In this chapter, the related literature including concepts of schema theory, graphic organizer approach, effects of illustration on L2 learner’s learning, learning disabled student’s learning, roles / functions of illustration and students’ responses to illustration would be
reviewed to provide an overall understanding of applying the illustration to language teaching.
Schema Theory
According to schema theory, knowledge or concepts in a human’s brain are arranged and presented by the form of slots. Each slot of schemata contains particular information or concepts. Moreover, these information and concepts of present schemata are believed to be helpful for the learning process and referred to the prior knowledge of the human’s brain.
During the learning process, schemata may provide a framework when the prior knowledge is activated by input (Kang, 2004).
In addition, Anderson et al. (1976) indicated that the comprehension acquired by means of schemata and factors of personal experience is seemed as the process of how schemata are instantiated. Furthermore, Hudson (1982) stated that:
Schemata are abstract in the sense that they contain a slot or place holder for each constituent element in a knowledge structure. They are stereotyped in that they indicate typical relationships among the elements. The reader is involved in a process of constructing a correspondence between the relevant schemata and the givens or knowns of a message (p.7).
Based on schema theory, background knowledge could be categorized into formal (textual) schemata and content schemata. Formal schemata refers to the background knowledge of the formal, rhetorical organization, such as differences in genre. Content schemata refers to the background knowledge of the content area of the text. Driscoll (1994) pointed out that situation-specific schema is context specific. Because of the situation-specific schema, experts who have complex developed schema of a particular subject area and novices who have simple developed schema of a particular subject area, may have different interpretations of information. They could be affected by their prior individual experience. Moreover, since the schema is related to personal living experience, Widmayer (n.d.) revealed that factors of cultural background and personal experience play an important role in constructing one’s knowledge. Therefore, when presenting materials, teachers must pay attention to materials that contain potential cultural-biases.
Many studies related to schema theory have affirmed that background knowledge is beneficial for comprehending and memorizing text information (Pearson, Hansen, and Gordon,1979). In addition, the schema theory is applied to all populations, including young and old, native learners and non-native learners (Chen & Graves, 1995). In terms of
corresponding instructional strategies, reading teachers have found that activating students’
schema by applying metacognitive strategies is helpful to their teaching. Some
metatacognitive strategies designed based on schema theory are reading headings or titles,
looking at illustration in the text and making predictions according to the titles and pictures.
Schema theory has shown its effectiveness on the learning process in many ways, whereas there are some possible reasons for causing comprehension failure. They included (1) Individuals do not possess the appropriate schema related to the issue. (2) Individuals possess appropriate schema but without sufficient input to activate one’s schemata. (3) Individuals do not interpret the content consistent with the author’s intent (Vurdien, 1993).
Graphic Organizer Approach
Teachers commonly utilize the semantic or graphic organizer approach to help young learners organize their ideas and make the ideas become the foundations for reading and writing activities. Moreover, the semantic or graphic organizer approach could be applied to all level of learners (K to college) and for the learners with special needs (趙瑞芳, 2000).
Graphic organizer refers to all kinds of visual representations of concepts that can help students learn, imagine, remember and organize important information in their learning, such as linear lines, boxes, circles, the semantic map, the structured overview and so on (趙瑞芳, 1997). These graphic organizers are beneficial for searching appropriate schemata within one’s mind and relating the information to the text’s meaning. Pearson, Hansen, and Gordon (1978) and Brown & Smiley (1977) also revealed that graphic strategy is facilitated to evoke prior knowledge of the present topic which could help learners to comprehend new information effectively.
For the graphic organizer approach, 趙瑞芳 (2000) provided an overview of some of the graphic models and teaching guidelines. In order to present the most basic and
elementary of graphic organizers, the following semantic organizers are highlighted: (1) Realia organizers are used to help students connect an activity, displayed by a picture (for instance, eating dinner) or with real objects (for example, cups, tables) that could be used within the context of the topic; (2) Picture organizers provide the notion to young learners that things can be symbolized through pictures. Then the students can use picture symbols to organize relationships; (3) Verb organizers teach students the base of the semantic relationship, starting from verbs and pictures to verbs and nouns. They also form the basic ideas to connect reading to writing paragraphs; (4) Noun organizers focus on the noun as the central word and the first noun word is placed in the central position. Moreover, before students try to create a noun organizer based on a paragraph, they should learn to develop a paragraph based on a noun organizer; (5) Based on brainstorming and telegraphic language (essential key words), concept organizers bring more creative thinking and language structuring; (6) Cluster organizers is a kind of semantic map that can motivate or evoke students to write by providing a core of stimulus words, and (7) Each episode of episodic organizers is treated as a cluster with a major concept and with related minor information or events. The actions within an organizer may need to demonstrate as a series of events in a set sequence. It is useful for summarizing autobiographies, novels, and so forth.
