Learning Playing

The significance of vocabulary in English as a foreign language is incontrovertible, unfortunately this parameter has beenneglected in Iran, especially in rural areas. That is why a lot of students who take part in the entrance examination of universities, will encounter a want of appropriate words. If we take a glance at the problem, not only the students, but also English teachers, especially at junior high school levels, must shoulder the burden. This study tries to investigate the role of pictures and posters as peripheral teaching aids in vocabulary learning. In terms of facilities and equipment there is a big difference between junior high schools in cities and villages ,and it is axiomatic that the presence of various teaching aids can be very efficacious in language learning. Since the majority of words in junior high school books are concrete, the selection of pictures and posters will be more viable. There is no denying the fact that choosing pictures for abstract words is very grueling and even if we look over this , most of the pictures might be vague and equivocal. If students were supposed to pay attention to the pictures directly during the classroom sessions, the results could be prognosticated easily but in this study no attention was paid to the pictures directly. plausibly, the use of peripheral learning reminds us of Suggestopedia in which peripheral learning is highlighted however in this study the method has nothing to do with Suggestopedia –despite the fact that the books in junior high school level are based on the Audio – Lingual method; nonetheless, in this study the method is eclectic. It is evident that students’ mother tongue should be used as a last resort, but since students’ scope of vocabulary is very limited and they are beginners , student’s mother tongue may be used. Another overriding factor which should be taken into account in this study is the setting, namely villages rather than cities. This matter can be justified from different perspectives among which two are more important. First, over the past years the number of drop – outs in rural areas has been dramatically increased. The second factor is that some of the problems in the area of language learning are exclusively associated with villages and when it comes to cities they will be completely non-applicable.Many L2 teachers fret over students’ learning at elementary stages, especially broadening the scope of vocabulary is a moot point because in final examinations students are required to have a mastery of grammar and vocabulary. Although most of the words of the book are very easy, students have problem when they want to apply in sentences. Despite many investigations on vocabulary learning, some of them have been devoted to the concept of peripheral learning. It is obvious that the use of pictures will facilitate learning. According to Park and Gabrieli (1995 ), pictures are inevitably remembered better than words on tasks of recall and recognition. They believe that “memory for pictorial stimuli is extremely accurate, durable, and extensive compared to that for verbal stimuli . There is a plethora of theories to explain why pictures can be remembered easily some of which are in the genre of medicine Pictures are more complex than the words that label them, so more time and attention is needed to identify, or “name” a picture. We spend more time looking at a picture before we can name it So we remember pictures better. We spend less time looking at words in sentences, so we don’t remember the sentences exactly – though we remember the gist of them.Pictures are also more distinctive and more unique than the words that label them, which further makes pictures more memorable.