It seems to me that having over 50 per cent of the pictures in a given coursebook used for

purely decorative purposes is a great waste of effort on the part of the publisher and a great
waste of opportunity for the language learner and teacher. I do not doubt that many teachers
use the decorative pictures accompanying, say, reading passages, for arousing interest in and/or
awareness of topic by discussing what the learners can see in the pictures. However, let us see
what we find in the coursebook.
Look at the page from Unit 10 of Outcomes Intermediate, which is fairly typical of the use of
decorative pictures (see Figure 7.1). First, there is a sense in which the use of the picture feels
deceitful, in that it is in colour when the rest of the page isn’t so that one’s eye is automatically
attracted to it, that it takes up an area of 189cm2 out of the whole 588cm2 of the page – one-
third, and yet despite the importance that colour and size affords it, it is not used directly.
The page works through a series of nine activities under three headings: Speaking (1),
Vocabulary (4), and Pronunciation (4). They all deal with aspects of the topic of talking about
going out to different events and entertainment. What is actually happening in the picture is not
clear, but it would seem to be young Japanese people at a rock concert. It therefore relates
clearly to some of the sentences in Vocabulary exercise A and could relate to Vocabulary
exercise D and Pronunciation exercises A and B, too, without being directly referred to. All the
exercises aim to help students describe attendance at events using more interesting and
colourful language.
So the picture provides a context of a kind, however it is not used for any linguistic purpose. The
activities would work just as well without the picture. Students will almost certainly describe
events they have attended better because of the written information given and the examples
they hear on the recording, not because of the picture.
Supposing the author, editor and designer wanted to keep the picture and texts more or less as
they are, it would have been very easy to lead into the language tasks through some picture-
related discussion, using rubrics such as:
What kind of events do young people enjoy going out to in the evenings and at weekends?
How do young people dress when they go to a rock concert?
Look at the picture below. What nationality do you think these people are? Are they dressed
and behaving like young people at a concert in your country? Why/ why not?
How do you think they are feeling?
In this way, for very little extra effort on the part of the materials writer, editor and designer,
there would have been more language production for the learners, perhaps an easier lead-in to
the topic than the Speaking A activity presented, in that they would
have had something concrete to refer to. And what is more the picture would become
integrated into the new language work of the page.
And it is this issue of dealing only with what is seen, or dealing with what the learner knows,
thinks or deduces which I would like to touch on now. Pit Corder was, to my knowledge, the first
to make the distinction between ‘talking about’ a picture and ‘talking with’ a picture (1966, p.
35). If you talk about a picture you are limited and constrained by what you can see – ‘there are
some young people, probably Japanese, at a concert. . . . Some of them are dancing and others
are. . . .’ It is factual and visible. It is also useful to revise some bits of the language system.
However, this need not be an end in itself, but the way into talking with the picture: ‘The girl
with the blonde hair looks as if she’s enjoying herself dancing, and this guy in the red hat and
white glasses reminds me of someone I saw at the last concert I went to . . . he was. . . .’. Here,
with a suitable task, the picture allows learners to bring their own reality to the lesson.
Coursebooks seem to offer very few opportunities to use pictures to stimulate their own inner
meanings.
In this author’s coursebook for the Italian Biennio, Corpus, a series of good colour photographs
are used on a large scale in relation to some pages on Art Nouveau (1994, pp. 220–1). First, they
are used to consolidate vocabulary encountered in a listening passage about collecting Art
Nouveau objects. There is a relatively simple labelling activity (‘talking about’) first, and then
there follows a series of three questions which broaden the topic out to a discussion of the
learners’ feelings related to the Art Nouveau objects illustrated (‘talking with’).
conclusion
This chapter has sought to show the nature of typical illustration used in British ELT coursebooks
aimed at young adults and adults. It has shown that a majority of pictures included are used
only for decorative purposes, and that those used for language purposes tend to concentrate on
low-level language skills related to basic language manipulation. It has suggested how such
materials might be improved, and has gone on to exemplify the type of materials which is
deemed necessary for a more meaningful and involved kind of language learning experience.

1. The image in ELT: an introduction

Kieran Donaghy
UAB Idiomes Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain
Daniel Xerri
ELT Council, Malta
The vast majority of language teachers use images in their classroom. In today’s increasingly
visual world, it is difficult to imagine the language classroom without coursebook images,
photographs, paintings, cartoons, picture books, comics, flashcards, wallcharts, YouTube videos,
films, student-created artwork and media, and so on. However, despite the ubiquity of images
in language teaching, we need to ask whether images are being approached merely as an aid or
support, or as a significant component of communicating in a foreign language, and as a means
of fostering students’ communicative competence and creativity. In order to answer this
question, we need to examine how images have been approached in resource books and
coursebooks.
