VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
FACULTY OF POST – GRADUATE STUDIES DƯƠNG TRA
̀
MI THE USE OF PICTURES IN TEACHING ENGLISH
SPEAKING IN AN ENGLISH CENTER

(ng dng ca tranh nh trong dy ni ting Anh ti mt
trung tâm Anh ngư
̃
) MINOR PROGRAM THESIS

THE USE OF PICTURES IN TEACHING ENGLISH
SPEAKING IN AN ENGLISH CENTER

(ng dng ca tranh nh trong dy ni ting Anh ti mt
trung tâm Anh ngư
̃
)

MINOR PROGRAM THESIS

FIELD: ENGLISH TEACHING METHODOLOGY
CODE: 601410
SUPERVISOR: V MAI TRANG, M.A. HANOI –2011 iv

……………………………………8
4. Picture processing and memory models
……………………………………9
Chapter III: Research methodology
……………………………………12
1. Participants
……………………………………12
2. Method of research
……………………………………12
3. Analysis of the research
……………………………………13
3.1. The questionnaire
……………………………………13
3.2. Class observations
……………………………………25
Chapter IV: Conclusion
……………………………………27
1. Conclusion
……………………………………27
2. Limitations and suggestions for future research
……………………………………31
Chapter V: References
……………………………………32
Appendix
……………………………………I 1

Chapter I


2
2. Research aims and objectives
As pictures are considered as something indispensable in teaching speaking by most
instructors, how to use them effectively is a worth answering question whose answer is of
great importance to teachers. The major purpose of the study is to find out ways to use
pictures in teaching English speaking. It also seeks to discover their impacts on speaking
lessons and consider factors that can influence their effectiveness.
3. Research questions
The study revolves around the following guide questions:
3.1. What are the functions of pictures in teaching English speaking?
3.2. Which activities using pictures can be organized in teaching students of the center?
3.3. Pictures with or without text materials, which is more facilitative?
3.4. Which issues need to be addressed in using pictures in the center?
4. Research site and subjects
The research was conducted in an English center in Hanoi, Vietnam. The subjects were
drawn from beginning to proficient levels of learners as well as EFL teachers with at least
1 year's teaching experience, specifically 5 classes consisting of totally 68 students and 20
teachers. Among these 20 teachers, 3 of them are highly experienced with more than 5
years teaching English speaking. (See Chapter III for more details.)
5. Research methodology
This research was carried out in qualitative way, which involved a teacher survey
questionnaire designed to get both quantitative and qualitative information and class
observation sessions accompanied by records of students‟ responses. It also made use of
lesson plans for various lessons of different English levels that were provided by the
teachers participating in this study.
6. Significance of the study
This study will be of considerable interest to teachers and students in this language
center and others because it opens the door to initiatives as well as to students' attitude and
perceptions of language learning. This investigation of the influential factors that concern

2.2. The notion of teaching speaking
The main objective of a language course is to enable students to communicate in foreign
language; speaking, therefore, needs a special attention. This is due to the fact that in daily
life, most of us communicate by speaking more than writing.
Many language learners and teachers regard speaking ability as the measure of knowing
a language. To them, fluency is the ability to communicate with others much more than the
ability to read and write. Speaking is the most important skill that a student can acquire,

4
and is the benchmark to assess one‟s progress or accomplishments in spoken
communication
In general, students need to recognize that speaking involves three areas (Burnkart
1998).
a. Mechanics: Using the right words with correct pronunciation in the right order
b. Functions: Knowing when the clarity of messages is essential, and when exact
understanding is not required.
c. Social and cultural norms: Understanding how to take into account who is speaking to
whom, in what circumstances, about what, and for what reason.
In language teaching, the teachers help to develop students‟ knowledge by providing
genuine or authentic practices and prepare them for realistic communication
circumstances. In other words, they help students acquire the ability to produce logically
connected sentences which are relevant to specific contexts, and use accurate
pronunciation and grammar.
2.3. The components of speaking skill
Speaking is very complex, and it is the language art that is most frequently used by
people in the world. It often requires the simultaneous use of number of
abilities/components developed at different rates and level. Syakur (1987) established 5
components of speaking skill, consists of comprehension, grammar, vocabulary,
pronunciation and fluency. In short, mastering these components will allow speaker to
perform effectively and comfortably in actual communication.

