Language Learning and Audio-Visual Aids (A Review Study)

We are living today in a rich audiovisual environment. As teachers, we must face the fact that this radically changes our students’ attitude towards language and language learning. As Carter and Nunan (2002) pointed out, media have undoubtedly always facilitated the task of language learning for both instructed and non-instructed learners. Just as children learning a first or second language grasp the meaning of words from the objects that surround them, non-native speakers (both inside and outside the classroom) make use of the here and now or objects in the immediate environment to process incoming speech. Whatever the approach as Celce-Murcia (2002) said, language teachers seem to agree that media can and do enhance language teaching, and thus in the daily practice of language teaching we find the entire range of media-from nonmechanical aids such as household objects, flashcards, and magazine pictures all the way up to sophisticated mechanical aids such as video cameras and computer-assisting teachers in their jobs, bringing the outside world into the classroom, and in short, making the task of language learning a more meaningful and exciting one.