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Title
Improving Imagination in EFL/ESL Classes: The Case of PICTOLOGICS
Presenters
Abolfazi Shirban Sasi
Dr. Leong Lai Mei
University Sains Malaysia (USM)
Abstract:
Imagination is perhaps the most mysterious and precious gift by God to mankind. Without it, no progress would occur, and no wishes would be shaped. Because dreams and wishes are rooted in our imagination. Pictures, art of imagination, and language… Is there any link among them?
The researcher believes that Pictologics (PLS), his newly developed teaching method, has made a subtle bridge among picture, imagination, and language. A picture can stimulate thousands of words, sentences, and memories in our mind. We can cry and laugh with pictures and bring together past, present, and future in a fraction of a second. Thus, when learning a new language, we can use our imagination to practice and use our newly-learnt knowledge, and move forward.
The title “Pictologics” is made of three parts: “picto”, “logic”, and “s”. S is a suffix which gives the whole word a noun form. Picto is the short form of ‘picture’. This has two meanings: as a noun, it means pictures of different subjects such as people, nature, animals, etc. Totally, there are 300 pictures used for all the levels. ‘picture’ as a verb means ‘visualization’ or ‘imagination’. We teach the language learners how to control and use their imagination. In the beginning, we teach them to pay a lot of attention to their more concrete senses: sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch. Logic, on the other hand, means ‘whatever word(s) or pieces of information that we can connect-directly or indirectly- to a certain picture or/and set of pictures picked by chance’. If students learn to do so, and if they learn to make the best of their imagination, they can come up with producing many structures. It is very interesting that when we use more than one picture card at a time; that is, if we deal with random combinations of two, three, four, and … cards, and if we can just ‘see’ one concept from this picture and another from that, then we will have a very large number of chances. Therefore, there will be chances for the students to produce (both oral and written) structures, and chances for the teachers to check their students’ understanding and learning. Applying the formula n! / m!(n-m)! with just 20 cards, we can have more than 2,000,000 combinations, each of which could be a good source for language production.
The art of imagination enables us to open wings and soar beyond a picture to the realms of knowledge. The inductive reasoning practiced in PLS increases students’ learning power, adds joy to training, and facilitates teaching. Publications:
1- PICTOLOGICS SYSTEM, Elementary: Textbook (2004)
2- PICTOLOGICS SYSTEM, Intermediate: Textbook (2006)
3- 1300 BASIC WORDS (2004)
4- An English-Persian Dictionary of IDIOMS in PLS (Editor, 2005)
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