Fluency is the ability of speaker to speak fluently and accurately. Fluency in speaking is
the aim of language learners. Fluency can be measured by the extent to which speaker use
the target language quickly and confidently with few hesitations or unnatural pauses, false
starts. These signs indicate that the speaker does not have to stop to search for words or
items during his/her speech.
2.4. The activities to promote speaking skill
In traditional classrooms, speaking practice normally involves one person asking the
question and another giving answer. The process of question and answer are often
predictable and there is only one correct answer. In contrary, in real communication
speakers normally have to deal with uncertainty of what the other person will say. The
objective of communication is to complete a task, such as expressing one‟s opinion,
obtaining information; and in order to do so, speakers may have to clarify their meaning or
clarify confirmation by different ways.

6
Therefore, to develop communicative competences, teachers need to incorporate
classrooms activities with a purpose and an information gap, and at the same time allow
multiple forms of expressions. (Burkart, 1998)
a. Structured output activities
The two most common types of structured output activities are information gap and
jigsaw activities.
* Information gap activities
According to Rapton (2001), in information gap activities students usually work in pairs
or groups, whereby one person has information that must be shared with the others in order
to solve a problem, gather information and make decision. The activity could be filling the
gaps in a schedule or timetable. For example person A holds a timetable of delivery
schedule of a restaurant with some of arrival and departure times missing, while person B
has the same timetable but with different blank spaces. The two persons are not allowed to
see each other‟s timetables and must fill in the blanks by asking each other relevant
questions. Completing a picture is another common practice of this type of activity, where

complete the picture of a person‟s life.
b. Communicative output activities
This type of activity allows students to practice using the target language in situations
that resembles real setting. Students must work together to solve a problem, complete a
task or develop a plan, the most common communicative output activities are discussion
and role play.
* Discussion
According to Kayi (2006), in a discussion students may aim to arrive at a conclusion,
share ideas about an event or find solutions in their discussion groups. There are some
criteria to group discussions:
- It is essential that the purpose of discussion is set by the teacher. This is to ensure
students do not spend their time discussing about irrelevant topics.
- The chosen topic is not necessarily a serious one in order to create a more open and
interesting environment for students to interact.
- Each group then works on their topic in a given period of time and presents it to the
class.
- At the end, the class decides on the winning group who defended the idea in the best
way.
This kind of activity encourages students to learn how to express themselves as well as
how to justify their ideas.

8
In speaking lessons, teachers often bring out a picture of a specific issue like global
warming, pollution, or festivals to set a context for lessons or to raise a task. Students may
be arranged into groups and discuss the picture under teachers‟ requirements. They may
have to discuss causes of an issue, the conditions of a problem, or just any thing they know
about events like time, date, and activities.
* Role Play
In role plays, students pretend they are in various social situations that they may
encounter in real life. Teachers will assign the students‟ role in different contexts, so that

explain the “picture superiority effect,” including (1) the dual-code model, (2) the single-
code model, (3) the sensory-semantic model.
According to Paivio (1971, 1978, 1990, 1991), the dual-coding theory argue that there
are two interdependent types of memory codes, verbal and nonverbal, for processing and
storing information. The verbal code takes charge of processing and storing verbal
information such as words and sentences. The other system consists of memory for all
nonverbal phenomenon, which is mostly thought as a code for images and other pictorial
representations. Pavio assumes that the dual coding of pictures in verbal and nonverbal
memory is more likely to occur for pictures than words, then the “picture superiority
effect” could be explained using dual-coding theory.
Single-code model argues that visual information is transformed into abstract
propositions stored in semantic memory. Pictures trigger a single semantic memory system
differently than words. Individuals provided with pictures spend more times looking at
pictures before naming them, so they remember the pictures better. Pictures are also more
distinctive and more unique than the words that label them, which further make pictures
more memorable.
Picture superiority can also be explained using a sensory-semantic model (Nelson,
1979). There may be a more distinctive sensory code for pictures, or the probability that
pictures will be processed semantically is greater than that for words.

