TEACHING ENGLISH THROUGH ART: BENEFITS AND PERSPECTIVES

Jeksembayeva Baktygul Germanovna

English language teacher

Mangystau Energetic College

Kazakhstan, Mangystau oblast, Aktau

Does art have a place in language learning? I believe it does. Students are naturally creative. They respond to visual images and have most active imaginations. Art can assist a teacher with many aspects of teaching English.

For example6 you can use art when you are teaching the names of colors. What about sky blue, teal, magenta, lilac, scarlet, azure, chartreuse, burgundy, crimson, apple green, lemon or canary yellow, burnt orange, dusty pink, forest green, battleship gray, chocolate brown, mahogany, tan, ivory, off-white, etc. A color wheel can help you to demonstrate these. Pick up some car brochures from local dealers and see how they describe the colors of their vehicles. These can augment a lesson on using more descriptive adjectives. In one lesson, I first show my class a black and white illustration of a typical office situation with several people engaged in various routines. The students describe what people are doing. Then, I show the students a color version and have them elaborate on their description. Color makes a big difference. You can use art to teach shapes, simple tools artists use (including tools students use every day such as pencils, pens, erasers, rulers, etc.)

A book with different styles of paintings makes a great vocabulary building reference tool. Every painting can be a topic for discussion. Even just reading the various descriptions in the book can be a worthwhile language activity.

Drawing programs such as Paint, Corel Draw, ZBrush, Smart Draw, ArtRage and Twisted Brush can be useful if you have artistically inclined learners. Pick a program and open the tutorial section. Students can greatly improve their vocabulary as they learn to use the program. There is a whole world of digital art and digital artists who use these programs to create images for cartoons, animated films and book covers. Creatures that you see in films were more often than not created on a computer.

Finally, students can use their artistic talents to illustrate their writing efforts – essays, short stories, descriptions of homes, friends, family, vacation, and other such typical ESL topics. I have had students make Japanese scroll stories where they have six or so panels on which to write and illustrate a short story. They then tape the panels together to form a scroll, tying the finished product with a ribbon. In the next class, students untie their scrolls and read their stories to the class.

Art can add another dimension to teaching English and is another way you can take advantage of local resources to support your efforts. Through the Internet, you have the whole artistic world at your beck and call.

With students will still have creativity to share, but they may not be as eager to do it with their peers. You can overcome this by showing your class some pieces by other artists. Take the opportunity to introduce new vocabulary as you describe the pictures to your class and then ask them to describe the same piece to one another. You can play an easy conversation game with your students with famous pieces of art. Take ten paintings and display them at the front of your class. Then pair students having one student describe one of the paintings. The second student must then determine which painting his partner is describing. Then switch roles. For each correct guess, award one hundred points to the pair. The pair with the most points at the end wins. Then assign a piece of writing to your students. Ask them to describe their favorite piece from class and say why they liked it. They can also compare it to some of the other pieces if you want them to write a longer piece.

Table 1. The example of teaching English through World Art History

With older students comes thinking and analysis that is more complex and an ability to connect emotionally with what they see. Review some well-known pieces of art with your students. You can introduce them as you would with middle school students, and even play the same game, but take the discussion a step further and introduce vocabulary that describes emotion. All of your students start learning emotions words with simple emotions like angry, happy, scared, and excited, but use art as a means to introduce even more complex emotion words. What does it mean to be melancholy? Lonely? Crestfallen? Apprehensive? Choose art pieces that allow you to discuss these specific emotions with your students. Ask them how the pieces make them feel. Then ask why. Students will be challenged to use specific emotion vocabulary and connect it with what they see. Show how Edward Hopper depicts loneliness through his pieces. Edvard Munch depicts panic in his painting The Scream. Embrace the serenity that comes from Claude Monet. Feel sentimental from the love expressed by Mary Cassatt in her mother and child pieces. You can use any piece or art you wish, and the emotions that one person may feel from a piece may be different than what another feels. Encourage your student to express their individuality and make personal connections with the art. This activity challenges your students to communicate a new depth of their emotions with new vocabulary and classic art in perfect harmony.

Language and art can complement and assist each other. When a concept is not clear in its written form, the visual form can assist the learner to comprehend, and likewise, when the visual form is confusing and unclear, the written form can facilitate understanding. Through the ages art has been a means of visual expression used to convey a wide spectrum of tangible and intangible ideas. Art can take the spectator into different times and into different worlds. It can also be used to introduce different levels of vocabulary to learners of a second language. Learning a second language for most adolescents is, a very difficult and trying experience. They are not only trying to adjust to a new language but are also trying to adjust to themselves and a new environment. They are self-conscious about almost everything, but they are especially self-conscious about their performance in the classroom. By shifting the focus from the student to an abject, everyone participates, thus eliminating a certain degree of self-consciousness.

Adult students may be comfortable with either of the two previous activities, but for those who may be uncomfortable getting emotional about art, take a historical approach. Many resources both in print and online give helpful information about art history. History may be a more comfortable approach for many adults who have been estranged from their creativity for many years. Ask a guest to come into class to present art history to your students, or have the students themselves do some research on artists, particularly those who may have come from their home countries. Then have your students present the information they learned to the class. Before their presentations, spend some time reviewing historical vocabulary explaining words like era, century, and movement. Encourage your students to talk about that artist’s historical context. Everyone is sure to learn about art, but they will also learn about familiar historical events in new language and vocabulary.

LITERATURE LIST

1. «How to use art to teach ESL concepts» by Susan Velmer, Busy teacher, 2016

2. «Using art in ESL Classroom» by Robert WF Taylor, Introduction to Teaching Overseas, 2015

3. Carter Ronald, Hughes Rebecca, McCarthy Michael  Exploring Grammar in Context. – Cambridge University Press, 2000

4. М. С. Сақтағанова, Н. Қ. Алиева, Н. Қ. Айтбаева «Ағылшын тілін оқытудың әдістері», Білім, 43-бет, №3, 2006