Visual Observation In Language Learning

Introduction

Language learning and teaching is nowadays often defined in terms of the four language skills: listening, reading (receptive skills), writing and speaking (productive skills). The four skills are not mutually exclusive but often interconnected, for example in spoken interaction, speaking requires listening and in written interaction, writing requires reading.

This paper will discuss the position of an eventual fifth language skill “visual observation” through experiences made during Swahili language lessons at the French Ministry of Foreign affairs and pedagogical implications of this skill. Swahili is a vehicular Bantu language spoken in East Africa by more than 100 million speakers. Whereas Swahili is taught as a foreign language

It also helps them understand what is happening; some students are easily destabilized with audio comprehension exercises but with the visual component it helps them to stay focused. Furthermore, this paper will show that like other skills, the observing skill, in order to be efficient, requires some training and it is interrelated with the four other skills. It will finally yields educational implications.

Visual observation skill will be studied in relation with the new tendencies in foreign language teaching whereby languages are reconsidered not in terms of boxes but in terms of networks and where internal and external boundaries are not anymore significant (Hudson: 2016).

The idea of this study came from the finding of different learning outcomes depending on the type of data used in a FL classroom: audio or video. Indeed, the outcomes when using video seemed during Swahili lessons to be multiple: auditory and visual. It also appeared as if this kind of activity requires different skills: listening and

The importance of culture in Foreign Language Pedagogy

According to the UNESCO Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity, culture should be regarded as the set of distinctive spiritual, material, intellectual and emotional features of society or a social group, and that it encompasses, in addition to art and literature, lifestyles, ways of living together, value systems, traditions and beliefs. A distinction exists between “Culture with a Capital C”—art, music, literature, and so on—and “culture with a small c”—the behavioural patterns and lifestyles of everyday people and both are important in language teaching. (Thanasoulas: 2001)

Culture has been already considered by different researchers as a possible 5ft language skill (Ozuorçon, Garza 1991) as research on foreign language pedagogy has shown that language and culture are closely related (Brown, 2007) and are best acquired together (Schulz, 2007). Brown (2007) describes the interrelatedness of language and culture stating “that one cannot separate the two without losing the significance of either language or culture".

But is culture really a skill? Cambridge English Dictionary states that culture is, "the way of life, especially the general customs and beliefs, of a particular group of people at a particular time" and therefore not a skill. Kramsch argues that