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Índice

Lesson 1: The world in images ..................................................................................................3

Lesson 2: Teaching the way our students learn ....................................................................... 15

Lesson 3: Memes and effective presentations as motivational means of communication in the

EFL classroom ......................................................................................................................... 27

Lesson 4: Using still images to encourage genuine communication and enhance personalized
learning in the EFL classroom.................................................................................................. 42

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Módulo 3: La enseñanza del inglés en la era de la imagen

Lesson 1: The world in images

“A picture is worth a thousand words."

Frederick R. Barnard

Welcome everyone!
We are about to start our third module, but before doing this, we invite you to get to know each
other and introduce ourselves. Please, follow this link and take part in our forum.

Let’s introduce ourselves!!

Welcome to this forum! The main idea of this activity is to introduce ourselves and share
our expectations about this module.

Let’s write something about you, and upload an image that represents your expectations
for this course. We, as authors of this course, will do the same:

Hi everyone! My name is Cecilia Belén Gonzalez, I have been an EFL teacher for more than
20 years. I have experience teaching children, teenagers, and adults at private and public
institutions of secondary and superior levels. I am currently interested in developing and
applying new strategies and resources to help students develop competencies to
participate in the world they are living in. I’m happy to have the opportunity to share with
all of you this space of growth and debate. I hope you enjoy the proposal and have the
opportunity to apply everything we share with you in your classes.

Hello, everyone! I’m Nora Lía Cortés, but people call me Noralí. I’ve been an English
teacher for almost 30 years now and I love teaching teenagers and teacher-trainees. I
teach teenagers in a high-school and I also teach Language and Methodology at an English
teacher-training college.

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 I’m excited and eager to start this course since I’m anxious to get to know other committed
colleagues and share knowledge and experiences in relation to the students we encounter
in our classrooms today, students who are extremely different from the students we once
were. I hope we all have a great experience together.

As you have read, this module is called La enseñanza del inglés en la era de la imagen and we are
going to learn about the importance of the image in English classes and more creative ways to
introduce them and work with them.

By the end of this module you will be able to:

● Know about image makers and their functions.

● Develop basic activities to mediate images in the classroom.

● Insert images properly in each step of the lesson.

● Value different subjectivities in the classroom through the correct use of image makers.

The image in the 21st century

It is widely known that people generate concepts through different senses. You may have noticed
that in the current times the visual sense is the one that is preferred for adolescents to transmit and
acquire different ideas. The popularity gained by social media put images in the spotlight, giving them

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the responsibility of expressing feelings, ideas and conveying messages. Videos, pictures, and emojis,
among others, are the way most people convey meaning. We are used to sharing videos with recipes,
healthy life tips, songs, and even fashion advice. Our adolescents are constantly sharing their
everyday life through the media. There is a vast range of streaming platforms from which we can
choose any kind of TV programmes, movies, or documentaries to watch whenever we want. Young
people talk about what they see or what they are going to see in the media, they belong to
communities like Snapchat, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook or Pinterest in which they create and
consume visual meaning. Considering that what surrounds us may motivate our students in the
classroom, we decide to share with you the relevant concepts or ideas connected to images that may
help you to innovate in your classes.

Visual Literacy
We perceive the world through our five senses (sight, smell, hearing, touch, and taste), but not very
frequently we think about the function of each of them at the moment of receiving information. In
certain contexts taste is more important than hearing, in some others touch is more important than
taste, but in most cases our sight is involved. Much of the time we are perceiving the world through
our sight, even involuntarily, and that is why becoming aware of this act may guarantee clear

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communication. Visual literacy is a term that depicts the deliberate intention of communicating
through images.

To understand this concept we invite you to watch a video. Here you will discover the relevance of
analysing and developing visual literacy in our students. decoding and encoding messages through
images.

Before watching the video, we invite you to think about these questions:

● Have you ever thought about the way we communicate using images?

● Is it common for you as a teacher to state your ideas with the help of images?

● Do you consider we should be more creative at the moment of working with images?

While you watch the video, please take notes on the following aspects:

● Connection between visual literacy and critical thinking.

● Relevance of visual literacy.

● Reasons for becoming visual literate.

Visual Literacy and Critical Thinking

https://youtu.be/2jR8zWqyHBY

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After watching the video, we invite you to reflect upon your classes and detect if you were aware of
the importance of visual literacy or if this idea is completely new to you.

Now it is time to go deeper on this topic…

Over the last decade, visual literacy has become a trending topic for teachers all over the world. This
term makes reference not only to the ability of reading and writing, but also to the ability of creating
images that convey meanings.

Historically, teachers have been using images as a way of supporting their teaching, but it is inevitable
to think of the way these elements have gained importance in our everyday life as well as on the
consequence their role plays in the classroom.

The core aspect to be analysed in this class, is the way images have been included and how this has
changed, through the last years, to meet nowadays students’ necessities. We all know that,
traditionally, the images that books contain are part of teachers’ routine to arise motivation in
students, but are there other sources to take advantage from? Today’s world is surrounded by all
kinds of visual inputs (photographs, videos, memes, flashcards, films, etc.) that can be part of
classroom activities to make them more significant for 21st century students. However, this insertion
should not be done without a deep analysis of the material and a clear objective in mind. Teachers
should be conscious whether to use images as a supporting element or as a real component to convey
meaning.

Now, we invite you to read page 5 from The Image in English Language Teaching to
read what visual literacy is.

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 It is time for you to think and reflect about your classes:

● Have we included images in most of our classes?

● Have our students reacted the way we expected?
● Were the images taken from different sources? Which ones?
● Have we used images as a supporting element or to convey meaning?

All the previous questions may help you discover the key aspects in the way teachers should organise
their classes and activities. Pit Corder in 1966 stated a clear distinction between the ideas of talking
about images and talking with images and this was the starting point to see them as mere resources
or as meaning creators.

The whole system of education should aim at developing in the students the capacity to interpret
and communicate by using images. This ability can be reached by stating clear terms such as
“viewing” and “representing”.