IMAGE RESOURCE BOOKS
In his 1966 seminal study The Visual Element in Language Teaching, Pit Corder made the
distinction between “talking about images” (merely describing images) and “talking with
images” (responding personally to images). The influence of this work on the use of images in
language education has been immense. Since this seminal book, there have been a number of
practical resource books, such as Alan Maley et al.’s The Mind’s Eye (1980), Andrew Wright’s
Pictures for Language Learners (1990), David A. Hill’s Visual Impact (1990), Ben Goldstein’s
Working with Images (2009), Jamie Keddie’s Images (2009), and Peter Grundy et al.’s English
Through Art (2009). These books promote the critical and creative use of still images in the
language classroom, and encourage students to interpret images and analyse their reaction to
them.
Perhaps the most influential video methodology book for teachers is Cooper et al.’s Video
(1991). This ground-breaking book was the first to establish the principle of active watching:
that rather than just watching a video passively and answering listening comprehension
questions,
students should play a much more active viewing role. Students were involved in information
gap tasks and engaged with the video on a much more meaningful level. Subsequently, a
number of guides such as Susan Stempleski and Barry Tomalin’s Film (2001), and Jane
Sherman’s Using Authentic Video in the Language Classroom (2003) contained practical
suggestions for activities built upon the principle of active viewing. More recently, Ben Goldstein
and Paul Driver’s Language Learning with Digital Video (2014), Jamie Keddie’s Bringing Online
Video into the Classroom (2014), and Kieran Donaghy’s Film in Action (2015) have focused not
just on activities to exploit existing video content available on video-sharing sites such as
YouTube and Vimeo, but also on making and using learner- generated videos and short films.
However, despite the fact that there are many resource books that promote the critical and
creative usage of both still and moving images, resource books sell very few copies and it can
take a long time before the activities proposed in them are adopted by authors of the much
better selling coursebooks. For better or worse, ELT coursebooks have a huge influence on
teachers’ methodology. As Peter Viney (2017) recounts,
I angered a group of teachers in Japan by stating that Headway had had a far greater influence
on what happens in the ELT classroom than the entire collected works of Stephen Krashen. In
practical terms, coursebooks are the filter through which theory reaches the classroom. It’s a
thick filter with an inbuilt delay system, but the good ideas trickle through eventually.
To better understand the role of images in the language classroom, it is necessary to examine
how they are used in coursebooks.
IMAGES IN COURSEBOOKS
When considering the use of still images in coursebooks, one is struck by the fact that the
power of images to stimulate ideas, discussion and creativity is still currently underexploited in
the majority of them. According to well-known coursebook writer Ben Goldstein (2009),
With the advent of large-scale ELT publishing, images were used not only as visual
reinforcement, but in order to make the finished product more attractive and hence more
marketable. However, although texts are largely taken
from ‘authentic’ sources to reflect the real-life language that the books promote, the images are
still largely made up of archive photos. Such images not only lack originality, but more often
than not project and promote an affluent and aspirational lifestyle to learners. For this reason
ELT materials, however, contemporary they are in topic and outlook, often appear to have a
superficial, colour- supplement ‘look’ to them. Teachers and learners tend not to be presented
with images that they would encounter in the real world, but rather a safe cleaned-up version.
(p. 4)
In addition to this sanitised use of images in coursebooks, there is the criticism that images are
still largely used as aids and for decoration. In a recent study of the usage of images in three
intermediate ELT coursebooks for young adults and adults, David A. Hill (2013) found that over
half of photos and drawings were used only for decoration:
It seems to be that having over 50 per cent of the pictures in a given coursebook used for purely
decorative purposes is a great waste of effort on the part of the publisher and a great waste of
opportunity for the language learner and teacher. (p. 163)
Of course, upon examining an ELT coursebook, one is also struck by the dominance of
monomodal texts over the type of multimodal texts that students are engaging with on a daily
basis outside the classroom.
However, despite the fact that the majority of coursebooks still use images largely for support
and decoration, and monomodal texts are generally dominant, recently there has been a clear
trend towards using images to stimulate ideas and discussion. In an increasing number of
coursebooks, such as Life (National Geographic Learning), Eyes Open/ Uncover (Cambridge
University Press), Keynote (National Geographic Learning), and The Big Picture (Richmond), at
the start of each unit large high-impact non-stock images are being used as a springboard to
help establish the topic, activate schemata and get students talking.
