Illustrations in Young Learners Textbooks

Young learners learn through illustration, specially foreign language. If they don¿t know how to interpret illustration, they find it senseless. Illustrations should follow and support child¿s cognitive development. This areas can include figure, colour appropriateness, gender awareness. One part of cognitive development is also semiotics. Symbols are learned and a lot of them are also included in illustrations. The colour, illustration-artistic, semiotics analysis and gender stereotype analysis of three textbooks for young learners showed that these textbooks need some corrections according to child¿s cognitive development and their visual perception. Textbooks all include a lot of ¿motion devices¿ and symbols which meanings change from page to page. The construction of illustration figures could also be improved in all textbooks and the choice of colours could be done on more solid professional ground. All textbooks also include some gender stereotypes.