Effects of Illustration/Comic Strips on L2 learners’ Learning
Illustration has been applied by L2 teachers in their instruction for many years.
Imagery-illustration interaction theory, which suggests that mental imagery and
text-relevant illustration enhance learners’ understanding of text by interacting each other and be served as the theoretical foundation of illustration application (Gambrell & Jawitz, 1993). Besides, material designers of English teaching usually involve illustration in their publications since they believe illustration is helpful for language learning (Kid Castle Internet Technologies Ltd, 2005). Numerous advantages of illustration have been revealed by researchers.
Wright (1989) pointed out that illustration in language learning shows its
effectiveness in (1) maintaining students’ interests and motivations, (2) creating a sense of the context of the language, and (3) providing a specific and related point or stimulus to learners. Furthermore, Alley (1994) concluded that illustration could facilitate foreign language learning in four ways:
(1) Providing clues to the global meaning of an utterance by setting the scene and giving background knowledge, (2) Specifying the meaning of individual words as in a vocabulary list supplemented by appropriate pictures, (3) Assisting in the explanation of grammatical points, and (4) Aiding proper pronunciation through the use of sagittal sections which indicate the correct position of lips, tongue, and teeth (p.490).
In Taiwan, several studies (周鴻謀, 2005; 梁冠平,2003; 陳宏喜, 2006; 黃幼莉, 2005; 羅國方, 2004) were conducted to explore the effects of illustration on English
instruction. 黃幼莉 (2005) employed a study to probe the effects of pictures on reading
comprehension in reading selections of American festivals. The study involved 78 (two classes) third-year junior high school students and each class was divided into three groups according to their English proficiency including high, middle and low. Students in control group finished five reading comprehension tests without pictures, whereas students in experimental group completed five tests with pictures. Questionnaires on the students’ perspectives on reading assessments and illustration application were distributed after the treatment. Findings revealed that there was no significant difference between two classes on the overall performance.
Otherwise, it showed a significant difference between the performances of the low-proficiency students in the experimental group and their counterparts in the control group, whereas the significant difference was not found between the two high-proficiency groups and
middle-proficiency groups. In addition, most of the subjects held positive attitudes toward the design of the reading assessments and the illustration application. Furthermore, teachers were suggested to promote their teaching by applying pictorial aids. The findings corresponded to study of 周鴻謀 (2003) which indicated that illustration application received positive impact on elementary fifth graders with low English proficiency. However, it did not show any significant difference between high-achievers in experimental group and control group.
Moreover, most subjects (high and low achievers) presented positive perceptions toward the effects of applying visual aids to enhance their reading comprehension ability.
However, in the study of 梁國平 (2003), the findings of showed that there was no significant difference between the experimental and control groups as well as between the performances of high-achievers/ low-achievers in experimental group and their
counterparts in the reading performances. The limited question format with immediate verbal multiple-choice and absence of color might be the possible reasons that caused the results. Nevertheless, the subjects also performed positive attitudes toward the effects of illustration on the reading comprehension. The study of 陳宏喜 (2006) aimed to investigate the effectiveness of illustration on EFL senior high school students’ reading performances, comprehension and recall. It explored teachers’ and students’ perspectives of applying illustration in EFL textbooks as well. According to the results, though the effectiveness of illustration on senior high EFL students’ reading comprehension was not salient, the with-illustration group performed better than without-illustration group in recalling specific information. Additionally, in this study, the illustration was beneficial for students to cope with some key words, sentences, or the main idea in the passages. The findings on students’ and teachers’ responses related to the functions of illustration will be presented in the following sections. 羅國方 (2004) employed a qualitative research on the effects of visual images on learner’s comprehension and creativity. The study proposed that visual images enhanced students’ comprehension of vocabulary, phrases and the main ideas of the teaching content as well as guided students to gain additional messages. Otherwise,
as for creativity, visual images evoked students’ better prior knowledge for generating and eliciting ideas.