Having looked at how images are used in ELT coursebooks, it is now necessary to explore how
videos are used as more and more coursebooks are integrating video. When we look at how
video is used, we discover that it is still largely regarded as glorified listening. Video is used as a
way of doing listening comprehension tasks but with the support of moving
images to help with non-verbal communication. It is still largely exploited for comprehension-
based tasks such as multiple-choice questions and language-based tasks such as gap-fills.
However, an increasing number of coursebooks are exploiting video not just for language or
comprehension-based activities, but also for more communicative and creative tasks in which
students are encouraged to interpret and analyse what they see. Furthermore, in some
coursebooks, such as Eyes Open/ Uncover (Cambridge University Press), students are even
asked to create their own videos. In the same way that the still image is beginning to play a
more dominant role, so too has video become more integral to classroom practice and has
begun to play a more communicative and creative role.
Nonetheless, despite the fact that there has been a gradual shift towards a more critical and
creative use of both still and moving images in ELT coursebooks and the ELT classroom, images
are still not being fully exploited as multimodal texts, and there is little focus on multiliteracies
pedagogy as well as little effort to develop learners’ visual literacy.
MULTILITERACIES PEDAGOGY
The term ‘multiliteracies’ was coined in the mid 1990s by the New London Group, a group of
scholars who argue that literacy pedagogy should be linked to the rapidly changing social,
cultural and technological environment. They argue that for a long period, the book was the
dominant medium of communication. However, with the challenge of a technologically evolving
landscape and the ascendance of the image, particularly the moving image, the screen has
taken that place. According to Gunther Kress (2003), a prominent member of the group, “The
former constellation of medium of book and mode of writing is giving way, and in many domains
has already given way, to the new constellation of medium of screen and mode of image” (p. 9).
However, this change does not spell the death of the written word. As Kress (2003)
states,“Writing is too useful and valuable a mode of representation and communication – never
mind the enormous weight of cultural investment in this technology” (p. 10).
In Literacy in the New Media Age, Kress (2003) offers a new theory of literacy where he argues
that our previous dependence on linguistic theories to define literacy is now obsolete and
deficient, and that we must combine language-based theory with semiotics (the study of signs
and symbols and how they are used) and other visual theories, to provide an appropriate
meaning to the term ‘literacy’ in the twenty-first century. As Carey Jewitt (2008) points out,
“there is a need to approach literacy
practices as an inter-textual web of contexts and technology, rather than isolated sets of skills
and competences” (p. 47). She believes that “what is needed is an educational framework that
recognises and describes the new forms of text that children meet every day in order to secure
the place of multimodal and visual texts within the curriculum” (p. 56).
To do this the New London Group called for a pedagogy of multiliteracies where students would
learn to ‘read’ (analyse and interpret) and ‘write’ (create) multimodal texts. Within the
framework of multiliteracies pedagogy, visual literacy is one of the key literacies.
VISUAL LITERACY
John Debes (1969) coined the term ‘visual literacy’ and offered the following definition:
Visual Literacy refers to a group of vision-competencies a human being can develop by seeing
and at the same time having and integrating other sensory experiences. The development of
these competencies is fundamental to normal human learning. When developed, they enable a
visually literate person to discriminate and interpret the visible actions, objects, symbols,
natural or man- made, that he encounters in his environment. Through the creative use of these
competencies, he is able to communicate with others. Through the appreciative use of these
competencies, he is able to comprehend and enjoy the masterworks of visual communication.
(p. 26)
A more contemporary and perhaps useful definition states that,
In the context of human, intentional visual communication, visual literacy refers to a group of
largely acquired abilities i.e. the abilities to understand (read), and to use (write) images, as well
as to think and learn in terms of images. (Avgerinou, 2001, p. 26)
The importance of visual literacy in education is widely acknowledged. It is generally agreed
that education needs to develop learners’ skills and ability to interpret images and to
communicate visually. In schools there is a gradual move away from a reliance on print as the
primary medium of dissemination and instruction, and instead towards visual media and the
screen. In addition, there is an increasing recognition that visual literacy
needs to be integrated into curricula. This is reflected by the fact that in the English language
curricula of a number of countries – for example, Canada, Australia and Singapore – two new
skills, viewing and visually representing have been added to the traditional skills of reading,
writing, listening and speaking.
