7 Simple Visual Aids Youve Gotta Use in

Your ESL Classroom

A picture is worth a thousand words.

Nowhere is this truer than in the ESL classroom.

Suppose after a verb game or during some reading comprehension exercise, one of your curious
students wants to know the difference between He danced at the party and He was dancing at
the party.

What will you do?

You could probably give a really clear explanation about how one sentence states what happened
at a specific place or time, and the other gives background information to establish a scene in the
past.

And then maybe youd give a couple more examples prior to showing how the two very similar
tensespast perfect and past perfect continuousdo in fact differ.

Or, you could draw a picture of two timelines, one representing each sentence, and have the
students describe them.

Which would be more effective?

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The Benefits of Using Visual Aids in the ESL Classroom

Visual aids, like those two timelines, are so perfect for the ESL classroom. Heres why:

Helps students understand and remember concepts more easily

When you present a concept using a visual aid, you are giving your students something they can
associate with that concept. Later, when they try to recall it, all they have to do is bring up the
image you used.

Visual aids also help you present clearly and smoothly, without complications or tangents.

Reduces Teacher Talking Time

Like I said at the top of the post, a picture is worth a thousand words. Visual aids allow you to
explain the meaning behind various vocabulary and structures without explanation. In addition,
you can ask prompting questions about your visual aids to boost Student Talking Time and lead
them to the answer.

For example, if your visual aid is a timeline illustrating someones work experience, you can ask
them How long did Bob work for ABC Inc.?, etc.

Provides a touchpoint you can refer back to throughout the lesson

Visual aids not only help put the new language out there, they also help remind students of the
language theyve learned as the class goes on.

For example, if your students make an error with the target grammar, or use a different word
when they could have used a new word from the lesson, you can direct them back to the visual
aid as if to say, Try and say it like we practiced earlier.

Makes the class more dynamic and fun

Visual aids add some pizazz to your lessons, and help take the focus off of you or the textbook.

Now that weve outlined just some of the benefits of using visual aids, lets look at seven visual
aids that work.

7 Easy ESL Visual Aids You Can Use Immediately

There are tons of games and activities that you can do with visuals, but youre not going to find
in-depth activities here. Rather, I want to show how you can use visuals to introduce new words
or clarify conceptswithout giving lengthy explanations to your students. (Were reducing TTT,
remember?)

These are simple, effective teaching aids. So here we go:

1. Pictures
Pictures are great for presenting many nouns, adjectives and simple sentence patterns. If you are
using a textbook in class, make use of the pictures in it; they are sometimes very simple and
effective. With younger students, solicit words by asking What do you see? Be sure to call on
many students and meet all of their suggestions with positive feedback. With older students, you
can have them predict what a chapter will be about based on the pictures from the opening page.

But what if your textbook doesnt have any good pictures? Or if youre not using a textbook?

In those cases, try using realia, such as pictures from newspapers or magazines. (Well touch a
little more on realia later in the post.) If your school has them, flashcards or picture dictionaries
also work well for teaching nouns, adjectives and verbs across a wide range of themes.

Here are a few ideas of how to incorporate pictures into your teaching:

Use personal pictures: Whenever possible, use pictures of yourself or photos around
town/school (that students would recognize) in PowerPoints or games. This will make it
much more interesting and memorable for the students, so words will stick that much
easier.

Include celebrities for interest: Likewise, if you use pictures of a well-known celebrity
(whether local or global) in activities, presentations or games, students will perk up and
youll have captured their attention more than before.

Draw stick figures: When all else fails, or you need a quick solution, use the simple
drawing or stick figure. Stick figures take only a second to draw, can be used to teach just
about anything, and are guaranteed to get a chuckle (or at least mine are).

The site ESL Flow has many more ideas about using pictures to teach English.

2. Timelines
One thing that pictures arent very helpful for is introducing grammatical structures, particularly
anything beyond the present simple or present continuous.

For this, we have timelines.

Timelines are a great way to illustrate tenses and time expressions. For instance, suppose you are
trying to teach the difference between by and until.

You could draw simple timelines to illustrate the following sentences:

Sun-Hee has to finish her thesis by March 12.

Sun-Hee will work on her thesis until 10:00 tonight.

Maximize your Student Talking Time by presenting timelines interactively and leading your
students to the answer.