Now, we invite you to read pages 6 and 7 from The Image in English Language
Teaching to understand these two concepts.

Different images, different activities

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When speaking about images we should consider still images as well as moving images, videos are
just as important as any other kind of images to be used in the classroom. These moving images
contain extra and extremely valuable information to reinforce what has been said, these non-verbal
elements such as gestures, facial expressions, or movements can add specific or additional meaning
different from the still images. The use of videos should consider exploring what they offer to the
fullest considering the three basic stages (pre, while, and post watching) and leading the activities so
as to avoid the mere exposition of students to the material. Before watching, prediction is a major
factor, it can create expectations and engage the viewers to participate in the following steps. This
step is as important as the others, we can use still images to predict or talk about certain aspects that
may appear on the video later. All the contributions from our students should be welcome and
appreciated so as to create a safe atmosphere to continue participating during the rest of the lesson.
After the first time the video is shown, confirming expectations is what helps our students to feel
motivated since they find the purpose of the previous activity, and they are able to discover the main
aim of the video. If we underestimate this step, our students may feel that some of the activities
proposed do not have a specific purpose, so whenever we face our students with a new proposal we
have to state clearly the aim and the connection of this to the rest of the lesson. Finally,
comprehension activities will help to go over the main aspect of what was shown and to provide tools
to keep on working. Be sure you provide comprehension activities that really become a challenge for
the students, that means they are not expected to be obvious to answer, otherwise instead of making
them feel confident about the topic, they may feel undervalued. Our students' active participation in
classes implies activities in which they create, interact and manipulate the images to interact with
others and communicate, but these activities should always be guided by the teacher in the
classroom in order to avoid losing focus.

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 For example once they have watched the video, you can use the information provided
to work with different activities like:

● Use the information provided on the video to create a similar situation in your
life. After deciding on the material (structures, language, and vocabulary) to
be included, record your own video. Share the video with your mates and
analyse possible variables (new endings, other characters, etc.)

● Choose one scene from the video and describe it fully. Act it out and take a
picture of it so as to provide others students to retell what they see on it.

● Freeze the last scene on the video and let your students some minutes to
imagine a possible ending. Ask the students to act it out and record it. After
that, watch the ending of the video and compare the two endings.

Even though the majority of coursebooks still use a wide percentage of their images for support or
decoration, the art of using images is mainly the use of them to trigger discussions, stimulate ideas
and establish the topic to be learned. If you pay attention, most coursebooks provide a large image
at the beginning of each unit, this can be used at any point of the lesson in which we should support
what is being said. In order to use them properly, we should not forget that they are helpers at the
moment of creating communication situations in the classroom. It is essential to prepare in advance
the questions or activities to obtain a major benefit from the pictures. It is advisable to focus on
different aspects like the communicative function we aim at developing at that moment, the
vocabulary we are intending to present, the new grammatical form, etc.

Multiliteracies pedagogy
For years, the written word that books contained was the only way of transmitting knowledge in
education. As time has gone by and technology has evolved, this idea has started changing.
Technological improvements such as the movie industry or, more recently, the media have provided
the educational environment the possibility of taking advantage of different resources. By doing this,

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we can offer our students the possibility of receiving inputs in a variety of ways that may cater for
multiple intelligences.

The term multiliteracy makes reference to this idea of including different kinds of stimuli such as
images, movement, sounds among others to create and convey meaning. Bearing in mind all these
elements, is that we, as teachers, can reproduce a real life situation in our classrooms. If we present
our students with activities that challenge them to read the hidden message in the image we will
help them to be critical, analytical and go beyond what is obvious. Apart from that, they will be able
to write or create new meanings from different kinds of images. The list of resources is enormous;
we can use Youtube, Netflix, Spotify, HBO+, Starplus, or even social media, among others, to include
images in the proposal. Do you dare to elaborate a list of ideas to have in hand at the moment of
planning your lessons? A good idea is to create a bank of activities that can be used in different
moments of the lesson and contain different kinds of images so, whenever you are running out of
ideas, you pay a look at it and use them effectively.

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 Some important tips at the moment of applying different resources in the classroom:

● Include visual inputs whenever you can, but bearing in mind that they need to
be worked properly and included in the correct moment with the correct aim.

● Exploit images to the full. Create activities in which your students analyze the
images under different perspectives. Ask them questions so as to make them
think and connect what they see with real life.

● Spend some time before the activity to anticipate what is coming, ask your
students questions to help them predict the content of the proposal.

● During the activity, encourage your students to discover the real meaning of
the material presented.

● After the activities, do not forget to check they understand the purpose and
they can handle the topic to produce something on their own.

Images: An Invaluable Source of Meaningful Learning

As it has been discussed throughout this lesson, it is inevitable to see that the world has changed and
everything has evolved. Visual literacy is a crucial goal we should aim at if we want our 21st century
learners to communicate efficiently. It is our duty as teachers to generate situations in which our
students create and convey meaning the way they do in real life. Hard as it seems, using images
meaningfully might be difficult at the beginning. However, once we start using them, effective
communication becomes simple not only for the students, but also for the teachers.

As we will learn in our next lesson, still images are not the only resources that can be used to boost
visual literacy in our students. Videos represent a vast source of motivation, among other benefits,
to convey meaning through language, as well as images in motion do. Why don’t you go through our
next class and learn how you can make profit from this invaluable source?

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 Are you ready for the change? Are you willing to see the changes? We invite you to start
including some of the ideas proposed and get ready for the ones that are coming in next
lessons!

Activities

Let’s convey meaning through images

We invite you to participate in a collaborative Wall (Padlet) to show two different segments
of secondary school textbooks that contain images and to suggest activities in which
students are expected to use them to communicate. Please, contextualize the activity by
stating course, students’ age and objective of the activity.

This activity is compulsory and it will be available for two weeks for you to participate in it.

Reading Materials
Donaghy, K. & Xerri, D.l (2017) The Image in English Language Teaching. ELT COUNCIL.

