Using Visual Thinking for Effective Teaching and Learning

The present diploma paper is focused on using visual thinking at the English language lessons for more effective teaching and learning.

One of the priorities of Kazakhstan is the trilingual language policy of the State. The president of our country, Nursulatan Nazarbaev, has called citizens of Kazakhstan to learn three languages: Kazakh, Russian and English. He said: “Knowledge of three languages should become a standard practice for us. We are teaching these languages to our children starting from their first year at school. We need the English language to enter the global arena. Out of 10 million books published in the world 85% are in English. The science, all the new developments and information – they are all in English nowadays”. [1] The Kazakhstan government is continuing to reform our national system of education. The objective of this reforming is to create a world-class education system that will prepare learners for university-level study in English and help Kazakhstan compete internationally. But today’s system of teaching English at school needs to be improved.

One of the critical problems of teaching English as the second language is the lack of learners’ motivation and discipline. Learners of our schools are not enough interested or motivated in learning English. They can skip classes or chat with the classmates. But we can try to solve this problem by using visual thinking, because one key for increasing motivation is to use activities that are interesting for learners.

Visual thinking is important not only for learning, but for every-day life. Now, in the early 21st century, when we are flooded with visual messages of all types in a wide range of media on the Internet, television, and in personal and private spa...

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...er consists of two chapters. Introduction shows the relevance of the work and describes the object, the subject, the goal, the objectives and the methods used in our diploma paper. The first part is called Theoretical aspects of teaching English using Visual Thinking. It describes the core features of visual thinking practice and psychological difference of several types of intelligence. We classified the most popular visual aids in the second part of the diploma paper, which is called Classification of Visual Aids. It also includes description of the process of practical approbation during our teaching at secondary school and its analysis. In the conclusion we summarize all theoretical information on the topic and its connection with the teaching practice.

Works Cited

2. Visual Literacy in Education, http://www.smkb.ac.il/en/visual-literacy-edu viewed: 15/03/14