Pictures Speak A Thousand Words

Teaching isn’t only about delivering lectures on a particular subject but it’s about making those lectures interesting by demonstrating them practically. This can be understood with the help of an example. One day my little niece asked me what a tiger looks like. I promptly described the structure of a tiger in response to her query. She listened to me minutely and grasped every detail. The very next day she came to my room in the morning and told me that she saw a tiger in the lawn, but that it was small. That very moment I understood my fault. I had described all the details of a tiger but had forgotten to show her the picture of a tiger. No wonder why she mistook a cat for a tiger.

We may not understand the importance of visual expertise on our psyche, but these have a great impact on our imagination. Whenever we hear something, immediately we create a picture in our mind about that. To a listener, the Radio works on this principle. Say for example we are listening to a Radio documentary; our brains constantly create pictures according to the scenes described verbally in that documentary. It is estimated that 80 percent of what we learn is through our visual senses. From an early age, children acquire valuable information about their surroundings through their visual experiences. It is a scientifically proven fact that the interpretation of the same object may vary from person to person. In a hallucination, we often misunderstand a rope with a snake. Demonstrating a particular thing by using pictures will help understand the object better. One of the most profound mysteries of autism has been the remarkable ability of most autistic people to excel at visual spatial skills while performing so poorly at verbal skills. Visualization abilities help children understand the world around in a more lucid manner.

Picture books fuel a child’s imagination which eventually leads to a different perspective towards life. Images look through these picture books can help draw the passion inherent in every child with regard to their fear, and personal achievements objectives. Imagination through visualization is the initial step towards accomplishment. If children can visualize an experience happening to them, such as hitting a home run, or sing songs on stage, they will surely achieve a lot in their personal life. Visual learners may lean toward being picture learners or print learners.

The difference in these visual learning styles is that picture learners visualize images while print learners visualize words when they think. Visual learners do well with teaching techniques that involve graphics and images. The audio-visual aids always help in completing the triangular process i.e. Motivation, Clarification, and Stimulation. Attention is the true factor in any process of learning and teaching. Audio-visual learning process helps the teacher in providing proper environment for capturing and sustaining the attention and interest of the students in the class room.