References
Donaghy, K. & Xerri, D.l (2017) The Image in English Language Teaching. ELT COUNCIL.

Harmer, Jeremy. (2007). How to Teach English. Chapter 10. Harlow: Pearson Education Limited.

Maggio, M. (2020). Enseñanza poderosa. Enriquecer la. Enseñanza. Buenos Aires: Paidos

Robinson, K. (2018). "Enseñar es un arte". Entrevista en Ciclo "Aprendemos Juntos" Valencia-Molina,

T. y otros (2016). Competencias y estándares TIC desde la dimensión pedagógica: una perspectiva
desde los niveles de apropiación de las TIC en la práctica educativa docente. Publicación de UNESCO
y de la Pontificia Universidad Javeriana de Call (Colombia).

13
Créditos
Autoras: Cecilia Gonzalez y Nora Lía Cortés

Cómo citar este texto:

Cortés, N. y Gonzalez, C. (2022). Clase Nro 1.: The World in Images. La enseñanza del inglés en la era de la
imagen. Buenos Aires: Ministerio de Educación de la Nación.

Esta obra está bajo una licencia Creative Commons

Atribución-NoComercial-CompartirIgual 3.0

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Módulo 3: La enseñanza del inglés en la era de la imagen

Lesson 2: Teaching the way our students learn

“If a child can't learn the way we teach, maybe we
should teach the way they learn.”

Ignacio Estrada

Introduction
Hello everyone! We hope you are enjoying this learning experience. Last lesson we dealt with some
valuable ideas that may help your students feel motivated when working in the classroom. Visual
literacy is the main aspect to understand the way our students interact with real life. In this lesson,
we are going to enrich the way we work not only through the use of still images but also through the
videos we choose for our classes. We invite you to read, analyze, and enjoy our proposal.

According to Jeremy Harmer, motivation is “some kind of internal drive which pushes someone to do
things in order to achieve something” (2012: 98). Considering this definition, most of our lessons
should aim at helping our students to find this internal desire to learn something new, but in order
to do so, we should catch their attention first. In our previous lesson, as we mentioned above, we
dealt with the necessity of developing visual literacy in our classrooms and the importance of working
with images effectively in order to help our students to develop creativity, an essential skill to be part
of the 21st century. This need for the development of visual literacy needs to be considered when
motivation is at stake in our lessons. Since the world we are living in is bombarded by all kinds of
images (social media, streaming platforms, and other means of communication), the decision of
considering visual literacy not only becomes natural but also results in an efficient way of motivating
the type of learners we find in our classrooms nowadays.

How to teach a visual generation

Have you ever thought about the way technology has taken place in education through the years?
Do you imagine your students learning, in the same way, people did 100 years ago? Not only have

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societies evolved, but also our cultures and the way students think, behave, and see the world around
them. That is why the changes that have been taking place in society, as well as those which have
occurred in technology, directly affect different aspects of education. Such aspects include the need
for changes in our teaching practices which will, inevitably, influence the way students learn. Let's
see these two technological devices that were innovative for the time they were created. Both of
them were revolutionary for the time they appeared and, at the beginning, it was difficult for the
teachers to include them properly in their lessons. Nonetheless, after years of using them, teachers
discovered more efficient ways of designing proposals that implied their use in order to attract
students and motivate them favorably. When books were created, they were considered valuable
belongings of a selected group in society. The press, and as a consequence books, were revolutionary
inventions since they gave people the possibility to leave a legacy that could be read by other
generations in the years to come. Books also became a way of transmitting culture to all the ones
that wanted to learn about sciences, history, or arts, among others. Later on, e-books and other
technological devices such as tablets, smartphones, or laptops came to grant fast, easy, and cheap
access to the information that had once been restricted for that selected group of people;
consequently, changing history once and forever.

To teach adolescents, first, we have to understand the way they think and the way images affect
them. As we all know, working with teenagers is a tough task, they are undergoing a series of changes
that definitely affect the way they see reality.

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 ● Have you ever put yourself in your students’ shoes?

● Do you consider they behave the way they do just because they want to?

We invite you to watch a video about the way adolescents feel nowadays, but before that, we would
like you to elaborate on a list of the most outstanding characteristics of the adolescents you have in
your classrooms. Try to consider aspects like personality, likes and dislikes, and significant others.
Keep this list at hand till the end of the video.

While you watch the video make a list of relevant aspects mentioned about teenagers that can help
teachers understand them better and prepare activities more attractive according to their
necessities.

In this video you will listen to Dr. Cox, she is an Associate Professor in the School of Education at Utah
Valley University. She works to understand the way teenagers think in order to improve educational
proposals. She aims to include technology in the classroom and create learner-centered lessons.

Teens, Technology, and Transformation | Suzy Cox | TEDxUVU

https://youtu.be/341hHTShopM

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Now you have listened to Dr. Cox let’s consider some aspects to bear in mind to create classes that
fit our students’ necessities:

Which are the brain functions that are developed for the last?

When can we consider that the brain is fully developed? Why is this important?

How is the brain of new generations developing? When is the brain of new generations
fully developed? Why is this relevant for education?

How is technology viewed from teenagers’ perspective? How can technology be used
for other purposes?

Having all the information about the way teenagers learn and about the way we can contribute to
their natural development, we are going to consider some of the ideas stated by Dr. Cox. She
mentioned that adolescents need the guidance of grownups to lead all the potential they have to
achieve the full development of their capacities. This can be reached by providing our students with
educational opportunities that are attractive to them. So considering the way they interact with
others is the best way to motivate them.

Images for our students' learning process

Images surround us in several ways, we are immersed in a society in which the most widely used way
of communication contains not only verbal codes but also a variety of sonorous, visual, and
kinaesthetic ones. If we pay attention to the way adolescents grow up, we will discover that it is quite
difficult for teachers to compare it to the way they learn. Since they are little, children are exposed
to videos, songs, and images. Consequently, what is familiar to them can be of great help in the
teaching-learning scenario.

