“The four basic skills that students should acquire in foreign language teaching have been determined as listening/listening comprehension, speaking, reading/reading comprehension and writing, respectively. In particular, the skill of listening/listening comprehension is a skill that should be taught first among these skills and is the most difficult to learn. One of the main reasons for this is that listening skill is a skill that occurs outside the individual and depends on the speaker.”[1]
“Listening skill comes first in the acquisition of the mother tongue. Research has shown that the hearing ability of newborn babies is quite strong and that babies always react strongly to sounds.”[2]
In the process of teaching a foreign language, as in the mother tongue, listening activities are given importance first and listening skills are taught first. Because listening skills are important in terms of communicating and maintaining communication. The child must first recognize the sounds in the target language and then proceed to the process of giving meaning to these sounds in his mind.
In addition to listening skills, supporting the messages to be given in foreign language education with visual materials is also an effective method. In this way, children's attention will be drawn to the desired message and they will enter into an effective learning process.
According to Canut and Leclaire-Halté[3], “with the help of visually supported texts, children better understand and interpret a piece they listen to. "In particular, the use of visual materials helps children understand the text better without the need to use the teachers' native language." Because when listening activities are conveyed to the other party with the help of visual tools, they will be remembered longer and thus permanent learning will be achieved. In short, the use of visual materials in listening activities has an effective and important place in teaching in terms of facilitating understanding, developing children's creativity and contributing to their mental processes, ensuring that they understand a text read or listened to without the need for explanation, and keeping attention and interest alive in the activities.
According to the findings we obtained as a result of the studies we conducted with the subject group and control group on children aged 3-4 in the 2018/2019 academic year; Visual material-supported foreign language education has enabled students in the younger age group to better understand what they see and hear, to develop their vocabulary in the target language, and to memorize what they see and hear more easily.
[1] Şavlı and Özdemir, The place of visual material-supported listening comprehension in foreign language teaching, International Journal of Languages' Education and Teaching, 2018, p. 187
[2] Dellal, What is foreign language education and language acquisition for children? Why? How?,2011, p.123
[3] L'élève et la lecture d'album. Quelle compréhension du texte et des images?,2009, p.3
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