Tuesday, September 2, 2008

Topic: Goals of Visual Literacy Instruction

10-Second Review: Interpreting pictures and films.

Title: “ERIC/RCE Report: Visual Literacy.” Laurel Ladevich. English Journal (October 1974), 114-116. A publication of the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE).

Quote: “The goal of visual literacy, as suggested by Barley in A New Look at the Loom of Visual Literacy (p. 14), would be to enable students to learn to ‘read’ visuals with skill, to write with visuals expressing themselves effectively, to know the grammar and the syntax of visual language and be able to apply them, to be familiar with the tools of visual literacy, and to be able to translate from visual language to verbal language and vice versa. In other words, the ultimate goal of visual literacy is visual articulation.”

Comment: Italics in the previous quote are mine. I think expressing visual interpretation verbally and verbal language in pictures is the point. In other words, the students and we the teacher need to learn to compose in, and respond to, all types of media: words, pictures and film through pen/pencil, computer and camera.

We should not be thinking of composition solely as words, but should learn to compose with all other media, most especially in pictures, film and tape recordings (radio). RayS.

The purpose of this blog is to review interesting articles from past issues of English education journals.

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