Apresentacao

1. Topic:
The Use of Pictures to Enhance
Students’ Speaking Skills: Case study:
Grade 8 – Cambine Secondary school

2. Research problem
The research problem arose when I was having teaching practice
at Cambine Secondary School, where pictures were not
explored. During the process, I could also notice that the
students were not highly engaged in the learning process and
they had limitations in expressing their ideas during the lessons.
When I taught the similar lesson using different pictures and
encouraged the students to bring different interpretations around
the pictures, I could noticed that almost everyone was engaged
in the learning even the students that rarely participated in
lessons had at least something to say despite some errors that
were committed during their participations.
In this way, I became interested in investigating the effectiveness
of using community pictures to enhance students’ speaking skills

3. Objectives of the research
Aim:
 To investigate the effectiveness of using community pictures to
enhance students’ speaking skills.
Specific objectives:
 To find out the speaking activities teachers bring in the
classroom;
 To identify the challenges faced by teachers when teaching
speaking;
 To find out the problems that students face when learning
speaking;
 To discuss how community pictures can be used to motivate
the students to speak the language;
 To evaluate the relevance of using community pictures to
enhance students’ speaking.

4. Research questions
 What speaking activities do teachers bring to the classroom?
 What are the challenges faced by teachers when teaching speaking using
pictures?
 What are the common problems the students face when leaning speaking?
 How can community pictures be used to motivate students to speak
English?
 To what extent community pictures can be used to improve students’
speaking skills?
Hypothesis
 Most teachers do not use authentic materials to encourage students to use the
English language communicatively;
 The lack of vocabulary to communicate ideas and thoughts can be one of the
problems faced by students when speaking the English Language ;
 Teacher can resort to community pictures to promote interactive lessons.

5. Literature Review
Speaking
Speaking is generally thought to be the most important of the four
skills in English (listening, speaking, reading and writing) but
learners claim that they spend years studying English and still
cannot speak it.
• According to Stern (1998), speaking is the process of building
and sharing meaning through the use of verbal and non-verbal
symbols, in a variety of contexts.
• Florez (1999) as cited by Bailey (2005:2) asserts that speaking is
an interactive process of constructing meaning that involves
producing, receiving and processing information.
Language can be seen as a system of rules or a dynamic resource for
creation of meaning (Nunan, 1989).

6. Pictures
According to Sinclair (1987), a picture is defined as a visual
representation or image that is painted, drawn, or photographed,
and put on a surface.
Sadiman (1990) adds that picture is a general verbal
communication that can be understood and available everywhere.
Picture gives real description of an object which is portable and
can be used anytime and helps in understanding objects which are
difficult to be observed.
Suleman (1988:29-30) states that pictures have several
advantages. First, pictures are easy to obtain, pictures can be
found in newspapers, magazines, books, etc. Second, pictures
have been familiar in the teaching and learning process. Also
pictures are easy to manage because once employing a picture of
a computer for example, a teacher does not need to bring a real
computer to describe its parts.

7. According to Harmer (2007: 123), there are three main reasons for
getting students to speak in the classroom.
► First, speaking activities provide rehearsal opportunities or
chance to practice real-life speaking in the safety of the classroom.
►Second, in speaking tasks students try to use any language they
know to provides feedback for both teacher and students where
everyone can see how successful they are, and also what language
problems they have.
►Finally through speaking, the students have opportunities to use
actively the various elements of language they have stored in their
brains.
Teaching speaking

8. Advantages of using pictures in a
speaking lesson
Motivate the students to speak;
Provide the student with information to
use in controlled practice work;
Guide spoken descriptions, narrations or
dialogue;
Promote discussion and provide
reference.

9. Teaching speaking using community Pictures
According to Wright (1989) there are some speaking activities in
the classroom which use community pictures as the main tools.
These activities include:
1. Picture Narrating
2. Picture Describing
3. Find the Difference and others
It is believed that by using these activities inside and outside the
classroom, students may develop sufficient vocabulary, fluency
and accuracy in speaking in a very short period of time.

10. CHAPTER II: RESEARCH METHOD AND DATA
COLLECTION TECHNIQUES
Type of research:
Taking into account the process adopted to find answers to the
research questions, the research is classified as qualitative and
quantitative research.
Population and sample
To study the problem, was selected 8 streams of grade 8 with the
total of 350 students. Among these students, 42 were selected to be
the sample of the study. This number corresponds to 12% of the
population.
To collect data, I used observation, questionnaire and interview.