Smartphones, laptops, smart TVs, and different kinds of tools are at our students’ hands every day,
and most of them have mastered the ability to use them properly. Nevertheless, when we say
“properly”, we just make reference to the instrumental use, not to the meaningful use of them. The

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main concern of teachers nowadays is how to use them efficiently without leaving the pedagogical
purpose of the activity aside.

Among all the variety of inputs, students can find in the media, images (either still or in movement)
are the ones that catch their attention more rapidly, and that is why teachers should use them in
different activities. Images in movement contain elements that may transform them into an
enormous source of material to be analyzed and discussed in the classroom. In the previous lesson,
we stated certain steps to guarantee a successful result when working with videos; now we are going
to detail some aspects to consider at the moment of creating videos in the classroom.

Creating videos in the classroom

It is well-known that motivation is the hook that catches students’ attention, but motivating 21st-
century students widely differs from the way other students were attracted before. The world that
surrounds us nowadays is loaded with tons of images, information, and vibrant sounds that stimulate
people to the point of making them forget about reality. Even though it is difficult to imagine a class
bombarded by all these elements, we can insert some of them and make our students feel like a fish
in the water.

At present, adolescents are very much used to communicating ideas through videos (tutorials,
reactions, unpacking, music, etc.) and in this sense, communicating in the classroom can have a

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similar way of interacting with others. Creating videos as part of a class can be highly motivating and
may provide students the certainty that what they are learning can be used at any point in life.
Technology in the classroom can become part of our routine and, as a consequence, we won’t be
fighting against it anymore.

Filmmaking should follow certain steps to guarantee success, and these steps should provide
different students with different roles. Creating a video should be quite similar to creating a real
movie since there should be scriptwriters, editors, directors, etc. The organization of this kind of
activity is paramount since students should focus on paying attention to the proposal and not be
tempted to surf the Internet. Creating a video should not become an activity that aims at working
with technology and language, teachers should always bear in mind that, through the elaboration of
videos, we can foster our students’ capacity to work collaboratively. Some 21st-century skills such as
creativity, communication, and critical thinking can also be worked on while taking different roles
and elaborating on a final product.

Before the development of the video, we should convey all the steps to reach the final product.
Stating rules like the language we expect them to use, the division of the work, and time limits among
others will help the students to know what to do in advance. It is advisable to establish roles and
describe what to expect from each of them in detail, this can clearly state the division of the activities
and the responsibility that each of them carries.

Stating the topics to be included in the video, implies that all of the members of the group should be
alert of skipping any of them. We can elaborate a list of a minimum of elements to be inserted into
the video so as to have it at hand before ending the activity.

Rubrics are the best way of providing guidance in advance, students will have the possibility to know
the way they are going to be assessed and the items to be considered.

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 Some tips at the moment for creating videos:

● Organise the activity in advance.

● State clear objectives to be kept till the end.

● Provide different roles to different students and encourage them to maintain

the responsibility of the role till the end of the activity.

● Divide all the steps and guide them one by one so as not to let your students get
confused.

● Guide each of the steps without intervening in the students’ decisions.

● Providing clear feedback in each of the steps will guarantee the success of the
following steps.

● Praising your students when necessary will build up the confidence to keep on
working.

Now, we invite you to read from page 13 to page 18 of The Image in English Language
Teaching to understand and complement these ideas.

Toolbox

There are several tools to create videos in the classroom. Now we are going to discover some of them
so you have the possibility to put everything we have been talking about into practice. It is advisable
to explore the tools in advance before taking them to the school.

1. Loom: this tool will help your students to create videos and share videos instantly.

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 What is Loom and how to use Loom to record your screen.

https://youtu.be/gVo4L_P7J5E

2. Powtoon: Your students will love to create videos using this tool. Its attractive design and
intuitive handling will provide your students the best space to develop their creativity

How To Use Powtoon | Tutorial For Beginners (2023)

https://youtu.be/SgHsKqC_-7Y

3. Canva: Probably, this is the most widely known tool. What might be new for your student is
the way to use it for educational purposes. It will be easy and fun for them to create videos
in the classroom using this tool.

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 Create EASY VIDEOS with Canva

https://youtu.be/2nIq8VEixEc

Why is filmmaking so significantly necessary in the 21st-century

classroom?

The roles students take in filmmaking will promote skills such as good decision-making, efficient
problem-solving, and effective negotiating, all skills which are extremely valued in the 21st-century

23
workplace. Our role as teachers will be to guide this process, encouraging the use of the target
language in our students. While they work together in this type of activity, they will share ideas using
the target language showing they can effectively communicate in English. If we can successfully
merge these skills, we will guarantee our students the possibility of learning efficiently in the EFL
classroom and the acquisition of such skills will set them ready to be well-prepared for the jobs they
will do in the future as competent adult citizens.

Motion images as a priceless source of motivation

● In this lesson, we have discovered the relevance of proper motivation to

create effective and interesting activities for our students.

● The best activities for our learners are the ones that aim at providing them
with the possibility to feel as close to the real world where they live as
possible in order to keep them motivated.

● Videos are part of our everyday life, that is why including them in activities
that foster creativity, communication, and problem-solving skills, among
other abilities required for the 21st century, will guarantee access to all
subjectivities in the classroom.

Not only motion images in the form of videos are a significant tool to promote 21st-century skills in
the classroom. As we will learn in our coming class, memes, which are an essential part of students’
everyday life, also represent a successful source of material to facilitate meaningful communication
within the framework of EFL learning.

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Activities
Using images for classroom activities

This time, we would like you to participate in a collaborative Wall (Padlet) to work on a task
based on two different ways of boosting critical thinking through films. Please, suggest two
activities your students will need to do in order to work collaboratively.

In the first one, suggest an activity for them to create a soundless film that will trigger
critical thinking among their classmates. In the second one, plan an activity you would
assign your students through which critical thinking is generated by means of a short film
where speaking occurs. Bear in mind that this activity is optional, but it will help you to
start building up the final task. This activity will be available for two weeks for you to
participate in it.

