The Educational Impact of Picture Book Illustrations

Teaching reading needs to incorporate a multimodal approach. People today are more graphically bombarded than any other generation. Children expect images in every experience. This graphic orientation is an instructional opportunity that must be incorporated into learning environments. Reading programs need to forego one-dimensional methods and learn how to expand teaching methodologies. Can the use of picture book illustrations as a teaching tool help improve comprehension and vocabulary development? Absolutely!The study helped verify facts that students who visually experienced illustrations accompanying a book demonstrated improvement in story comprehension and retelling ability. Of more significance was the fact that those students who experienced graphics exhibited greater vocabulary development than students who did not.This research adds another dimension to the work of Azripe and Styles in Children Reading Pictures: Interpreting Visual Texts. In addition it contributes to Paivio's work on Theory of Dual Coding.