In order to determine the effect of certain types of pictures on reading comprehension in beginning French, a study was conducted in which six types of pictorial contexts were used as advanced organizers for a test passage. One group of university students was given a text in French, a second group the same text in English, and a third group a set of pictures related to the text. Some members of the first two groups were also exposed to one of the pictorial contexts. The first two groups were given comprehension tests, while the third was asked as a control to construct a story from the pictures. It was discovered that pictorial stimuli had no effect on comprehension in the native language (English). However, comprehension in French was improved by exposure to pictorial stimuli, the degree of improvement depending on which picture was seen. The most helpful picture was a scene from the beginning of the story. These results confirm the long-assumed usefulness of visual aids in second language study, while at the same time indicating the importance of careful consideration in selecting visual aids. (JB)