Importance of Visual Aids in the classroom

In agreement with Mac Ramirez who recognizes that visual aids can help to recreate real-life situations when the reality of English speaking environments might be otherwise inaccessible to students. In “The Neglected Tools Can Work for You” (1975), Ramirez outlines that learner of a second language has many obstacles to overcome, as far as possible, the teacher should expose the student to real-life situations; when this is not possible, the visual aid can serve as a substitute, and make students to recreate context to practice an use the language which is learning, giving more relevance to what the student is learning as the teacher is creative in the way we present and develop the material during the class-moment.

 In my opinion are many the advantages we can identify when using visual aid, and common objects, some we can mention are:  To make teaching clear, To make teaching a part of one’s personal experience, To bring the teaching to mind in the future when the visual aid is seen, To involve more senses, To add interest, and To draw a crowd (especially slides, films and videos), visuals aids improve listener retention, and can keep students motivated to learn, and paying attention, also if you decided bring into the classroom interactive material, they will be willing to join in class and make the course interesting as you let the student choose and participate actively in the classroom.

English language educators, or any other teacher of second language should help to make teaching and learning more pleasant and, ultimately, more successful, and I strongly believe that the presence of visual aids in the classroom make the class interesting and authentic, the challenge for the teacher is to create visual aids which would be bright and cheerful, being creative, and follow the basic rules concerning with visual aids. In conclusion Visual Aids’ major advantage is that they can enrich your teaching-learning process, and the opportunities for use them are only restricted by the teacher-students´ imagination or ingenuity, but the teacher will never forget that s/he is the responsible of creating and giving meaning for the visual aids or realia bring into classroom contexts.