Reading Materials
Donaghy, K. & Xerri, D.l (2017) The Image in English Language Teaching. ELT COUNCIL.
https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/sites/teacheng/files/The_Image_in_English_Language_Teachi
ng.pdf

References
Donaghy, K. & Xerri, D.l (2017) The Image in English Language Teaching. ELT COUNCIL.

Harmer, Jeremy. (2007). How to Teach English. Chapter 10. Harlow: Pearson Education Limited.

Maggio, M. (2020). Enseñanza poderosa. Enriquecer la. Enseñanza. Buenos Aires: Paidos

Robinson, K. (2018). "Enseñar es un arte". Entrevista en Ciclo "Aprendemos Juntos" Valencia-Molina,

T. y otros (2016). Competencias y estándares TIC desde la dimensión pedagógica: una perspectiva
desde los niveles de apropiación de las TIC en la práctica educativa docente. Publicación de UNESCO
y de la Pontificia Universidad Javeriana de Call (Colombia).

25
Créditos
Autoras: Cecilia Gonzalez y Nora Lía Cortés

Cómo citar este texto:

Cortés, N. y Gonzalez, C. (2022). Clase Nro 2.: Teaching the way our students learn. La enseñanza del inglés en
la era de la imagen. Buenos Aires: Ministerio de Educación de la Nación.

Esta obra está bajo una licencia Creative Commons

Atribución-NoComercial-CompartirIgual 3.0

26
Módulo 3: La enseñanza del inglés en la era de la imagen

Lesson 3: Memes and effective presentations as

motivational means of communication in the EFL
classroom
“A visual image in the hand of an artist is merely a tool to trigger a mental image."

Roy H. Williams

Welcome back!

From the 60s onwards, educators have used technology as an efficient way to support learning in
the classroom. The problem lies in the fact that, at times, technological resources are badly or
weakly used and, consequently, results reflect an effortless waste of time. What we need to
consider is that the best results are obtained when the materials we use exploit all the
communication possibilities that language offers and the media through which messages are

27
conveyed is effectively chosen. The question is: How can we boost our teaching practices in order
to enlarge our students’ meaningful learning? Using media efficiently implies using all resources
available to favor successful communication within the framework of effective EFL learning.

Memes as a motivational means of communication in the EFL classroom

Multimedia interactive resources can be understood as means to represent knowledge and, in
various ways, exhibit a similar way of association our human mind holds. That is why the effective
use of interactive multimedia in EFL learning brings about several benefits such as non-sequential
information, integration of the information received, associative connections, interactivity, and a
dynamic way to access information.
The digital world in which we are immersed nowadays, particularly the interactivity our students
are so dependable on, offers outnumbered possibilities for our EFL teaching practices. The fact
that we are moving forward from the typical use of conventional texts in our classes (many times
monomodal ones) in order to increase the use of multimodal texts in our classrooms to resemble

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the kind of material our students read outside school is a reflection of how educators are aiming
at developing meaningful teaching and learning strategies inside the language curriculum. That,
along with the increasing efforts to exploit technological tools teenagers are keen on, imply a
revolutionary act that will bring about a large number of effective learning possibilities. This is
where the use of memes as an effective source of motivation in the EFL class arises.

The meanings of Images through the power of memes

The paradigm shift that occurred in the digital era towards the supremacy of multimodal texts has
influenced the role of the reader who is now expected to approach texts from a multimodal
framework. As we have stated in previous classes, our job as teachers is, then, undergoing an
enormous challenge since we have to teach a type of students we have never faced before. Visual
language rules our present world and our students are an ineludible part of it. Our job as teachers
must be to choose activities that boost and promote learning accessing the inner needs and beliefs
our children and teenagers hold. Our imminent role is to prepare our students to succeed in the
world they will live and work in the future.
With a focus on the effective teaching of visual literacy to our particular students is that the use of
memes in the EFL classroom has come to gain particular relevance. The role of the new learner,
nowadays, needs to be that of a ‘viewer-learner’, which requires the acquisition of different skills

29
 such as summarizing and interpreting visual images, among others, that enable them to face the
multimodal texts that facilitate their actual acquisition of language as a continuum.
The use of memes in the 21st-century classroom has proved to be highly effective for warmers.
Not only do they trigger motivation, but they also promote critical thinking and speaking which,
ultimately, bring about the acquisition of all other skills - receptive as well as productive: listening,
reading, speaking, and writing. Memes have been selected for the power they have to offer various
opportunities to promote visual and critical skills in the EFL classroom. Even though these
resources may seem superficial at times, they represent the social and cultural structures in which
our students are immersed.

Why is the use of memes necessary in the EFL classroom?

In our present world, our viewer-learners are constantly creating meaning and building knowledge
through images. Not only are they challenged to interpret words in a text, but also the images that
go with it. They must be able to move fluently through pictures and texts, from literal to figurative
meanings that are shaped by the cultural traits and social practices they are immersed in. In recent

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years, definitions of visual literacy have highlighted the relevance of image interpretation and placed
a spotlight on the ability to find meaning in imagery, which includes the acquisition of skills leading
to complex interpretation at contextual, metaphoric, and philosophical levels.

How can memes be used as a powerful source in the classroom?

Unfortunately, in recent studies, the use of learners’ visual material at academic levels has reflected
the lack of skills many students hold when observing, interpreting, and analyzing visual content.
Consequently, the need for the creation of a critical viewing framework has become evident in order
to develop in our students the visual literacy skills they need to successfully interpret information.
The ability to explain memes will help learners to understand how image production is influenced by
cultural values and social constructs.

Here is a four-step plan that has been designed to help teachers work with
memes in the EFL classroom:

● Firstly, learners will be asked to observe the meme in order to identify

relevant information conveyed through the image assigned.

● Secondly, students will need to place that picture into the social,
cultural, and historical context it belongs to.

