Visualization in language learning

I have talked to hundreds of students about the way they think learn and most people claim to be visual learners. That is, they learn better when the new concepts are associated with images.

In fact, visualization for learning, already starts in infancy, during first language acquisition as we are biologically predisposed to link images and sounds to create and learn language. Reading to children from early on is crucial for their language development, and we cannot underestimate the importance of those very simplistic picture books that are available for babies. Pointing at pictures, or the actual objects in the real world is necessary for healthy language development and it is also part of our parenting instincts.

Though teaching infants to read (recognize words) is becoming more and more popular, we should not forget about the usefulness of visualization for second language acquisition. And don’t think of just pictures! This interesting article explains that when we look at a word, our brain sees it like a picture, not a group of letters. This ability will help us not only with acquiring new vocabulary but also to correctly spell the words in the future (or at least recognize if something is “off”). So read on and learn!

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