According to Deborah Begoray (2001), the Canadian common curriculum framework states that,
Viewing is an active process of attending to and comprehending visual media, such as
television, advertising images, films, diagrams, symbols, photographs, videos, drama, drawings,
sculpture, and paintings.
Representing enables students to communicate information and ideas through a variety of
media. (p. 202)
Viewing therefore requires learners to construct meaning by interpreting the parts (images,
symbols, conventions, contexts) that are related to a visual text, and to understand not only
“what” a text says, but “how” the text works. Here are some of the questions the Canadian
common curriculum framework states effective viewers would ask themselves:
  What is the text representing?
 How is the text constructed?
 What assumptions, interests, beliefs, biases and values
are portrayed by the text?
 What is the purpose of the text?
 To whom is the text directed? Who does the text exclude?
 What is my reaction to the text? What causes this reaction?
 What personal connections and associations can I make
with this text?
Representing enables students to communicate their ideas visually using a variety of media and
formats, including diagrams, charts, infographics, illustrations, slide shows, concept maps,
photographs, images or symbols, storyboards, memes, posters and videos. Representing often
allows students to make sense of their learning and to demonstrate their understanding.
Undoubtedly, these two new skills of viewing and representing will be integrated into national
curricula throughout the world in the near
future. However, for the moment, at least, very little attention has been paid to them in ELT
syllabus design. Indeed, multimodality and visual literacy have been largely ignored in ELT. As
Kress (2000) points out, “Nearly every text that I look at uses two modes of communication: (a)
language as writing and (b) image. Yet TESOL professionals continue to act as though language
fully represented the meanings they wish to encode and communicate” (p. 337). Similarly,
Greek academic Sylvia Karastathi (2016) states that,
Talks in TESOL conferences, address the use of iPads, films, digital storytelling, interactive
whiteboards, GoogleMaps and so many other digital media. It is indeed exciting the way ICT has
been embraced by the ELT community, as a useful tool that promotes engagement and new
learning opportunities. But, although much attention has been given to digital tools which
produce mainly visual media, visual literacy is largely ignored in TESOL conferences, often
subsumed under the focus on digital literacies, revealing the overall misinterpretation of its
changing role in the ELT field.
This misinterpretation of the changing and increasingly important role of visual literacy in ELT
highlights the need for teachers to receive training in both visual literacy and media production.
According to Karastathi (2016), “Aspects of visual literacy training need to be included in the
syllabus of pre-service and in-service teacher training courses if we want to empower teachers
in an era of multimodal communication and enable better collaboration with their students.”
Unless teachers receive specific training in visual literacy and media production, it will be
difficult for them to teach these vital skills to their students in a world where they are expected
to interpret and present complex visual ideas using a variety of media. As Karastathi (2016)
argues,
If it is true then that our world is full of powerful visual images that continually bombard our
students, it is important to teach them to resist the passivity, apathy and numbness they might
feel toward the visual, and instead help them analyze the rhetorical techniques and meaning
making mechanisms in operation in visual texts – that is, to make them active viewers. The fact
that the nature
of contemporary communication has changed into a multimodal one, would lead us to rethink
the construct of communicative competence.
Despite the excellent work being done by many teachers with images, there is an urgent need
for ELT to finally come to terms with both multiliteracies pedagogy and visual literacy if we are
to meet the needs of our students to communicate effectively in a world where communication
is increasingly multimodal in nature. To do this, we need to increase the presence of multimodal
texts in the ELT curriculum, incorporate specific visual literacy and media production training
into pre-service and in-service teacher training courses, and extend specific visual literacy and
media production strategies aimed at students.
THE IMAGE CONFERENCE
The Image Conference was set up to explore the possibilities that film, video, images and video
games offer to both language teachers and language learners. In a world where we are
saturated with visual stimulation due to the fact that the visual image is taking over, the
rationale behind The Image Conference is that there is a need for the ability to interpret,
analyse and create images to become an integral part of literacy.
The aim of The Image Conference is to put images at the centre of the language learning agenda
and offer guidance on using images critically and creatively, and to promote visual literacy in
language education. The Image Conference brings together leading experts and practitioners in
the use of images in language learning so that they may share their experiences, insights and
know-how. It provides participants with an excellent opportunity to enhance their competence
in the innovative and creative use of images.