● Thirdly, students will be required to recognize several components of

visual materials and consider any related visuals and text.

● Lastly, they will be asked to give an account of their interpretation and

analysis of images considering the visual materials discussed during the
previous steps.

Let us illustrate this with examples:

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Take the memes we have chosen to present above, for instance. Imagine we are going to use those
images to generate a class discussion on superstitions with a group of teenagers who have an
intermediate (B1) level of English. Imagine our students are going to learn how to describe possible
situations within the context of superstitions all over the world. Let’s see how you could do it…

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Students will be shown these memes one by one. Each time a meme is shown, they will be asked
questions so that they explain not only what they see in them, but also what they think the meaning
behind the images and the text is.

Example 1 (the one about savings)

What do you see in this meme? What are “savings” in the first image? What is the problem with
those savings? Why are they flying away? What can you tell about the second image? What is “salt”
and what is “spilt”? What is the relation between his savings flying away and salt being spilt?

Example 2 (the skeleton)

What can you see in this photo? Where is the skeleton? What is the skeleton doing? In your opinion:
why is this a skeleton and not a man of flesh and blood? What has “he” waited/been waiting for so
much time? In your opinion: what is the relation between his breaking of the mirror and his waiting
for bad luck?

Example 3 (the boy with different reactions)

Is the man happy in the first photo? What is his reaction? How is he feeling? Why is it bad to open an
umbrella indoors? What about the second photo? How is he feeling now? Why is it good to find a
four-leaf clover?
Now, considering all these memes, what is similar among all of them? What do they have in common?
What are they referring to?
Once the topic of superstitions arises, students will be guided to express whether they believe in
superstitions or not, and then, they will be encouraged to share their knowledge about other
superstitions generally believed in by people. For instance: what will happen if people get married
on a rainy day? Or… what will happen if you leave your purse on the floor?
By doing so, we will be promoting in our students the development of their speaking skills as well as
their critical thinking ones which are a new focus upon which we should concentrate when teaching
21st-century learners. Always remember that the more information (W-H) questions we ask, the
more opportunities we will provide for our students to share their ideas meaningfully.

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In addition to warmers, the use of memes in our EFL classroom can also prove their potentiality when
aiming at strengthening our learners’ writing skills, for instance.

Take the case of this fourth meme being shown above and pretend we want our students to produce
a short text about superstitions in their country. The task could read like this:

WRITING
Why don’t you look at the meme above and complete this chain of events?

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 If I see a black cat, I'll
have bad luck.

If I have bad luck, I'll lose

..................................
my savings

If I lose...............................
......................................
...........................................

Numerous activities can be suggested to students in our lessons in relation to memes. Their
potentialities are unlimited if we make clever decisions on their use. Not only will our learners feel
eager to actively participate in class, but also they will be developing different skills and gaining the
sense that they are learning something new not only effectively, but also meaningfully.
In case you cannot find memes that perfectly suit the content of your class, you can always create
your own by using meme generators on the web. They are free and, some of them, are extremely
easy to use and will take you no more than two minutes to create the meme you wish.

Meme generator online

Here is a link for the easiest and fastest to use:

https://imgflip.com/memegenerator/27596988/Free

However, we encourage you to search for more options on the web such as Canva or Kapwing, for
example, and try them on your own.

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Remember… trivial and meaningless as they may appear, the potentiality the use of memes holds in
the EFL classroom is an invaluable tool to promote meaningful communicative activities in our
lessons.

If you wish to go deeper into the study of the use of memes in the classroom,
please, go through pages 60 to 64 from The Image in English Language Teaching.

Effective presentations through the use of images

As we have been discussing before, our students today hold a particular trait that makes them
different from the students who used to fill our classrooms in the past: they are visual learners. The
role of this type of student, as we have pointed out before, is that of a ‘viewer-learner’, who needs
to develop further skills other than linguistic ones, such as interpreting visual images, inferring
information on their own, and asking questions.
Considering this is that we should not overlook the significance of images in the presentation of new
information to students in our classrooms. Just as we have been arguing before, the use of memes
to motivate our students’ active participation in class is highly advisable. Nonetheless, however
effective our warmers or class activities may be, if we back up our explanations or topic presentations
with weak study material, our classes will fall short of consistency and our students’ learning process
will be hampered by meaningless and ineffective techniques. This is why the quality of our lesson

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presentations should not be neglected and we should place particular attention to the way in which
we design them.

In order to avoid a situation like the one reflected on the image above, it is paramount to
acknowledge our visual learners’ peculiarities when presenting new content to them. This is why
some facts are essential to consider when preparing presentations for them.
Here are a few…
First of all, it is imperative to avoid what almost every teacher does in their presentations: we need
to neglect the overuse of texts and the lack of visual images as shown below:

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By doing so, our students will not only be demotivated to read and/ or pay attention to our speech,
but they will also miss the opportunity to develop their interpretation, inference, and critical thinking
skills. Consequently, meaningful learning opportunities will be restricted, and effective learning will
be unsuccessful.
An effective presentation requires more than just a simple PowerPoint presentation. Here are some
tips we should consider in order to foster our visual learners’ potentialities:

First, we need to know who our audience is. If we know our students well, then
we will be able to design content that will be attractive to them, will catch their
attention easily, and will exploit several of their skills.
● We must have a clear idea of the information we wish to convey.

● We need to design our presentation carefully and organize it clearly and

neatly.

● Avoid the delivery of excessive and useless information that is not closely
relevant to the topic. The simpler, the better. Give room for your students’
questions.

● Always accompany presentations with clear and effective visual support.

Remember our visual learners will give the most of them if they are
prompted to do so.

● Use concrete info and data. Avoid providing abstract concepts. They will
be able to infer them through the images you provide.

● Make the most of multimedia. Use it effectively.

● Provide material – either anecdotes or significant pictures - that trigger

emotional reactions and critical thinking in our students.