10

Figure 1: Dual-Code Model
Figure 2: Single-Code Model

Verbal
memory

Nonverbal
memory

read or understood faster when preceded by a related context. Long-term memory stores
information in “schema,” which is a “cognitive construct that permits one to treat multiple
elements of information as a single element categorized according to the manner in which
it will be used (Marcus, Cooper, & Sweller, 1996:49). For instance, learners can develop a
schema for cats, and recognize a single instance of a cat as belonging to the category of
“cats” although each cat is different from one another in many ways. Saunders, Wise, and
Golden (1995:42) says knowledge is more memorable when presented in webs of
schemata; the more information is interconnected, the more it is readily recalled.
A multimodal theory of learning, like the Dual Coding theory, says learning is more
effective when the learner uses more than one sense modality, for instance, verbal and
visual processing, and when connections are clearly made between the information
contained in each modality (Mayer & Sims, 1994:390).
Meaning
features
Phonemic
features
Visual features
Visual features
PICTURE
WORD

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Chapter III
Research methodology
1. Participants
This study was carried out in a well-respected English center in Hanoi for

40
15
Upper-
intermediate
and advanced
Pre-intermediate
and
intermediate
Beginning and
elementary
Proficient
questionnaire. One more email was sent as a reminder and as an encouragement to
participate in this project. The response rate was 100%.
Another tool applied is class observation and lesson plan revision to enrich the
perspectives. Class observation was carried out in all five chosen classes. While observing,
recording and note-taking were made for later detailed analysis. As required by the
questionnaire, teachers provided parts of their lesson plans to illustrate their opinions,
which were analyzed later and served as a very necessary and convenient tool.
3. Analysis of the research
3.1. The questionnaire
3.1.1. The first six questions
The first 6 questions of the questionnaire were to get professional information of
teachers and the present of pictures in speaking lesson. The results are presented in the
following table which shows teachers mostly teach beginning to intermediate levels. Even
though 3 of them, who teach proficient level, do not have speaking lessons but they did
teach speaking before. All of them have used pictures in teaching this skill. The only
reason for not using pictures in teaching speaking is the unavailability of speaking lessons
in these proficient classes. This proves the popularity of pictures in teaching English
speaking and they seem to be an indispensable tool in speaking lessons.


Teachers who use pictures in
English speaking lessons
Table 2: Percentage of teachers involved in teaching English speaking and using
pictures in English speaking lessons
3.1.2. Questions 7 and 8
Questions number 7 and 8 asked teachers to verify the purposes of using pictures and
activities with pictures in teaching English speaking. They had to tick the squares that
indicated their common purposes of picture uses, as well as activities applied, and then
illustrated them with parts of their lesson plans. It is necessary to note that these purposes
concern teaching targets solely. The questions also provided teachers with the option
“Others” and blank for them to contribute their experience apart from the ideas suggested.
Here is what the answers look like and how they are demonstrated in specific lessons. In
each of the lesson plans below, three pictorial items are taken as examples. The following
table shows common purposes of pictures and their popularity (how many teachers use
them as the main purposes; teachers may choose more than one purpose).


Table 3: The main purposes of using pictures in English speaking lessons in the center
As can be seen from this table, vocabulary is the most common target that picture
activities aim at. Pictures are also frequently used to open the topic of speaking lessons, to
brainstorm ideas and to serve as speaking tasks. On the other hand, pictures do not seem to
be favored in teaching grammar and making abstract words concrete.
a. Teaching purposes
* Pictures are used to teach vocabulary.
Pictures are always the first tools teachers think of when they need to provide students
with vocabulary input because pictures are direct and eye-catching. Rather than giving
long oral or textual definition, teachers just need to find a picture that best explains the
word. This also prevents the problem of misunderstanding as students may comprehend
oral and textual information in a different way if they do not have enough vocabulary or
their reading and listening skills are not sufficient to understand the definition. Students are
often asked to look at the pictures and say what they think of when seeing them. Then the
teachers give the new words that need to be learned. The lesson plan for Unit 2 with the
topic of Illnesses from a foundation academic English class is given as an example for this
tool.

to understand from textual definition at all and may cause misunderstanding from students.
Actually, students, when given written definition of a word, even easy with no new
vocabulary items, they have the tendency to read and translate word by word to understand

