By Will Godinez
The use of Dual Coding in essence is using imagery and labeling it with a word which in turn helps you remember the word or the image one sees for the first time, and it should turn into a long-term memory. But how can we use dual coding in our freshman year in college, well depending where you go you may end up taking a class of learning a new language for extracurricular, something fun you may have a trip in mind to go to and you want to learn the language before you head out to that specific country in case the locals or the signs don’t have the language you speak. Would be awful if you get stranded in a country without knowing the language, and what would you do if your phone dies google translate won’t be translating nothing if you can’t speak at least a broken version of the country’s native language. But how does this correlate with learning a language in class or even on your own time.
The use of Dual Coding
Well with dual coding 1 it can be used in class with how our technology has been evolved people would resort to Duolingo. But what if the way Duolingo and the way our professors are teaching us can be the wrong way of learning a new language. We know that at an older age it is hard for us to learn a new language without getting confused on how to say it or what words have meaning if we just get a book and start writing down vocabulary to figure out the language and symbolism.2 I know that everyone that is reading this has some type of subscription services and more than likely uses subtitles to watch a show weather that be in their native language or a show that’s from a different country but reads it in their preferred language to be able to understand what’s going on. With Dual coding we can use all the technology in our disposal which can help us learn and retain the new language we are learning. Now here’s a step by step to be able to do so, to be able to know what a word is we must connect to it with an image and with that also comes the auditory sounds, the way it is pronounced and how to break it down into syllables. After that we want to be able to advance that word and we see it used in everyday conversation, but you won’t hear it used in the language you want to hear. It would be in your native tongue and connect the dots on how it is used. This term here is called reverse subtitle, 3 in this way it seems to be best to learn a new language connecting words to images to better retain them but also hearing it in your language to also reinforce on how that word is being used. But of course, professors makes us get a book to use and learn how to write and see the words that we are learning to use4 , of course people would want to learn how to write and know how the language they are learning looks like to be able to determine what is coming into their perception. And that’s how Duolingo works: it only writes and shows the words showing images but only in the beginning and pronunciation. But if you take out the word’s image, it can be harder to retention with new vocabulary because you don’t have those symbolic meanings.
Lastly how can one use dual coding if we’re not learning a new language well we can still use the same principles. If you were trying to memorize fill in the blanks for an upcoming test you would put the word you are trying to memorize but not just writing it down, but also hearing, and connecting to an image that will more than likely be able to remember during the test. Which in turn should become into a long-term memory that will pop up during the test or if you think of that image you associate with that word it should help you during the test.
References
Farley, A. P., Ramonda, K., & Liu, X. (2012). The Concreteness Effect and the Bilingual Lexicon: The Impact of Visual Stimuli Attachment on Meaning Recall of Abstract L2 Words. Language Teaching Research, 16(4), 449–466. https://doi.org/10.1177/1362168812436910
Javier Ávila-Cabrera, J., & Rodríguez-Arancón, P. (2021). The use of active subtitling activities for students of Tourism in order to improve their English writing production. Iberica, 41, 155–180. https://doi.org/10.17398/2340-2784.41.155
Kanellopoulou, C., Kermanidis, K. L., & Giannakoulopoulos, A. (2019). The Dual-Coding and Multimedia Learning Theories: Film Subtitles as a Vocabulary Teaching Tool. Education Sciences, 9.
Talaván, N. (2019). Using subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing as an innovative pedagogical tool in the language class. International Journal of English Studies, 19(1), 21–40. https://doi.org/10.6018/ijes.338671
Shen, H. H. (2010). Imagery and Verbal Coding Approaches in Chinese Vocabulary Instruction. Language Teaching Research, 14(4), 485–499. https://doi.org/10.1177/1362168810375370
Hey Will! I thought that reading about dual coding was very interesting because I remember learning about it and thought it was interesting, but this answered a lot of questions that I had. However, one question I do have is with learning a different language, what is the best way to learn it? By seeing images, reading it then translating, speaking it first, or something else?
I would say doing a little bit of everything but especially associating images with words helps create a better connection with the words sometimes even memorizing in our own language we tend to forget but if we connect a figure or something related to that word it can come up to us better when we need to use it.