Every Picture Tells a Story : Using Infographics for Discussion Preparation

This paper reflects upon a pilot study conducted into the use of infographics (data/content visualization) during different key stages of an English discussion class and how this may have better enabled the students to interpret information and thus discuss more meaningfully.This study takes place in an English discussion course, in which the students are required to prepare for the lesson's discussion topic by reading a two to three-page text.This pilot study, conducted over one semester, sought to consider and evaluate the effectiveness of information presented more 'visually' by using infographics, moreover than through a large body of text.The basic findings were that the students would much prefer a blend of visual and textual preparatory tasks and also that they were most favourable to using infographics as a pre discussion task rather than part of any homework activity. INTRODUCTIONDespite the wealth of research that is available to educators on the use of technology as a teaching aid, there certainly does seem to be a paucity of academic inquiry into using infographics, a visual representation of data, as a means of illustrating information in an ESL classroom.In that sense, I propose there are ample opportunities, within the context of a discussion course, to further carefully consider a pedagogical approach that incorporates and draws upon visuals.This paper does not intend to overly explore familiar literature on tried and tested guiding principles and cognitive approaches to SLA, I will highlight two theoretical tools which informed this paper and consider works of a similar viewpoint to assess the potential for further research.Underpinning this study is the inquiry into the visual literacy amongst our 'digital native' cohort of students.Research undertaken by the Social Science Research Network has suggested that a figure of 65% of the world's population are indeed visual learners, that is to say people that associate information with images (McCue, 2013).That brings about the question, what are the benefits of using infographics in class?The hypothesis more concretely can be framed as 'As we are increasingly surrounded with visual representations of information -though the internet and social media -are infographics a quicker and clearer way to convey understanding of content required by students for productive tasks?'As a theoretical tool, I will primarily consider the cognitive principle of meaningful learning (Brown 2007).Furthermore, I intend to juxtapose considerations of student visual literacy alongside the activation of content schema (Carrell and Eisterhold, 1984).In that sense, content schema theory is an explanation of how the reader of a text uses prior experiences or knowledge in order to learn and indeed.In the pure Kantian view, new information, new concepts and new ideas can only have meaning when they can be related to something the individual already knows.However, this paper considers whether this understanding similarly applies in a second language and more pertinently, are there better/other alternatives to present such information moreover through a body of text?In order to activate the reader's background or subject matter knowledge schemata this project offered the participants in an English discussion class a different mediumdiscussion topic infographics featuring imagery, graphics, charts and minimal text.Does this way of presenting information, in what I shall term display schemata dovetail with content schemata?To further clarify what is meant by display schemata we can assume that the participants in the study, university first-year students on a mandatory discussion course at a university in Japan,