17
it. If asked what the word means, they read the definition or just repeat it. However, when
shown pictures, they can call out the words; and if the student unfamiliar with them, they
use their mother tongue to name the pictures.
One reason that makes this application less popular than the others is the need for
further explanation. As abstract words are hard to describe in nature, pictures just help a
little in forming the visual image in students‟ minds, but again, still a little bit vague in
some cases. That‟s why teachers often accompany these pictures with further oral or
written definition to specify the words.
* Pictures are used to teach grammar.
Grammar is an indispensable part of teaching speaking in this English center. As
required by the textbooks for in-house use, teachers have to teach vocabulary and grammar
issues that later assist speaking topics in the lesson. Pictorial illustrations are also
commonly used to support learning involving larger verbal units which contain other parts
of speech in addition to nouns like verbs, adjectives, prepositions…
A common application of this type of depiction involves the presentation of a sentence
in which the preposition is blanked out and the student is required to produce or choose the
correct preposition on the basis of information given in the illustration. This type of
exercise relies on the fact that a number of prepositions could be used to complete the
sentence on its own in a semantically and syntactically acceptable manner. An extract
lesson plan for unit 6, “describing a place,” for a foundation academic English class in the
English center can be used as an example. In this lesson plan, the students learn concepts
of prepositions like “in, on, under” by looking at the positions between the ball and the
box. They understand “in” which means the box contains the ball, “on” which means the
ball sits on the upper horizontal surface of the box, and “under” means the box lies above
the ball. In doing so, they can “transfer” the memory to positions of other things like

Avatar. When viewing these pictures, the students have to answer questions of whether
they know the films‟ names, who stars in the films, and what kinds of the films are.
Experiences prove that students get excited with guessing topics of lessons through
pictures. They form association basing on the pictures and generalize them to reveal the
theme. This activity is also applied to a wide range of topics. To make it successful,
teachers should control the pictures so that they are known by the students. Despite
common or strange topics, the chosen pictures should be understandable and popular to
most students. Otherwise, students both do not find out the topics of the lessons and are

19
discouraged to learn. To motivate the students more, teachers may try pictures of stuffs that
are of great concern at the time of the lessons.
* Pictures are used to provide input information for speaking topics.
With topics that students hardly or little know about, pictures are of great help that
provide them with input knowledge. When seeing the pictures, students can analyze
information presentable and transfer this into words to speak out. Without pictures,
teachers experience difficulty in exchanging information with students because in that
case, teachers will have to talk a lot while students should be the ones to do so. Also, this
kind of brainstorming helps students better remember what to say. One lesson plan for unit
12 entitled “Environment” provided by a teacher who is teaching a foundation academic
class has given an insight into this issue.
Required by the lesson plan, students have to work in groups of 3 or 4 and use the
pictures to generate ideas for environmental problems and ways to protect the
environment. As students‟ background knowledge of this area may be limited, they find in
those pictures useful guides to bring out problems like smoke from factory, radioactive
waste, glacier thawing, rising sea level, drought, flood, fire, and others. Also they will
discuss solutions suggested by the pictures, which are using solar panels to turn solar
energy to electricity, growing trees, and using wind mills.
Pictures are really facilitative with this function that most teachers make use of this
application. It both helps students with ideas for unfamiliar topics when all they do is to try

Also, it is easily seen that pictures help motivate learners a lot during learning process. If
teachers keep talking and talking without showing anything fun or authentic to look at,
learners may get bored quickly. However, there are some teachers (10%) who believe that
pictures do not have any positive effects or even oppose to that idea. This is true sometimes
when pictures are not properly used or, even worse, abused. For example, a teacher may
want to introduce the topic of illnesses but fall into a specific kind of disease, like diabetes;
the students will surely wonder what is the relation between those issues and lose attention
because they do not understand anything about diabetes. Another case is when a teacher
always uses pictures to teach vocabulary, to introduce topics, and to do other purposes
without thinking of a different idea with something else, not pictures. Students,
consequently, will become fed up with pictures, loosing their motivation and cooperation
as well.
3.1.3. Questions 12 to 22

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These questions deal with different aspects of pictures to discover problems or
difficulties that may occur. The results are presented in the following table.
Question 12: Pictures with text content are more facilitative.
60%
30%
5%
5%
0%0%
Strongly agree Agree Neutral Disagree Strongly disagree

Question 13: Text content should appear together with pictures.
0%
60%
25%
15%

35%
45%
0%
Strongly agree Agree Neutral
Disagree Strongly disagree

Question 17: Complex pictures are more facilitative than simple pictures.
5%
5%
0%
60%
30%
0%
Strongly agree Agree Neutral Disagree Strongly disagree