11. The study
During the study it was possible to find out that:
1. When teaching speaking, teachers sometimes ask their students
to answer questions in pairs or small groups, use dialogue, role-
play, fill in using the missing words; find differences or
similarities in pictures and others. Analyzing this information
and basing on the students participation during the lessons it was
possible to understand that the teachers vary the activities and
depending on the lesson and the activity used to the lesson, the
students reacted differently. In this way, the students that found
the activities interesting, participated actively and those who
found the activities boring did not participate.

12. 2. During the teaching process, it was possible to understand that
teachers face problems on managing the time to make all the
students practice the language. Similarly, the students face
difficulties like: lack of sufficient vocabulary to express their
thoughts, problems in constructing grammatical sentences and
pronouncing words correctly.
3. Teachers are aware that community pictures can be a good tool
to improve students’ speaking skills. Therefore, they suggested
that to effectively teach speaking, teachers may ask their students
to label pictures, produce short stories or texts from a sequence of
pictures or report an event from the pictures.

13. 4. The intervenients of the study (teachers and students) were
unanimous in saying that they can give privilege to pictures
taken in the students’ community to promote active
participation in the classroom because they believe that it
would be amazing if a speaking lesson was introduced using
pictures of the students’ society. To motivate the students to
speak in the class, teachers may ask them to label the pictures,
produce short stories or texts from a sequence of pictures or
report an event from the pictures. They also believe that
giving relevance to this kind of pictures may motivate even
the weaker students to say something mainly if the pictures
contain events or situations that these students might have
heard about or participated in.

14. Conclusion
From the collected data, it was possible to conclude that although
teachers at English at Cambine Secondary School are aware of
their students’ needs, strategies and materials to teach speaking,
they still face problems in managing the time to modify pictures
to the ELT environment. I came to this conclusion because when
I asked the students how often teachers take pictures to the
classroom, 86% of them said that teachers have never taken
pictures to the classroom. In contrast,14% of the students said
that sometimes the teachers take pictures to the class (see chart 3
of the questionnaire) . Apart from the students’ answers on the
questionnaires, during the interview, the teachers also have
supported that it has been difficult to prepare special pictures to
the classroom because pictures require time to prepare and then
time to make the learners explore them in the classroom. It’s also
important to remember that during the lessons observed, the
teachers did not prepare pictures to use during their teaching.

15. This information comes to sustain the hypothesis which says that
most teachers do not use authentic materials to encourage
students to use the English language communicatively.
Going on with the data collected, it was also possible to conclude
that the information gathered through the lessons observation,
questionnaire and interview sustained the hypothesis which says
that the lack of vocabulary to communicate ideas and thoughts
can be one of the problems faced by students when speaking the
English Language because during the lessons observed, the
students manifested speaking problems that are related to the lack
of vocabulary and grammar. To prove the validity of the fact, I
asked the students about problems they face when learning
speaking and 37% of them said that face problems in mastering
vocabulary when learning speaking. Similarly, 50% of the
students reported that face problems of vocabulary and 13% of
the students said that face problems in pronouncing words
correctly (see chart 4 of the students questionnaire).

16. Furthermore, it was possible to conclude that teachers and
students are aware of the advantages of using community pictures
in ELT. When asked how would be learning speaking using
community pictures, 74% of the students said that it would be
very interesting. When asked the similar question to teachers,
they said that it would help a lot in engaging the students in the
learning process and added that even the weaker students would
try their best to say something using the target language. This
view comes to sustain the hypothesis which says that teachers can
resort to community pictures to promote interaction which is the
key aspect in the learning environment.
Therefore, taking into account all the data collected and the
evidences gathered, I conclude by saying that really pictures can
be the effective tool to improve students’ speaking.

17. Suggestions
To the teachers
The first suggestion is regarding to the production of learning
materials that make the students produce the language. Although
some teachers have proved to find hard times in time
management, they should do their best to capture community
pictures and use them in a ELT.
Second, during the lessons, teachers should select the most
important activities to do in the classroom and give much time to
the students to practice the language. The remaining speaking
activities should be done at home so that they can use English
language communicatively inside and outside the classroom
which is a way of improving their speaking problems easily.

18. The researcher proposes that the students
should spend their time doing activities that
may help them overcome speaking problems
like commenting on pictures of their
community and other pictures. They should
also try to construct vocabulary through the
use of picture interpretation in pairs or small
groups using English language outside the
classroom.
To the students

19. The end!
Thank you.