The first edition of the Image Conference was held at Universitat Autònoma Barcelona with the
support of the IATEFL Learning Technologies Special Interest Group. Subsequent editions were
held in Brasilia, Brazil; Córdoba, Spain; and Munich, Germany. The fifth edition of the
conference was held in collaboration with the ELT Council in Valletta, Malta, in October 2017.
BOOK OVERVIEW
This book brings together a selection of papers based on sessions at the five editions of the
Image Conference organized so far. All of the
papers in this book urge teachers to use images critically and creatively, and encourage students
to resist the passivity they might feel towards images. Every single contribution is meant to help
both teachers and students to become more active viewers and more visually literate.
The first group of papers explores the use and production of film in the language classroom.
Whitcher uses her analysis of a short film as a springboard for a discussion of the potential of
filmmaking for language learners. Goldstein provides a history of video in ELT and considers
what role it will play in the future. Clare examines why video is such an engaging language
learning tool.
In the next group of papers different authors investigate how images sourced from social media
can be used to enhance language learning. Wasilewska starts by providing an overview of the
needs of language learners forming part of the visual generation before considering the
classroom use of applications like Instagram and Pinterest. The latter is also the focus of
Zakime’s paper, which examines how a tool like Pinterest can be harnessed for the purpose of
developing students’ visual literacy. Domínguez Romero and Bobkina illustrate how visual
literacy can be taught via the memes that are regularly posted on social media.
The book’s next two papers consider other sources of images in the language classroom.
Fresacher takes a look at how product packaging, advertisements and other image sources can
be used to develop students’ colour vocabulary and their understanding of the different
meanings of colour. Seburn makes a case for the use of learner-sourced images in the classroom
as a means of deepening textual engagement and conceptual comprehension.
The next group of papers examines how the images in artworks can be exploited not only for
language learning but also for the development of visual literacy. Papalazarou shows how
exposing students to paintings can serve to structure their thinking and enhance their writing
skills. Similarly, Karastathi discusses the classroom application of ekphrastic writing, which
consists of the act of writing about visual works of art such as the ones found in museums.
Writing prose and poetry in response to peace-related artworks constitutes the focus of
Brzezinska’s paper. Given the importance of visual arts as a means of enriching human
communication, Pratt describes how to create an Artists in Schools project.
The book’s last group of papers is concerned to varying degrees with the storytelling capacity of
images. Dummett highlights the connection that exists between images and stories, a
connection that helps to
1. The image in ELT: an introduction
Kieran Donaghy & Daniel Xerri 9
make language learning more engaging. Narratives play an important role in many digital
games, these being what Driver evaluates in his paper. Lewis explores how graphic novels and
comics can be used with language learners while Theuma elaborates on how to exploit the
visual communication contained within cartoons and comics. Finally, Benévolo França explains
how the act of deconstructing pictures of teaching and learning spaces enables us to glimpse
the truth about the movements, voices and interaction of the people that occupied them.
14. The picture and the story
Paul Dummett
ELT author, United Kingdom
This paper highlights the link between images and stories, both important tools in engaging
learners on an emotional level. Images may be used in various ways to stimulate learning – to
teach vocabulary, to discover new things about the world, to stimulate debate – but arguably
their most common, and useful, role is to support discourse, whether written or spoken, and to
make that discourse more memorable by providing a visual link to it in the mind of the learner.
The paper will also argue that the discourse itself is more memorable when it takes the form of
a narrative, but that the skills needed to understand or tell a story, components of what has
been called ‘narrative intelligence’, are not to be taken for granted, but are something to be
learned and practised. The last section of the paper offers some practical ideas for doing this.
BACKGROUND
I became properly interested in the use of images in teaching about when I read Zull’s The Art of
Changing the Brain (and later on From Brain to Mind). Zull is a trained biologist and biochemist
who has applied his knowledge of the physical workings of the brain to the study of how we
learn and how we can teach more effectively. In the book, Zull puts great emphasis on the role
of visualization in memory – how our minds and memories work principally in images – claiming
that vision and visualization account for over 50% of our brains’ activity.
I read the book in 2010, around the same time that I started working with National Geographic,
and so it seemed natural to use the opportunity to exploit images – and in particular powerful
and memorable images – to enhance learning. We authors were given access to the whole
National Geographic photographic archive and we decided that we would try to use photos in
much the same way that National Geographic Magazine has done so successfully for so long, by
grabbing the attention of the viewer and drawing them into the story behind the image. So
rather than a specific topic or language point being the starting point for each unit and spread
of the book, the image became the springboard and the focus was the narrative that informed
each picture.
