| Summary: | The aim of this study is to examine students’ experiences of how graphic symbols as a visual support affects their understanding of oral verbal information. Students with a typical language development as well as students with language difficulties regarding the understanding of vocabulary were included in the study, in total 43 students from two different classes in grade 5 participated. The students answered a questionnaire conducted at the end of two lessons without graphic symbols and two lessons with graphic symbols in order to explore how usage of graphic symbols affected their experienced understanding. The results were compared through a paired samples t-test and an independent samples t-test. The results showed that both the linguistic vulnerable students and the students with typical linguistic development experienced an increased understanding of the teachers lecture during the lessons with graphic symbols. However, the results indicated no positive effect for the linguistic vulnerable students regarding the understanding of the teacher’s vocabulary or how clear the teacher’s explanations were. The results also showed that the linguistic vulnerable students, in comparison to the students with typical linguistic development, experienced greater difficulties regarding the understanding of both the vocabulary and the symbols used by the teacher.
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