For instance, if youre using timelines for the above sentences, ask questions like, What is Sun-
Hee working on now?, When is the deadline?, When will she stop working on it
tonight?, etc.

3. Charts and Graphs

These work beautifully for introducing and practicing a variety of structures. For example, you
could use a pie chart or bar graph to illustrate comparatives and superlatives, such as:

ABC has a larger market share than XYZ.

LMN has the largest market share in the industry.

Because line graphs indicate change, they also work like a charm for verbs of change, like
increase, decrease, dip and so on.

When you are working on vocabulary building in class, use a chart. I myself like to use charts to
teach word families. I have columns for noun, verb, adjective and adverb. So lets say
the word tired comes up in class. Ill expand on it by eliciting tiredness, tire and tiredly.
Get the words in the chart, and refer back to it through the lesson.

4. FluentU

A super effective type of visual aid thats also an English immersion platform is
FluentU. FluentU takes real-world videoslike music videos, movie trailers, news and inspiring
talksand turns them into personalized language learning lessons.

Its got a huge collection of authentic English videos that people in the English-speaking
world actually watch on the regular. These are videos that your students already love watching,
so theyll be beyond excited to interact with them in the classroom.
On FluentU, all the videos are sorted by skill level and are carefully annotated for students. In
addition to the strong visual cues in the authentic videos, students will see an image with every
word. Each word also comes with an in-context definition, audio and example sentences.
Students will be able to add them to their own vocabulary lists, and even see how the words are
used in other videos.
Worried that students might be stumped by some of the harder videos? No way. FluentU brings
authentic content within reach by providing interactive captions and in-context definitions
right on-screen. For example, if a student taps on the word brought, theyll see this:
Plus, these great videos are all accompanied by interactive features and active learning tools
for students, like multimedia flashcards and fun games like fill in the blank.
Its perfect for in-class activities, group projects and solo homework assignments. Not to
mention, its guaranteed to get your students excited about English!
5. Opposites

Showing a words antonym or opposite is a sure-fire way to teach its meaning without a word of
explanation. Suppose your student doesnt know the word least. Just jot down something like
this on the whiteboard:

Least <> Most

Alternatively, you could use hand gestures: Spread out your arms for most and bring them in
for least. Hand gestures are also good for opposites like fast/slow, cheap/expensive and
big/small.

And, speaking of opposites, whats the opposite of an answer? Thats right, a question! Introduce
question structures by showing the questions answer. For example:

Q: ________________________?

A: I work for a securities firm.

6. Gap Fills
Like opposites, gap fills help you introduce or reinforce grammar by accessing the knowledge
your students already have. Theyre perfect for things like pronouns, prepositions and articles.
Lets say your lesson today is about in, on and at.

Having three sentences on the board like the following is all youll need to make their meaning
clear:

Mary always goes to the beach ___ the summer.

Richard has a meeting with his boss ___ October 7. Theyre meeting ___ 2:30 p.m.

If you wish, you could expand on this by creating a chart (like in #3) with in, on and at at
the top. Then you can have your students come up with time expressions that go under each
category. Its interactive, easy and reinforces what you made clear via the gap fills.

7. Realia

Realia is an incredibly effective visual aid in the ESL classroom. Realia means real-life,
authentic items. For example, if youre teaching a lesson about booking a hotel room, students
will become much more engaged if they have an actual hotel brochure to look at. You could use
the brochure to introduce new language items, and even as the basis for a role play if you wish.

I highly recommend taking some time to build a realia collection for your ESL classes. Take a
walk around town or go online to gather some essential realia. Anything you print should be
laminated to make it last longer.

Here is some must-have realia for you to start off your collection with.

Celebrity photos
Menus (eat-in and take-out)
Weather reports
Hotel pamphlets
Maps (world, country, street, train, subway)
Train/subway/bus timetables
Movie/concert schedules
Want ads
Property ads
Family trees
Car rental brochures

And there you have it! With these visual aids, you can teach a diverse range of structures, words
and concepts with pizzazz and, best of all, very little talk time.

Practice trying out different types of visual aids in different situations. Over time, you will
develop your go-to visual aidsones that youll use every time you teach a particular lesson
or topic, because you know they work. Good luck!

Download: This blog post is available as a convenient and portable PDF that you can take
anywhere. Click here to get a copy. (Download)

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If you liked this post, something tells me that youll love FluentU, the best way to teach English
with real-world videos.

Bring English immersion to your classroom!

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