A Survey of the Application of Visual Literacy in Senior High School English Teaching

邢月娇

1     Introduction

Since the beginning of the development of human civilization，graphics and symbols have been closely linked with human civilization.With the continuous development of human civilization，graphics and images have become more abundant.In the21st century，the arrival of"picture-reading era"has put forward higher requirements for the im‐provement of public visual literacy.In2003，in a report entitled"21st Century Abilities for21st Century Learners：Basic Literacy in the Digital Age"，North American Central Education Laboratory lists visual literacy alongside scientific literacy，economic literacy，technical literacy and information literacy as the basic literacy for young people in the21st century.In2017，in the latest revision of the General High School Eng‐lish Curriculum Standards，the Ministry of Education added the skill of"viewing"to the original English language skills of"listening，speaking，reading and writing"，which can reflect that our country is attaching more and more importance to the training of students'visual literacy.The pur‐pose of the study is to know the application status of visual literacy insenior high school English teaching，and then give suggestions to help senior high school English teachers to develop visual literacy and apply itin class.

2     Literature Review

2.1  Visual Literacy

The term visual literacy was first coined in1969by John Debes，who argued that visual literacy was the ability of the human being to de‐velop a set of visual skills by watching and integrating other visual ex‐periences.Visual ability played a fundamental role in the normal learn‐ing process，anda person with visual literacy can develop these abilitiesto understand and differentiate visual actions，objects，and symbolsin their environment，whether they're created naturally or artificially（Nie，2009，p15）.The basic definition of visual literacy is the ability to read，write and create visual images.It is a concept that relates to art and de‐sign but it also has much wider applications.Visual literacy is about lan‐guage，communication and interaction.Visual media is a linguistic tool with which we communicate，exchange ideas and navigate our highly visual digital world（Shane，2020）.

Visual literacy is becoming more and more popular in different ar‐eas，and it is becoming an important ability in our daily life.It is neces‐sary that visual literacy should play a key role in language learning.In order to combine visual literacy with other English skills to improve teachersteaching and help students learn English better，visually liter‐ate teachers should choose the most suitable forms of images for teaching the main English language skills：listening，speaking，reading andwriting as well as the English language sub-skills：vocabulary，gram‐mar，pronunciation.Visually literate teachers are able to choose or create the right images and use them to teach the English language skills and sub-skills（Suryanto，2014，p40）.

2.2  Viewing Skill

According to High School English Curriculum Standards（2017），"viewing"usually refers to the skills of understanding and expressing meaning by using figures，tables，animations，symbols and videos in multimodal discourse.Therefore，the skill of"viewing"is not only an important channel to obtain information，but also an auxiliary tool for students to convey information and express their views.In modern me‐dia，students need to observe，compare，analyze and think to get infor‐mation from pictures，symbols，tables and videos through the skill of"viewing"，and use the knowledge and the skill which they have learned to grasp the connotation and the significance so as to obtain the sufficient language input.In addition，teachers also need to help and guide stu‐dents to use drawing，charts，symbols and other ways to organize and convey information，express their views，opinions and suggestions（Ji‐ang&Tang，2019，P59）.In the Canadian Common Curriculum Frame‐work，viewing is defined as‘an active process of attending and compre‐hending visual media，such as television，advertising images，films，diagrams，symbols，photographs，videos，drama，drawings，sculptureandpaintings.So‘viewingisabout‘reading-analyzing，evaluatingand appreciating-visual texts（.Kieran，2020）.

As can be seen，viewing is becoming a really important skill in lan‐guage learning，they all stress on viewing in multimodal texts，so lan‐guage teachers should focus on and research the skill of“viewing”in order to apply in practice and help students to use the skill to learn lan‐guage better.

3     Research Methodology

Based on the background of the present study，the research ques‐tion is put forward for the purpose of this survey：What is the application actualities of visual literacy in senior high school English teaching？

In order to make the survey，twenty-two senior high school English teachers from Senior High School in Shandong Province were selected as subjects.

In the survey，twenty-two questionnaires were collected and IBM SPSS Statistics22was used to analyze the data from these questionnaires.

4     Results and Suggestions

The application actualities of visual literacy in the survey consist of cognitive situation about applying visual literacy，usage of visual literacy and effect of visual literacy.

For the cognitive situation about applying visual literacy，54.5%English teachers know a little about visual literacy，only4.5%learn a lot about it and40.9%English teachers know nothing about visual literacy.Further more，only five of the twenty-two English teachers can have the awareness to cultivate studentsabilities of visual literacy，while nine of them dont have the awareness to cultivate studentsabilities of visual literacy.If the teachers know little about visual literacy，they wont have the ideas to help students improve the competency of using visual litera‐cy in their classes.

IntermsofusageofvisualliteracyinhighschoolEnglishclass，45.5       %English teachers give students1to2minutes to analyze visualtexts，27.3%give3to4minutes and the rest give5to6minutes.And91%English teachers use visual texts to guess or understand the texts in their textbooks.When it comes to mind map or concept map，we can see that only31.8%English teachers often use them tohelpteach，only18.2%English teachers often require students to use，andmost of themuse mind map or concept map in English reading classes.81.8%English teachers often use Powerpoint in their classes to pass the visual informa‐tion to students，63.6%English teachers often show pictures to students on Powerpoint，72.7%English teachers choose to show the pictures di‐rectly，and when they show the visual texts，81.8%of them prefer to ask questions after showing students pictures.MostEnglishteacherswould like to use pictures in their English teaching rather than use mind map，they seldom apply mind map to teach，so they even dont teach students how to use mind map to help them learn English.Powerpoint is really a useful teaching tool to help English teachers to show pictures vividly，but maybe they dont apply the tool richly.

As for the effect ofvisualliteracy，72.7%Englishteachersagree that it is helpful for English teachers to apply visual literacy in English teaching and for students to learn English better with visual literacy.So，it is glad to see that most English teachers affirm the role of visual liter‐acy for English teaching and learning，but how to apply properly and ef‐fectively may be a big problem for them.

In accordance with the situation，there are some suggestions for secondary school teachers.First，take the training as the basic way to cultivate and popularize the visual literacy knowledge to the secondary school teachers.Second，carry out teaching and research activities to im‐prove the visual literacy of secondary school teachers actively.Third，make full use of network resources to improve the visual literacy of sec‐ondary school teachers.Fourth，strengthen practice and improve the creative thinking of secondary school teachers.Finally，combine the cul‐tivation of visual literacy with the inheritance of national culture.（Liu&Gao，2009，p49）

References

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