Visual aids for effective lecturing

Modern educational establishments are open to new innovative approaches to teach various theories to students, particularly in the sphere of English philology. There is no doubt that the demand for modern technologies and creative methods is increasing speedily. Due to the learners’ need and interests, a number of simple teaching strategies and approaches are being discovered. A good example for such strategies is visual effects in teaching theoretical classes. But why visuals aids ? The answer is in the followings:

• •    70% of learners are visuals

• •    65 % of what we learn comes visually

• •    Visuals help to make abstract words more concrete

• •    Visuals (Audio-visual & Visual aids) help to link the theory with a real life

• •    Visuals create “Realia”

Visuals make the teaching process livelier and excite learners to pursuit for studying with motivation. If so, why some Educational spheres still fail to have visual materials? Why do all levels of education cover multi-media tools in teaching but Higher education’ lectures still hold the traditional way of educating? Do we have enough sufficient visual aids to cover the learners’ needs? Why do some students still feel under pressure while being dictated and don’t enjoy the lecture time? Does such pressure kill the learners’ motivation and desire to study the subject?

To find answers for these questions, the following research steps were taken:

• 1.    A questionnaire was designed to study students’ needs and interests;

• 2.    Teachers of English were interviewed on the questions addressed the topic of visual aids. Having analysed the data, we found out that the visuals hold the great importance in teaching languages. Students do not enjoy the lectures on dictation and they are eager to accept visual effects to be implemented in teaching theories and practices. Moreover, EFL learners tend to feel realia, enjoy English atmosphere with videos, pictures and films though it is a lecture time.

We observed and analyzed the lectures in the top universities of the world including Harvard, Cambridge, Oxford and Tokyo Universities.

In Harvard University, Michael Sandel’s lecture was on the theme “Justice: What's The Right Thing To Do?” Episode 01 "The moral side of murder". The lecturer was always holding a positive atmosphere and kept friendly to his large audience, made jokes while answering his students. His attitude toward keeping the audience in such motivating climate was remarkable. Though it is a tough job to teach the law, Sandel managed to discuss it through lectures and explain episodes. He brought the real life into the teaching domain, links the Real World with his lectures, and pushes his students to find solutions to many cases. Especially, showing pictures and using Realia were his key approaches to success.

Next lecture was again of the Harvard University, with Sarah Hendriks lecturing. The lecture was entitled “What if...Gender equality could change the face of poverty gender equality?” Sarah gave the audience the first preview of the Foundation’s findings before they are launched on International Women’s Day on 8 March. The interactive method which she used made her class professional. At the lecture, she showed images, graphs, PPTs and asked learners to listen and watch carefully. She explained the theme and let her audience to connect the words she was saying with the images on a big screen. The audience could visually see the facts.

The 3^rd analyzed lecture was of the Oxford University with the Professor Sarah Harper who looks at the rapidly declining percentage of young people across the world as the population ageing moves across the globe. She asks about the implications for societies, their economies and political structures. Before starting her lecture, she asked the audience to get divided into several groups. She gave various statistic facts as a name to each group and asked to remember those facts till the end of the lecture. This method was rather intriguing since she achieved both presenting new facts and dividing the auditory into sub-groups to interact them better. Besides, she used a wide range of visual tools, like pictures, PPTs, images and videos to make her lecture more effective.

The last point is at Tokyo University, DawAung San Su Kyi's Lecture. Here, the lecturer used interactive method and had no dictating step at all. Interaction with the audience was under a positive atmosphere where the Instructor psychologically approached the audience. No restrictions were observed.

The Rates of Visual Tools Implementation in the teaching domain

Before trying to investigate the rank of the illustrative tools, we have conducted the survey with 48 students of philology at Bukhara State University and this research has found the followings:

Questions	1st Year	nd Year	rd Year	th Year
1. What kind of learner are you? 1.     Visual	10	10	9	9
2.     Auditory	1	1	3	0
3.     Kinesthetic	2	0	1	1
4.      Tactile	0	0	0	0
2. Effective lectures should be in the form of…? Dictation 35 No	9No	8 No	11 No	7 No
Pic/Videos—42 Yes	13Yes	10Yes	12Yes	7 Yes
Oral Explanations	9 Yes	8 Yes	10 Yes	3 Yes
Discussions/Debates	10Yes	4 Yes	9Yes	8 Yes
4. Do you feel bored and exhausted while being dictated?	13 Yes	10 Yes	13 Yes	8 Yes
43 Yes; 5 No	0 No	1 No	0 No	4 No

It’s clear from the table that Videos are very important and effective tool of visual effects. (1st place); Then, PPTs and Images gained next places among the Visual tools. But, as it’s mentioned, almost all EFL students responded negatively to the dictating process. All respondents want to change the lecturing system and support the idea of having more visual effects rather than abstract words.

According to their response:

V 79.1% of EFL learners are Visuals and according to their views, effective lectures should be in the form of pictures/videos, discussions/debated and oral explanations.

V Professional lectures should contain short Videos/ Pictures/Images and PPTs

V 87,5 % of learners feel bored and exhausted while being dictated. So, it’s high time to refuse this policy!

V 21of the students believe that videos and short films help them to understand abstract theory words and make them concrete at the lectures.

After having observed the lecturing system of the world, and conducting the questionnaire among 48 students among EFL learners, we compared the traditional system with the modern one:

Traditional (Dictating)

Modern (Interactive)

Oral Explanation	Oral + Visual Presentation
Dictating	No dictating (taking notes desirable)
No Realia	More Realia (Bringing Real World)
Teacher-centred	Learner-centred
Stressed students	Excited & Curios students
55-70% effective	80-90% effective

Implementation

So if this is a result, what do we need to do to overcome this problematic situation? In order to investigate and design most effective lectures, the followings are suggested to be considered for implementations:

• 1.    Not restricting or keeping the students under pressure. Instead, getting engaged them all with multi-visual activities.

• 2.    Start with pictures shown on the wall and ask to guess what the theme and check their background knowledge.

• 3.    Address some parts of lectures with questions to discuss and see the learners’ predictions

• 4.    Give the whole information on the PPT so that everyone can see. But don’t forget to talk loudly while presenting PPT slides+discussion at the same time (Audio-visual)

(And give some time while showing so that students can take some notes)

What if we design theory plans according to this table and add more visual aids to excite our learners?

S	Procedure	Usage of visual aids
teps I I I I II I V V	Org moment (Checking    the previous theme) Introduction Presentation of a new theme Consolidation Conclusion	PPTs, Pictures, Videos. a)       Pictures are shown to guess the topic b)      Questions are given for predictions PPT slides + talking loudly while showing=> audiovisual (discussion is held to keep activating the audience.) Video or short films to reinforce the theme a)       Pictures are once more shown to check the learners’ previous predictions and comprehensions b)       Colourful handouts are distributed as a Homework => Explanation given on the Board

Besides, in methodology of FLT the different lesson organization approaches as teaching models are used: 1) Presentation->Practice. But please don’t forget to give a smile before and after the lecture to create a positive atmosphere of learning. If we have a problem with video or lecture, let’s design them once and use them for several times. There is a saying goes: It’s better to see once rather than hearing hundred times!

If we, philologists, could apply these all in our lectures and build a meaningful connection with a real life through visuals and create “Realia” for modern classes, then this article would achieve its aim!