And so it was that I also became increasingly interested in the use of stories in teaching. Why is
that we all love a good story? Why in so many contexts – when we socialise, when we listen to a
lecture, when we read a newspaper – does the narrative element resonate with us so strongly?
And how could these two things, picture and story, be combined to make learning more
memorable?
WHAT STORIES PROVIDE
Cognitive research suggests that storytelling is popular across all cultures because it provides a
context or framework in which we can more easily interpret human experience. As Bruner
(1991) puts it, “we organize our experience and our memory of human happenings mainly in
the form of narrative” (p. 4). Even if the narrative transports us to ‘another world’, as it often
does (Gerrig, 1993), we, the audience inevitably, bring our own life experiences to bear on the
interpretation of events and human actions.
Stories are also often about the human condition and the conflicts we face – with others, with
society, with nature and within ourselves. As such, they demand our emotional engagement,
because they help us to identify our own feelings and to empathize with the feelings of others
(Singer, 2004). The more I teach and the more I learn myself, the more I become convinced that
emotional engagement is the key to memory, to deeper processing and thereby to more lasting
learning.
Lastly, stories are a key resource in the early development of language (Johnston, 2008). This is
something we all know from our own childhood or parenting experiences: a well-turned phrase,
a rhyme, a piece of moral advice, or a funny response – these things stay with us. In summary,
stories provide the following elements that help us to make sense of the world and of new
information:
146
The Image in English Language Teaching
1. 2.
A social context. Whether it is an entirely familiar one situated in our own culture or a less
familiar one from another culture, such contexts will generally contain elements (e.g., familial
relationships, work situations) that all of us can relate to.
Practical examples. Public speakers or lecturers, when explaining complex concepts, often use
stories as a vehicle for making abstract ideas more concrete and immediately understandable.
An example I remember quite clearly was a physicist trying to explain the Higgs boson particle
when it was first identified. He used an analogy of Mrs Thatcher (Higgs boson) walking through
a crowded
room of admirers (other particles) who were all drawn nearer to
her. A strange, perhaps, but definitely memorable analogy.
3. A structure or schema. Narratives follow a recognisable structure that we feel comfortable
with and that helps us to make sense of events. At its most basic, this structure is a
straightforward chronological beginning, middle and end, but of course there are
many other permutations.
4. Integration of the new with what has already been learned.
Research in New Zealand (Elley, 1989) showed that through listening to stories primary school
children made average vocabulary gains of 15% without any pre-teaching or teacher
explanation of unknown words.
5. Recognition of the brain’s multi-tasking abilities. One interesting thing about the way we
process stories is our ability to simultaneously absorb detail and see the wider picture (in ELT
terms to understand both gist and detail). This is in contrast to a camera that can focus in on an
individual object or take a ‘landscape’ photo, but not both at the same time.
I will refer to these points later in the paper when I present various activities using picture and
story that exploit each of these benefits.
NARRATIVE INTELLIGENCE
Educational research has also in recent years stressed the importance of what is called‘narrative
intelligence’for both learner and teacher. Narrative intelligence (NI) at its simplest level is the
ability to tell and understand a story. In certain cultures, particularly those that have used
storytelling as a way to affirm their own culture when faced with domination by another
(external) culture, narrative intelligence is extremely high. In western societies, which have very
often been the dominant external culture, its importance has diminished and its benefits have
to a large extent been ignored in mainstream education. This has been to our detriment
because the components that make up NI contain many more widely useful cognitive abilities,
namely:
 the ability to organize, sequence and show connections between events;
 the ability to prioritize events;
 the ability to understand and convey a central idea or theme;

 • the ability to recognize the different perspectives of those experiencing an

event;
 • the ability to understand character and human emotion.
 Almost immediately you can see how each of these abilities or skills might
relate to teaching: planning a lesson and presenting information logically and
sequentially; prioritizing what needs to be learned; having clear and coherent
aims; accommodating different learning styles; and, last but not least,
understanding the feelings and motivations of a particular group of learners.
 The notion that teachers with a high level of NI make for more effective
language teachers was backed up in a piece of research conducted among a
group of 80 Iranian teachers and their 673 students (Pishghadam et al.,
2011). The teachers, who were from a variety of backgrounds – some had
majored in TEFL, others were English Literature graduates, others graduates
in English Translation – were measured for their NI levels and it was found
that those with a high level were more ‘successful’ teachers. (Success in this
case was measured in terms of both learners’ progress – both real and as
perceived by the student – and learners’ enjoyment of a particular teacher’s
lessons.) The research also pointed out that among the subcomponents of NI,
the most effective skill for teaching was the ability to plan and organize
events into a coherent whole. The study concluded: “To recruit qualified
instructors, language schools can incorporate narrative performance as one
 of the criteria of selecting effective instructors” (Pishghadam et al., 2011, p.