Small, Lovett and Scher (1993) conducted four experiments to examine the effects of pictures on the recall of expository prose. Experiment 1 was aimed to find out whether or not pictures facilitate students’ recall on illustrated information, unillustrated information or both. Researchers designed a further study to explore which types of unillustrated information, behavioral and physical attributes of unusual animals, could be promoted by providing pictures as experiment 2. Experiment 3 utilized four conditions, including illustration with complete information mentioned in text, illustration with incomplete information mentioned in text, illustration with irrelevant information, and no illustration to compare the effectiveness on readers’ recall. By having experiment 4, researchers tested whether effects of illustration could be applied to unfamiliar topics. First and third graders were included in these experiments. From these experiments’ findings, (1) Researchers reconfirmed the effects of pictures on facilitating children’s recall of illustrated and
unillustrated information. (2) No significant difference was found in recalling two types of unillustrated information, including behavioral and physical attributes of unusual animals.
(3) Both kinds of illustration, with complete information and incomplete information, were beneficial to children’s recall and there was no significantly different effect between these types of illustration. Otherwise, illustration with irrelevant information can not show any
effectiveness on children’s recall. (4) Effects of illustration were applied to both familiar and unfamiliar topics in this study.
Regarding the effects of different kinds of illustration, Boling, Eccarius, Smith and Friek (2004) explored the effectiveness of illustration with graphical devices and
illustration without graphical devices by doing survey in order to find out whether the graphical devices influence the interpretations made by readers and if the interpretations match the materials designers’ intentions. In this study, graphical devices served as a useful shorthand method for representing phenomena, such as thoughts, speeches, and past or future actions, which are not visually evident when viewing a scene (Boling, Eccarius, Smith, and Friek, 2004). Two hundred and forty one out of 471 participants worked on the surveys with graphical elements and 230 of them completed the surveys without graphical elements. Results indicated that the subjects who worked on the surveys with graphical elements interpreted the illustration more consistently with the material designers’
intentions. Besides the different effects of illustration with- and without- graphical elements, the results showed that the interpretations made by US college students were significantly different from the interpretations made by the Malay college students. The study results reconfirmed the findings of Hewings’ (1991) study which proposed that people with different culture may perceive illustration in different ways.
In terms of the effectiveness of comic strips, Liu (2004) conducted a study about the
effects of comic strip on L2 learners’ reading comprehension. This study used a 2 (English proficiency level: high, low) ¯ 2 (text difficulty: difficult, easy) ¯ 2 (visual support: with, without comic strips) factorial design. The subjects involved in this research were 107 adult ESL learners. They were divided into two groups, with 53 in the low-proficiency group and 54 in the high-intermediate-proficiency group. Students in each group were randomly assigned to receive four conditions, each condition with 13 or 14 students. The four conditions were: (1) low-level text only, (2) low-level text with comic strips, (3) high-level text only, and (4) high-level text with comic strips. The results of the study indicated that the comic strips might help low-proficiency students in their reading comprehension, whereas the comic strips did not enhance the high-level students’ reading comprehension.
Effects of Illustration/Graphic Organizer for Learning Disabled Students
Illustration is applied for not only general students but also learning disabled students.
Some researches had been done to examine the effects of illustration on learning disabled students. Similar to general students, previous study results presented different impact on learning disabled students with different ages and proficiency level.
Rose (1986) investigated the effects of illustration on reading comprehension of learning disabled students. The participants involved in this study were thirty-two learning disabled students who were at elementary school age. The researcher randomly selected the
participants from learning disabilities classes. All of the subjects had been diagnosed as learning disabled and it had been proven that their IQ scores were within normal ranges on standardized intelligence tests. The Barnell-Loft Multiple Skills (three books of Level A-A2-A4) was selected as the reading materials. Though the reading materials were unfamiliar to the students, the materials matched the student’s reading level. During the experiment, the subjects totally received the three reading passages. The first passage was used to verify the reading passage level to meet the students’ reading level. After that the second one was presented for students to read (either illustrated or non-illustrated; order was randomly assigned for each subject) and to answer a set of comprehension questions.
