‘Teach English with Infographics’ – Tarun Patel

[ELTWeekly Volume 6, Issue 24 | September 29, 2014 | ISSN 0975-3036]

Information graphics or infographics are defined as “graphic visual representations of information, data or knowledge intended to present complex information quickly and clearly”.

Google shows 624,000 results for the keyword infographics. There number of online services available for creating infographics. Some of the services are piktochart.com, infogr.am, infographicscreator.com, create.visual.ly and venngage.com.

As the definition says, infographics are intended to present complex information in quickly. This function of the infographics allows English teachers to use them in the classroom for different language teaching functions.

Here is a sample infographics which depicts English as a world language.

The above infographic shares the status of the English language in terms of

• its speakers, native and non-native
• speakers of English as percentage of the world population
• usage of English on the web; and
• the number of ESL speakers in India.

This is a simple infographic showing the status of English. Higher level infographics would have more information combined and presented in interesting manner.

Here are some ways English teachers can utilize infographics in their classrooms.

• Ask your students to analyse a set of infographics and explain it in the class.
• Make a group of students and assign them the task of preparing a write-up based on a given infographic.
• If your students have access to the Internet, ask them to prepare simple infographics based on short surveys and their knowledge.
• Engage them in conversational activities keeping an infographic in focus. For example, they can enact an interview scene trying to elaborate the information from the infographic.

Use of infographics will help develop your students critical thinking and and analytical abilities in addition to the speaking skill.

There can be several other ways one can utilize this tool in the classroom. If there is some different way you would use infographics to teach English, please do share it with the ELTWeekly readers in the comment section of this post.

References

Mark Smiciklas (2012). The Power of Infographics: Using Pictures to Communicate and Connect with Your Audience.

Paul Raine (2012). English: The World Language (Infographic).