have been described here are contrast, enumeration, mime or gestures, spelling the word, elicitation, among others. However, reviewing the article it can be said that visual aids like poster presentations with pictures and illustrations are the best way of making students increase their vocabulary in a particular foreign language.
This article also focuses on other methods of language learning apart from visual aids; however, it involves only informations from previous literatures and does not involve the use of standard qualitative and quantitative methods to carry out research on this subject. It does not involve the use of surveys to identify and compare the importance of visual aids like posters with other techniques in foreign language teaching or learning. Finally, this article does not provide any limitations associated with visual aids.
This article focuses on the importance of poster presentations and other visual aids in foreign language learning (Amel, 2014). Posters are well-illustrated tool used in foreign language learning. It provides a concise approach by utilization of visual expertise. Posters also require the knowledge of visual languages. This qualitative study helps to determine the student experiences in poster, animated videos and power point presentations. The questions asked in this article are based on experiences gathered by students in foreign language learning using posters, power points and videos. It also describes the similarities and differences between posters, videos and power points in foreign language learning.
Posters presentations are used in various professions and used in foreign language teaching and learning (Higgins, Ludwig & Servatius, 2014). This article adopts a research methodology to determine the experience of the students in preparing posters, power points or videos. The roles played by posters in language teaching include the development of communication skills in the foreign language and enables in carrying out research in that context. Posters meet the content and linguistic aims that help students to present materials in a comprehensive manner. Linguistics aims help to enhance fluency and vocabulary in the foreign language (Mitchell, Myles & Marsden, 2013). It also enables proper communication, research, presentation and reading skills in that particular foreign language. Content aims help to understand the research of interest and to present the research in a successful manner. Moreover, posters also help in visual learning and subsequent memorization (Gregersen & MacIntyre, 2013). Videos, power point presentations and posters use visual as well as verbal aids. However, the difference lies in the fact that posters rely on visual literacy while power point presentation rely on verbal communications.
This article also gives thorough representations of limitations associated with poster presentations in foreign language learning. Some of the issues discussed are well designing of posters, which needs a lot of time and research. A particular style is to be determined to address a particular target audience. Posters have limited amount of space and as a result, only relevant informations can be incorporated into posters. Moreover, they also described the importance of power points in increasing the academic performance of students. Additionally, videos engage students in a comfortable visual learning environment (Godwin-Jones, 2013). However, power point presentations define key points in a concise manner.
This article focuses on the use of posters for foreign language teaching and learning (Çetin & Flamand, 2012). Posters are visual aids that consist of both pictures and texts for concise description of a topic. Researchers have described that hanging posters containing foreign language vocabulary can assist students in their learning without the help of the teachers. However, the efficacy of the posters for language learning has not been previously described. Some researchers have noted that posters have negligible pedagogical value in the absence of teacher’s guidance. Posters act as visual stimulus because it can attract the attention as well as the interest of the students, thereby assisting in language learning and increasing vocabulary stock. It also has an emotional connect that helps the learners to learn and memorize new information. ‘Explicit word learning’ describes the explicit use of words by teachers to enable efficient learning of the foreign language. On the other hand, ‘incidental’ learning of words describes the method of determining the word meaning from written and oral contexts (Schmidt, 2012).
This article introduces a new term called ‘self directed inferential learning’, which acknowledges the involvement and the initiative of the student in language learning. This type of learning is not initiated by teachers, rather requires the initiative of the students themselves. In this context, the role of posters comes into the limelight as the students can improve their vocabulary by studying the posters without the help of their teachers. This study tries to determine whether posters can help students to learn on their own without outside help.
The study involved 31 students consisting of males and females having similar socioeconomic backgrounds, education and age. Both experimental and control studies were carried out. Posters were created having pictures and their names. Tests were carried out before and after poster hanging, in order to determine the ability of the students to learn the vocabularies and their meanings. The test was generally carried out to determine the progress of the students. Control students were not provided with posters but the experimental students were. The results obtained after the tests were critically analyzed by a statistical software. Results revealed that both experimental and control samples showed similar knowledge of words before poster administration. However, after poster administration, the experimental students showed improvement in vocabulary as compared to the control students.
This study successfully carries out both qualitative and quantitative research using control samples, which are essential to determine the significance of the study. They critically analyzed their results using statistical methods, which ensure the validity of their research. Thus, this article concludes that posters present in classrooms can attract students and enable them to learn new words; thereby ensuring their success in foreign language learning.
Conclusion
This report tries to place an argument about the effective role of posters in foreign language learning. It critically appraises the research work described in five articles dealing with the role of posters in foreign language learning. Posters impart both texts and visuals in the form of pictures and diagrams to enable foreign language learners with an easy means to understand the language and increase their repository with new, foreign words. This helps them in their communication based on the foreign language. It also increases their presentation and vocabulary skills. Posters not only aid the students in gaining new information through their visual appeal, but also help the teachers to efficiently teach the students. Posters also challenge the creative powers of students as well as the teachers. This report describes the issues present in some of the selected research articles. Moreover, it also summarizes the advantages and disadvantages of poster presentations on the context of efficient learning of foreign languages. The last article also introduces a new theory in the already existing pedagogical methods. Thus, a conclusion can be drawn that posters are efficient tools for enabling foreign language students to successfully gain expertise in the language.
Reference List
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Çetin, Y., & Flamand, L. (2012). Posters, self-directed learning, and L2 vocabulary acquisition. ELT journal, 67(1), 52-61.
De Grez, L., Valcke, M., & Roozen, I. (2012). How effective are self-and peer assessment of oral presentation skills compared with teachers’ assessments?. Active Learning in Higher Education, 13(2), 129-142.
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