Visual Literacy in Vocabulary Teaching and Learning in Foreign Language

Resumen

This paper aims at investigating the use of visual resources in foreign language vocabulary teaching based on a pedagogical orientation which explores the reading of visuals elements. Firstly, it presents a theoretical refl ection contextualizing the debate about visual literacy. A vocabulary activity from an EFL textbook was selected for the empirical experiment. This activity was used in data collection, which involved two groups of students. The fi rst group carried out the activity proposed by the students’ book. The second one carried out the same activity, however, with some additional questions exploring the visual resources. The results obtained in vocabulary tests show that the second group had a better performance, providing evidence of the importance of turning students able to explore the visual resources.