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If we take all these aspects into consideration, instead of filling a slide with loads of words that will
only bore our visual learners and take all their attention away from our classroom, we should present
that topic with a powerful image that triggers our students' curiosity and promotes discussion in an
effective and meaningful way. Take the image below to illustrate this …

By looking at this image in the presentation, our students will be curious to hear what you have to
say. They will pay attention and attentively listen to you rather than just reading from a slide. They
will establish associations through the images shown and they will infer information from what you
are telling them. They will feel welcome to ask questions on what they are inferring, and they will
develop their critical thinking skills as well. As a result, meaningful learning opportunities will be
offered and practical learning will be successful.
An effective presentation requires lots of hard work. However, if we design it effectively, it will trigger
our students’ inference, critical thinking, and discussion, and it will also derive a strong backup for
the rest of our class activities which will result in nothing else than an instance of meaningful language
learning.

Well-chosen memes and powerful presentations: the bridge to an efficient

acquisition of skills
As we claimed at the beginning of this class, teachers have relied on technology in order to boost
their teaching practices in the classroom for a long time. However, no matter how many technological
devices we introduce in our lessons, they will result in meaningless and ineffective learning as long

39
as we do not make suitable choices considering the peculiarities of the visual learners we have in our
classes nowadays. Well-chosen memes will boost our students’ attention as well as their speaking
and critical thinking skills, and powerful presentations to back up the information introduced will
result in powerful tools to promote the acquisition of successful communication within the
framework of effective EFL learning.

In our coming class, we will discover how to merge everything we have been learning so far in order
to generate instances of meaningful communication. These will not only motivate our learners to
take an active part in our lessons but will also generate a feeling of accomplishment when successfully
using the foreign language in real-life situations.

Activities

Memes in the classroom

Please, suggest an activity you would assign your students to promote speaking
and critical thinking through a meme. It can be a warm-up activity to be carried
out within the EFL classroom or, if you prefer, an extra class activity where
students are required to work collaboratively as a team. This should not be longer
than 600 words. This activity should be handed in via inbox to your tutor.

This activity is compulsory in order to pass this module and it will be available for
two weeks for you to participate in it.

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Créditos
Autoras: Cecilia Gonzalez y Nora Lía Cortés

Cómo citar este texto:

Cortés, N. y Gonzalez, C. (2022). Clase Nro 3.: Memes and effective presentations as motivational
means of communication in the EFL classroom. La enseñanza del inglés en la era de la imagen. Memes
and effective presentations as motivational means of communication in the EFL classroom. Buenos
Aires: Ministerio de Educación de la Nación.

Esta obra está bajo una licencia Creative Commons

Atribución-NoComercial-CompartirIgual 3.0

41
Módulo 3: La enseñanza del inglés en la era de la imagen

Lesson 4: Using still images to encourage genuine

communication and enhance personalized learning in the
EFL classroom
“I found I could say things with color and shapes
that I couldn’t say any other way—things I had
no words for.”

-Georgia O’Keeffe

Images as a potential to mirror our students’ subjectivities

We are about to start our fourth and last lesson. In our previous classes, we have been arguing about
the relevance that images –either still or in motion– gain when they are introduced as teaching tools
in our practices. As we have pointed out before, we are often perceiving the world through sight, and
we cannot overlook the fact that our students nowadays are these viewer-learners who need to
develop skills that we, as students, did not need to promote many years ago. The need to boost visual
literacy in our classrooms and the importance of working with images efficiently will help our
students to expand their creativity, critical thinking, and other skills which are essential for them to
be an active part of the 21st century. Images can be used in so many ways inside the classroom that
whether using a picture or a video the potential for an interesting class where students are motivated
to learn increases exponentially. Proper use of images in the classroom will also cater to embracing
different subjectivities we encounter so as to make all our students feel represented in the learning
process. If we provide our students with the opportunity to choose images that characterize what
they feel, what they need to communicate, and what represents each individual in the classroom, we
may motivate them to participate and this may guarantee a successful learning process.

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Literacy in the 21st Century

The notion of what it means to be literate may vary according to the cultural context you are
immersed in, your individual experience, and your principles and beliefs. Nowadays, literacy is still
connected to the idea of successful communication. However, the expansion of the rapidly changing
means of communication has challenged us to expand the concept of literacy so that it encompasses
not only the act of interpreting and conveying signs of communication but also assessing how these
influence the environment and society around them.
We must bear in mind that it is paramount for teachers nowadays to be able to identify the needs
and interests of our students in order to provide them with as many opportunities as we possibly can
to help them develop these new literacies.

How to use images to build visual literacy

To understand visual literacy it is fundamental to distinguish the difference between seeing and
observing. These two activities apparently make reference to similar actions, but their essence is
quite dissimilar. On the one hand, seeing is almost an involuntary action, a perception with the eyes.
On the other hand, observing is more of a mental process that implies perception and thought. We
would like you to keep this distinction in mind throughout this lesson so as to understand that when

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working with images we should develop in our students the capacity to observe and communicate
rather than see and say.

Postmodern society has observed a huge growth in the significance given to the visual. In order to
communicate effectively, one should be able to read and infer images in a meaningful way, decode,
design, and choose illustrations to express a vast range of various meanings. The enormous influence
of visual content we are exposed to on a daily basis and the increasing dependence on non-textual
information has made it inevitable for teachers to become visually literate as well as to be highly
aware of the visual culture we are immersed in.

The relevance of syntax and semantics in the analysis of images

Linguist J. Bamford (2003) suggests that visual literacy includes the understanding of different aspects
related to syntax and semantics among which are the following:

In relation to syntax…
● Describing shapes, composition, colors, and graphics.
● Analyzing the relation between text and images.

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 ● Describing the connection between textual and para-textual
elements.
● Discovering the purpose of the composition of graphics and the
choices of each of them in accordance with this purpose.
And in relation to semantics…
● Analyzing the connection between the real world and the image.
● Developing awareness of the relation among culture, values, and
images.