Then, the students read the third passage (both illustrated and non-illustrated; the opposite of the second passage).
The findings revealed that learning disabled students who were at elementary school age comprehended non-illustrated reading passages significantly better than illustrated reading passages. The possible explanation was presented as well. Since learning disabled students might have difficulty filtering out extraneous stimuli, such as distractibility, illustration might be a kind of distractibility for them to comprehend the printed stimulus.
And, their attention could be distracted from the printed information by providing
illustration. The study results did not correspond to the study of 蘇婉容 (1994). 蘇婉容 (1994) proposed that providing illustration with vocabulary learning might interfere
learning disabled students’ learning since their attention would be distracted from the vocabulary items by presenting illustration. However, she ascertained the effectiveness of illustration in sentence and reading comprehension on learning disabled students because illustration was attractive, meaningful, connected and memorable. She further suggested teachers apply illustration to increase students’ comprehension of readings.
Besides, Mastropieri, Scruggs and Levin (1987) explored the effectiveness of different kinds of illustration, both mnemonic and nonmnemonic, on learning disabled students of junior high school. The study employed an expository prose related to reasons of dinosaur extinction. Sixty-seven learning disabled students in junior high schools were randomly assigned to three conditions, including (1) mnemonic-picture condition: pictorial representations directly linked to the reasons’ plausibility numbers, (2)
nonmnemonic-picture condition: pictorial representations of each reason which were the same as mnemonic-picture without connections of plausibility numbers, and (3) no-picture control condition: without any kind of illustration. After receiving interventions, three measures were tested: (1) free recall: how many reasons were remembered, (2) numbered recall: how many reasons were remembered with correct plausibility numbers, and (3) additional recall: how much additional information related to the reasons was remembered.
From the results, the study indicated that both mnemonic and nonmnemonic illustration facilitated students’ free recall. However, only mnemonic enhanced students’ numbered
recall. In terms of additional recall, neither mnemonic nor nonmnemonic pictures revealed significant effectiveness. 周台傑 and 黃雪慧 (1991) conducted a study to examine the effects of using illustration and imagery strategies on learning disabled students at junior high school age in terms of sentence acquisition, retention, and generalization . Five conditions were compared including (1) complete picture group, (2)
complete-picture-imagery group, (3) partial picture-imagery group, (4) imagery-instruction group, and (5) control group. The study results indicated that complete picture group and complete-picture-imagery group received significant effects on sentence acquisition and retention. However, imagery-instruction group did not show any significant impact on sentence acquisition, retention, and generalization. Therefore, the study suggested teachers apply illustration in their classrooms on various subjects to enhance learning disable student’s learning.
Furthermore, Scruggs and Levin’s study as well as the study of 周台傑 and 黃雪慧 presented different results from Rose’s (1986). Age might be the possible factor since the subjects of Mastropieri, Scruggs and Levin’s study were junior high students who had higher ability for filtering out extraneous stimuli than students at elementary school age.
The study ascertained the effectiveness of illustration on learning disabled students and demonstrated that not all types of pictures revealed significant effects on students learning while different criterion tasks were provided. The illustration type provided with text should be considered more carefully.
Regarding more studies related to illustration application on learning disabled students, Kim, Vaughn, Wanzek and Wei (2004) presented a synthesis of research about graphic organizers and their effects on reading comprehension of students with learning disabilities. Twenty-one studies encompassing 848 students with learning disabilities were included. The study probed the effects of graphic organizer from six aspects, including (1) types of graphic organizers: semantic organizers, cognitive maps with a mnemonic, cognitive maps without a mnemonic and framed outlines, (2) participants’ grade level:
elementary, junior high, or high school, (3) persons implementing interventions:
researchers, teachers or researcher-teachers, (4) persons generating graphic organizers:
teachers, researchers, or students, (5) types of measures: researcher-developed
comprehension tests or standardized reading test, and (6) additional measures: transfer tests, which used to evaluate students abilities for applying graphic organizer to other passages.
According to the findings of this systematic synthesis of research, all kinds of graphic
According to the findings of this systematic synthesis of research, all kinds of graphic