Using the drawing effect to bridge the vocabulary barrier

A picture not only paints a thousand words and tells a story but also crosses language and communication barriers. It encourages inference; it involves both artist and audience; it is a piece of expression or reaction. The picture is the leveller, as well as the talking point and the stimulus for retrieval, not least in areas of high disadvantage, significant EAL and low levels of literacy. Although I had long used images as an English teacher – often to provide a background, framework or context for a textual theme – my interest was piqued through a discussion around the ‘save’ symbol in Microsoft Word: a 3.5” floppy disc. All students knew what the symbol meant and what it represented, even though none of them had ever used or seen the object in real life. This got me thinking more about the universality of the drawn image as a retrieval aid. I was guided to the ‘drawing effect’ (Wammes et al., 2016) through our academy’s work with Impact Wales. The study had found