Title: Case Study on a 6-year old Cebuano Childs’ English Language Acquisition as Second

Language through Visual Aids

Proponents: Jehil Quisha Navhel E. Briones

Duration:

a.) This phase includes the following:

I. Introduction

Are you one of those people who closes your eyes to envision the exact location of where
you left your car keys? Do you bring up mental imagery when you're trying to remember what
you did last Tuesday afternoon? Do you remember the cover of every book you've ever read? Do
you have a photographic or near photographic memory? Then perhaps you are one of those
people with the visual learning style (Kelly 2018).

We see the world differently, that’s why we also learn differently. And because of that visual
learners are only able to know or learn things when they see it and can visualize it. Since the use
of technology and gadgets is very rampant to these days that even a months-old child already
knows how to use one, that makes most of the children of this generation a visual learner.
Children would now learn faster if they are able to see it, the more colorful and vibrant the visual
the more it gets the attention of a visual learner and the more they are able to remember what
they see rather than what they hear.

Visual aids online especially the use of YouTube and other entertainment media is very
effective for young visual learners in learning. For example, children watching nursery rhymes,
they would learn faster with the use of this visual aids that has combination of colorful aids, the
music and the jolly movements.

II. Statement of the problem

The study will provide an elaborate description on the subject’s English language acquisition,
to access the assumptions of the researcher, the following questions are imposed to further
achieve the goal of the study. Following are the study’s lines of inquiry:

1.) How can visual aids improve English language acquisition in reading and writing for
beginner ESL high school students?
2.) What is the Positive effect/s of using visual aids in a child’s English language
acquisition? And;
3.) What is the Negative effect/s of using visual aids in a child’s English language
acquisition?

III. Review of the Related Literature and Studies

What is Visual Learning?

Kelly (2018) stated that visual learning is one of the three different learning types
popularized by Niel D. Fleming in his VAK model of learning. Basically, this means that
visual learning is a style where in people need to see the information to learn it. And by
“seeing” comes from many forms from spatial awareness, photographic memory, color/tone,
brightness/contrast and other visual information. Classroom could be a very good place for
visual learner to learn. Teacher uses aids that would further elaborate to their students what
they meant and what their students should learn using overheads, the chalkboard, pictures,
graphs, maps and other visual aids that would help visual learners to learn.

Strengths of Visual Learning

Moreover, Kelly further stated that visual learners do really perform well in a modern
classroom setting. Since there are so many visual aids in a classroom like whiteboards,
handouts, photos and more. Visual learners have many strengths that can boost their
performance in school. Here are the few of the strengths of this learning type:

First is they instinctively follow directions, they can easily visualize objects, they have a
great sense of balance and alignment. Visual learners could be a great organizer, they have a
strong sense 0f color, and is very color oriented. These visual learners can also see passage
from a page in a book in their mind, they could also notice minute similarities and
differences between objects and people easily and lastly visual learners can envision imagery
easily.

(Visual Aids and Multimedia in Second Language Acquisition)

The data that I collected suggested that using visual aids is very helpful for students.
Observations and surveys revealed interesting information about the ways teachers and
students interact. By analyzing the observation log sheets and students’ reflections, I
discovered that the major barrier to students’ achievement of a higher level of comprehension
is the lack of what I like calling “understanding and participation boosters” in the classroom.
However, the log sheet showed that students gained self-confidence gradually and became
much more interactive, voluntarily speaking and reading as well. They were not lost or
ashamed anymore of reading out loud and participating in the classroom discussion.
Studentsbecame much more aware of what they are going to talk about. In addition, by
observing the students I pulled out, I realized how engaging the topic that we studied became
once I introduced visual aids, scaffolding, and multimedia into the lesson. I realized that in at
the beginning, my students were confused and hesitant, until I started drawing and showing
those pictures. At that point, they became active speakers instead of simply passive listeners.
Moreover, the exercise papers showed that the students started writing more complete
sentences, using grammatically correct structures. This proved that even if the idea was a
complicated punctuation rule, with visual aids, my students were able to understand the
concept even though it was difficult. I was very happy with the results that I saw during my
observations, because they proved that visual aids help more than I had anticipated. From my
literature review I expected to see a difference, but I did not expect such a difference. The
students’ attitudes were different; instead of being frustrated by not getting the idea and being
left out. They were more involved in speaking, reading and writing. The most important
teaching recommendation from the action research is that teachers have to convey
information in a clear and explicit way. For instance: for the Halloween lesson, most of the
students do not celebrate Halloween and they do not know what its meaning and how they
celebrate it by showing them pictures or short clip or even movie to build their background.
In general, when the students received support with multimedia during the lessons, they
participated more in the classroom discussions and met most of the writing and reading
criteria. The delimitations of my action research were the short time period I was given to
implement the variables and the limited number of students who participated. Additional
research should look to add more time to the study to find out how much the visual aids
affect the students’ overall performance on a larger scale. Based upon this action research,
the inquiry, “Can visual aids improve English language acquisition in reading and writing for
a beginner ESL high School student?” was answered in the affirmative. Multimedia and
visual aids help beginner ESL middle and high school students in improving English
language acquisition in reading and writing very much. As a result of this research, I would
strongly recommend the following:

 Teachers should be well trained to use visual aids and the Smart Boards in the classroom
to help students to improve their writing skills.

 Opportunities to use books, pictures, and even the web must be provided to the students
during the school day for multiple subjects

 Teachers support their students who are interested in researching different topics by
utilizing visual aids in a manner that is appropriate for their level of English proficiency.