An Eye for Detail: Practicing Visual Literacy in Language Classrooms

With the fast emergence of new literacies, particularly digital and multi-modal ones, the demand for integration of visual and media literacies into educational programs is mounting. The present study narrates an experience of weaving a number of vision-oriented activities into a Reading Comprehension course. The participants of the study were a community of 22 female freshmen studying English Literature at a state university in Tehran. At the first stage, we focused on reading conceptual still images and short silent animations considering compositional, affective and critical dimensions of visual language. The vision net was cast wider as we practiced comparing and contrasting mental, graphic, and verbal imageries employed in an abridged literary novel and its movie adaptation. In yet another comparative expedition, we embarked on making comparisons and contrasts between two movie adaptations of an English novel, produced at two different eras, with a focus on their literary, cinematic, dramatic, and ideological dimensions like the portrayals of characters and plot, settings, lighting and camera techniques, costumes, soundtracks, values and ideologies, and the like. Such vision-based practices, accompanied with vehement classroom discussions and reflective writings, provided spaces for the students to experience more profound understanding and appreciation of the ―art‖ of language in different genres or mediums, fathom the potentials offered or systematic constraints imposed by them, and practice becoming active analyzers rather than passive viewers.

Keywords:

Visual literacy , conceptual still images , silent animations , movies , English Language classes