187).
 I don’t want to get into the details or merits of specific teacher recruitment
policies, but this confirmed something I had thought for some time: for a skill
which we so admire in others and which so compels us to listen to others,
why does the development of narrative skills not feature more prominently in
teaching and learning syllabuses?
 PICTURE AND STORY
 So I have developed various activities that a) ally picture and story to make
learning more memorable, and b) exploit one of the universal elements of
stories or help to cultivate one of the cognitive abilities that are part of
narrative intelligence. These activities are transferable: that is to say, you can
use them with other texts and images.

Re-telling from different perspectives (and understanding social context)

Students read a story told from a neutral perspective and then are asked to re-tell the story
from the viewpoint of one of the characters in it. This helps them to empathize more with the
characters in the story and to see ‘the bigger picture’. At the same time, it is an excellent way to
activate the language used in the story and make it more memorable. These are the steps of the
lesson.
1. a) Look at the photo (https://goo.gl/RiAFXT) and answer these questions: What can you
see in the photo? How do you feel about this person’s situation? Is this something you
see much in your country? What is people’s reaction generally?
2. b) Listen to/read the story and note down the main events.
3. c) Work in groups of three. Cover the text. Then retell the story from the perspective of:
A. John Byrne B. The 18-year old youth C. A
member of the emergency services
4. d) Now answer these questions: Do you feel any differently about
the characters in the story now? How? What action (if any) do you
think should be taken in light of this incident?
5. e) Compare your answers to what actually happened (Byrne
was given a ‘Compassionate Citizen Award’ and the youth was sentenced to 4 months in prison.)
John Byrne, a 38-year-old homeless man who had lived on the streets of Dublin for the best part
of 22 years, was sitting on O’Connell Bridge, which straddles the River Liffey in the centre of
Dublin. O’Connell Bridge is a main thoroughfare into the centre of Dublin and Byrne used to sit
there and beg quite often. Beside him was his companion, a rabbit named Barney. As he sat
there, an 18-year-old youth passed by, picked up the rabbit and tossed it over the bridge into the
river below. Without hesitation, Byrne jumped into the freezing cold water after it. He managed
to grab the rabbit and then hold onto a ledge under the bridge to prevent them both from being
swept down the river by the current. One of the hundreds of onlookers called the emergency
services to help get Byrne back to land, but it was a good 40 minutes before help arrived. In the
meantime, Byrne gave Barney the kiss of life and managed to save the rabbit from dying.
Taking in both gist and detail
Students hear a descriptive part of a story and are asked to draw or note down the images
(visualization). They are then asked about the wider context. The idea is to show that gist does
not necessarily come before detail, as the teaching canon would have it. It also helps learners to
discover what a useful tool visualization can be in aiding memory. I usually use the opening
paragraphs of the novel Utz by Bruce Chatwin (1988), but for copyright reasons, here I have
used a much-adapted version. These are the steps of the lesson.
1. a) Tell the students this is a story about a collector. Ask them to look at the picture
(https://goo.gl/EaUdgF) and describe what it is the person collects. Discuss the things
people collect.
2. b) Tell the students to take a piece of paper and to draw or note in words the most
striking images in the story they are about to hear.
3. c) Read the story. Then ask them who drew the following: stamping feet, a bunch of
flowers, shutters opening, birds flying, etc. so that
collectively you rebuild the picture of the scene.
4. d) Then ask about gist. What was the occasion? Who attended the
funeral? Discuss what makes this seem a particularly sad occasion.
Early in the morning on February 28th 1976, Henrik Fischer was standing alone outside the dark
grey church waiting for the wedding car and his bride to arrive. He stamped his feet to keep
warm. In his hand, he held a small bunch of tired-looking flowers, which he had bought the day
before. He watched the street slowly coming to life. Across the street a woman threw open the
shutters of her fourth floor apartment, causing the birds on the window to fly off. Another
woman was sweeping wet snow from in front of her shop. And now and then a large piece of
melting snow would slip from the roof of a building and fall crashing to the street below.
After a little while a man with greasy grey hair and a dark overcoat approached him. A drop of
water hung from the end of his nose.
