Enhancing EFL vocabulary through Arts

Abstract

There are numerous connections between art and literacy; the combining of art and literacy uses of multiple intelligences. Children who have difficulty with linguistic intelligence may have strong artistic abilities that can compensate for language weaknesses. The ability to read a work of art can help develop the ability to read and comprehend text (Rowell, 1983). Art has the potential to be an integral part of the writing process at many stages, for all developmental levels, enabling students to organize thoughts graphically, visualize characters and settings for more detailed descriptions, sequence ideas and check for overall layout. Regarding the methodology part, this research project is a qualitative approach that has a more holistic sight, rather than an analytical and technical one, and which was focused on action-research. We also developed some categories (EFL teaching, impact of arts, teaching through arts, and vocabulary context) during our investigation thanks to the three data collection tools (observation, journal, and interview) used along the research. In the results, we made the connections between the four categories we found and we also highlighted the fact that the principal one is EFL teaching, because this is the base category of the other three. Finally, in the discussion part, we came to conclude that arts are a good idea in terms of developing skills such as reading, listening, and speaking; instead of writing (as we thought at the beginning), because our population was not able to produce a lot in the writing part yet.