Khanh Linh Tran Dang

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VISUALISATION - A POWERFUL TECHNIQUE TO TEACH
ABSTRACT CONCEPTS

• Khanh Linh Tran Dang
• Nha Trang College of Education

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(Geoffrey Petty,1993, p.114)
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NARRATING A STORY

• Questions
• How to begin a story?
• How to construct the story?
• When to move to a new paragraph?
• How to use the Simple Past, Past Continuous
  and/or the Past Perfect?
• Answer
• Visualise / dramatise a story and see!

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Model story

• Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting
  in the field having nothing to do. Suddenly a
  white rabit ran by her, saying to itself, Oh
  dear! I shall be too late!. Burning with
  curiosity, she jumped up to follow it. The rabbit
  ran down a hole, and she jumped after it.
• It was a long hole, and she fell for such a long
  time that she thought she might fall through the
  other side of the earth. Finally, she reached
  bottom. There she saw a bottle with a label that
  said, DRINK ME. So she did, and found that the
  liquid had a very pleasant flavour. But as she
  drank, something curious happened she began to
  shrink!

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Scene 1 (para. 1, past cont. for action)
Scene 2 (para. 2)
event 2, Past simp.
event 1, Past simp.
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UNDERSTANDING THE NATURE OF AN ESSAY

• Questions
• How many parts are there in an essay?
• What is the function of each part?
• How are the parts related to each other?
• How to arrange ideas?
• Answer
• An essay is like a sandwich / a tree.

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An essay as a sandwich
Introduction
Body para. 1
Body para. 2
Body para. 3
Conclusion
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An essay as a tree
development 3
development 2
development 4
Main idea (thesis statement)
development 1
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WRITING ESSAY - THE FUNNEL INTRODUCTION
Traveling to a foreign country is always
interesting, especially if it is a country that
is completely different from your our own. You
can delight in tasting new foods, seeing new
sights, and learning about different customs,
some of which may seem very curious. If you were
to visit my country, for instance, you would
probably think that my people have some very
strange customs, as these three examples will
illustrate. (Regina L.Smalley Mary K.Ruetten,
1986, Refining Composition Skills, Macmillan
Publishing Company)
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GENERAL IDEA
THE FUNNEL INTRODUCTION
TRAVELING TO A COUNTRY COMPLETELY DIFFERENT FROM
YOUR OWN IS ALWAYS INTERESTING
TASTING NEW FOODS
SEEING NEW SIGHTS
NARROW DOWN
LEARNING DIFFERENT CURIOUS CUSTOMS
VISIT MY COUNTRY TO SEE SOME STRANGE CUSTOMS
THESIS STATEMENT
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GIVING ACCURATE INSTRUCTIONS
To see the significance of accuracy in giving
instructions, do the Folding Paper experiment!
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Other examples of visualising concepts

• Hands movement in pronouncing word stress and
  diphthongs
• Time line in teaching verb tenses
• Contextualised pictures in teaching modals
• Mind maps for teaching word fields
• Narrow paper strips to split sentences to
  clusters
• etc

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Final comment

• Trainees (or learners) remember
• 10 of what they read,
• 20 of what they hear,
• 30 of what they see,
• and 50 of what people hear and see.
• (Pretty
  J.N. et al, 1995, p.24)

Visual presentation of concepts time-saving and
effective
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