‘Is this St Martin Luther Church?’ the man asked.
‘Yes,’ said Fischer.
The man disappeared and then a few minutes later pulled open the huge
carved wooden doors of the church from the inside. Without saying a word he then stepped
through a low doorway, bumping his head on the frame as he went. A few moments later
Fischer heard the first notes of Mendelssohn’s wedding march coming from the giant steel pipes
of the organ above.
Integrating the new with what has already been learnt
The idea here is to integrate new vocabulary into a story without pre- teaching it. The meaning
should be clear from the context and the story should be engaging enough for students to want
to know the meaning.
1. a) Focus the students’ attention on the photo of Daniel Kish (https:// goo.gl/hNpt1l) and
tell them they are going to hear the true story of this man’s life. Don’t draw attention to
his blindness. They may guess this for themselves, but at this point should not comment.
2. b) Readthestoryaloudtwice,thesecondtimestressingthewordsin bold in the text.
3. c) Go through the story once more and try to elicit the missing words from the students.
4. d) Mime the new words and elicit them one more time, this time writing the words on
the board.
5. e) Finally, ask the students to re-tell the story to each other using the words on the
board.
This is the story of a man who overcame a physical problem in an amazing way. Daniel Kish was
blind from the age of one. But he learned to see by using his tongue and his ears. From a young
age Daniel made a click (make the sound here) with his tongue as he walked. Then he listened
for an echo. If the echo was loud, he knew something was near to him. If the echo was not loud,
he knew the object was far away. Daniel is now very good at doing this. He can click his tongue
two or three times every second. He can even ride a bicycle – something that is impossible for
most blind people. Bats, which only fly at night, do the same thing, because it helps them to find
their way in the dark. For this reason, people call Daniel “the real Batman”.
Organizing and giving a clear structure to events
It is a rule of good news reporting that the writer must give as much of the key information in
the opening paragraph as possible. Subsequent paragraphs can give more detail, but the reader
should be able to find the answers to ‘the five W’s and the H’ (who, what, where, when, why
and how) as quickly as possible. This rule of thumb encourages the students to think about
structure and organisation when creating their own news stories.
a) Explain the idea of the 5 W’s and the H to the students.
b) Focus their attention on the photo (https://goo.gl/59dWCm) and ask them to make these
questions about what they see, e.g., “Who
14. The picture and the story

is this man?”
c) Hear their questions in open class and ask them to speculate on the answers before they read
the news article.
4. d) Ask the students to read the article. Were the questions answered in the first
paragraph or later?
5. e) Give the students other pictures from newspapers or news magazines and get them
to write a story that also answers the 5 W’s and the H as quickly as possible for the
reader.
In his latest artwork created for the Moscow Foto Biennale in 2012, Chinese artist Liu Bolin
blends into a background of a newsagent’s magazine display. When his assistants finished
painting him in, he seemed to have disappeared.
Pictures like these have made Bolin internationally famous and earned him the title ‘The
Invisible Man’, which is somewhat ironic because in his native China, Bolin is largely unknown.
He started making such pieces as a statement on behalf of his fellow artists about how ignored
they felt by the government and society. Bolin loves the challenge of ‘disappearing’ into any
surroundings, whether it’s a magazine display, a cinema, a building site or a national
monument.
No trick photography or photo-shopping is used and each image is carefully planned out. First,
before entering the scene, he tells the photographer how he would like the picture to look. Then
he asks his assistant to paint him in, a process that can take up to ten hours while he stands
completely still.
OTHER ACTIVITIES FOR COLLABORATIVE STORY-TELLING BASED ON IMAGES
Organising or sequencing a narrative for dramatic effect
Find a photo that shows a dramatic moment in a story – e.g., someone falling into the water.
Collaboratively build the story from this point, asking what had happened to get to this point
and what happened next. (This activity is great for narrative tenses.)
Understanding human character and emotion
Find a picture of someone looking thoughtful or pensive in an everyday situation, e.g., lost in
thought on a train or at the bus stop. Elicit what the person is thinking about and build a story
from there. You could do the same with a picture of someone smiling to themselves.
Understanding social context
Ask the students to work in pairs and complete the text with a name and place anywhere in the
world. Then ask them to draw or describe the place, the setting for the story, and to write two
lines saying what the person did next.
______ has lived in ______ all her life. Her house is just 10 minutes away from her elderly and
frail parents. Then one day, on her 47th birthday, she receives an email from an old friend,
asking her to go and join him at his new internet company in California.