The analysis of syntax and semantics of different images in our EFL classroom will provide us with an
invaluable possibility to develop linguistic as well as thinking skills. Below we will find a set of
questions we could ask our students in order to trigger a successful interpretation of an image:

Syntactically…
● What is the organization of different elements in the image?

● Which of the elements present in the image is the most relevant?

Why?

● What is the intention of the message that can be clearly seen through
the colors?
Semantically…
● Who is the author of this image? Who is the audience?

● Which is the hidden message stated about culture? And the values
stated through the image?

It is important to consider that, in order for these questions to work effectively on image analysis,
they should not be chosen at random. Teachers must be consciously aware of the objectives we
pursue through the use of the picture selected and we must design meaningful activities to develop
in order to enhance the effective development of visual skills.

45
Having all these concepts in mind, we invite you to watch a video that can help you understand how
to connect the different elements in an image and the real intention at the moment of choosing
and/or analyzing each of them. In this video, you will learn how to guide the analysis of an image in
the classroom.
Before watching the video, it would be helpful to imagine a real situation in which you will work with
images.

● Set in your mind the lesson, the content to be taught, and the activity you
will develop.

● Try to elaborate an imaginary list on which you will consider all the steps
you will build up to reach to the final objective.

● Think about the questions you will ask your students and the possible
answers to those questions.

Now, let’s watch the video and see if there is something new to enrich your proposal. It is advisable
to take notes so as not to miss any detail that can be of great help in your future lessons.

How to Analyse an Image in Less than 90 Seconds (Texts and Human Experiences)

https://youtu.be/BEc4Hm7lTco

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When you finish watching the video, we invite you to compare the activity you had in mind at the
beginning of the task and the ones proposed at the video.

● Were they similar or different? How?

● Did you work in the way it is advisable or you learned new ideas?

● Do you consider your everyday proposal can be enriched after this video?
How?
We suggest you elaborate a list of new ideas learned on this topic.

Visual literacy: the path to strengthen students' subjectivities in the EFL

classroom
Through these four lessons, we have been dealing with the importance of developing visual literacy
in our students. The correct use of still images in the classroom may provide our students the
possibility to be taught in the same way they interact with the real world. This interaction they have
with the world embraces the possibility of developing their sense of participation, interaction, the
importance of their interchange with significant others, and, as a consequence, the strengthening of
the different subjectivities that each learner brings into the classroom.

Working with images implies using the ones that are familiar to our students, the sources can be as
varied as we imagine, and the key aspect here is the way in which we deal with the images we choose
to use for each of the activities in our lessons. They should be included significantly, properly, and
attractively so they are not mere decorations in the tasks.

To include images, we have to consider the audience the message is intended to. Our teenagers have
specific characteristics that will determine the reception and perception of the communication sent.
Considering their needs and likes and including the correct images in the correct way in the lesson
will help them to undergo a successful learning process.

As we were arguing in our previous class, memes are part of our everyday life, but including them
does not simply consist of the act of cutting and pasting them so as to make our classes fun. The

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relevance of these elements in the lesson will be determined by the activities the teacher proposes
and the way in which they are organized in order to make the most of them. Same to effective
presentations in the classroom, memes should have a clear aim, and all the activities we design for
our lessons should cater to develop not only visual literacy but also critical thinking and effective
communication abilities among other significant 21st-century skills.

Now that we have discussed the importance of the use of still and moving images within the
framework of EFL learning, as well as the relevance of backing them up with effective visual
presentations, as the final task of this module, we will ask you to go through a complete lesson plan.
Once you have read it, please pay attention to the different activities suggested and make decisions
so as to improve it through the use of images (either still or in motion) whenever you consider it
necessary.

Showing how profitably a lesson plan can be bettered through the use of
effective images
Planning an effective lesson is not an easy task. It is time-consuming, it challenges our creativity, and
we are never truly confident about whether our ideas and/ or suggestions will be well-received by
our teenage students. However, if we design our classes taking into consideration our teenagers’
subjectivities, as well as the way in which 21-Century students learn, chances are that our viewer-
learners will go through their EFL learning process not only successfully, but also with a sense of
achievement.

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Activities

Final Task

Please read the file (Final Task) and, bearing in mind its content, suggest two (2)
activities that contain the characteristics stated in this module. One of the activities
should be based on a still image and the other one on videos.

Please support your choices acknowledging the theory of the material studied
(at least two pages supporting your choices)

Some important aspects to be considered:

∙ Your suggestions will need to be described in detail, in the same way in

which the activities in the present lesson plan have been depicted.

∙ This final activity should be handed in via inbox.

∙ The maximum extension of the final paper is 3 pages and the minimum is 2
pages.

∙ You should elaborate a Word file, size A4, typography Arial 11, line spacing
1.5, justified margins.

∙ You should also include your personal information and a heading indicating
that this is the final task of this module.

∙ Please do not forget to enumerate the pages.

∙ Name the file as follows: SURNAME_NAME_FINALTASK. For example:

GOMEZ_JUAN_ FINALTASK

● Deadline for the final task August,10th

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Reading Materials
Donaghy, K. & Xerri, D.l (2017) The Image in English Language Teaching. ELT COUNCIL.

References
Prieto Castillo, D. (2004) La Comunicación en la Educación. Editorial Stella.

Donaghy, K. & Xerri, D.l (2017) The Image in English Language Teaching. ELT COUNCIL.

Basart, I. (2009). Presentaciones efectivas. Presentaciones efectivas en el ámbito educativo.

Observatorio Tecnológico del Instituto Nacional de Tecnologías Educativas y de Formación del

Profesorado. Ministerio de Educación, Cultura y Deporte. España. (p. 1-6)

Créditos

Cómo citar este texto:

Cortés, N. y Gonzalez, C. (2022). Clase Nro 4: Using still images to encourage genuine communication
and enhance personalized learning in the EFL classroom. La enseñanza del inglés en la era de la
imagen. Buenos Aires: Ministerio de Educación de la Nación.

Esta obra está bajo una licencia Creative Commons

Atribución-NoComercial-CompartirIgual 3.0

50