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The way that picture story books can help young learners trigger the memory of another text and make a link with the prior knowledge has been discussed by Cameron (2001) who points out that when listening to a story in a foreign language, EFL learners are able to recall the meaning of some words or phrases in the foreign language. “Although the story may be told in the foreign language, the mental processing does not need to use the foreign language, and may be carried out in the first language, or in some language independent way” (Cameron 2001: 40). As stories are able to engage learners in using their existing language resources and knowledge of the world, readers are able to understand the underlying meaning and remember some phrases.
Brewster et al. (2002) suggested that stories could provide an ideal introduction to the foreign language as they are presented in a context that is familiar to the students. For EFL children who have acquired the conventions of narrative they have learnt from their mother tongue, stories have the potential to help them make the links with their prior knowledge, and to make the foreign language classroom less foreign.
2.1.3 The Value of the Pictures
In terms of the value of reading the picture, two main points were suggested: (1) pictures increase comprehension, and (2) pictures stimulate imagination. As pointed out by Schwarcz (1982), language discloses its content in time, whereas pictures confront the viewers all at once. Nodelman (1988) also notes that our understanding of language starts with details and moves towards the whole, whereas our understanding of pictures starts with wholes and breaks down into details. This feature of pictures allows beginning EFL readers to apply a top-down reading model when reading picture story books. As for beginning EFL learners whose limited English ability might constrain them from conducting a top-down model, pictures, to some extent, provide a source for them to form their own interpretation of the story by activating their prior knowledge.
With regard to how pictures can stimulate children’s imagination, Kress and Van Leeuwen (1996:26) pointed out that “Visual enigma can challenge parents and children to exercise their imagination, to include in their thinking elements that do not easily fit in with the traditional order of things, to tolerate some ambiguity, to allow the inclusion of the ‘other’ in their construction of the world.” According to Kress and Van Leeuwen (1996), pictures can encourage tolerance and thus help to increase understanding of other culture. Even though Kress and Van Leeuwen (1996) do not particularly refer to the EFL context, this ability to learn how to include, tolerate, and allow different elements in the interpretation is especially evident for EFL learners.