With the contemporary emphasis in China on learning language as a communicative skill, the teaching of English conversation as a separate course has been considered by many to be essential. However, it is still common to find a student with accurate pronunciation and a very good understanding of English grammar who is unable to converse effectively and appropriately with others.
To address this problem, we began to use picture activities at intermediate levels as supplementary aids to promote classroom interaction. We will begin this paper by describing the kinds of pictures we use. Next, we will present eight pair activities for lower-intermediate and intermediate students. Finally, we will discuss the role of the teacher and the method of evaluation.
Materials
We have established an ongoing collection of pictures on a variety of topics that are appealing and interesting, rich in cultural material, and apt to arouse students' emotional response. We have found the following to be the most useful resources: The Times, Newsweek, The Washington Post, US News and World Report, The New York Times, USA Today, The Observer, Daily Telegraph, western postcards, western stamps, local newspapers and magazines, calendars, picture books, cartoon series, photo collections, personal photo albums, instructional or operational manuals, book covers, and travel guides.
Preparation
The teacher has tremendous work to do before the collected pictures can be put to classroom use, but it is worth the effort. The pictures need to be categorised according to topic and level, and labeled (i.e., SPT-A = sports for advanced level students).
We then create activities for specific curricular goals, considering the following questions: Will they create a real need for students to open their mouths? Will they help bridge the information gap between students? Will they be used so students concentrate, not so much on the linguistic form of what they say, but on the communicativeness of what they say and how they say it? Will they create realistic social or cultural contexts? Can they be used without much teacher intervention?
The following section describes eight speaking activities that we have developed for classes of 25 lower intermediate-intermediate sophomores at our university. The picture type, procedure, and observations for each activity are detailed.
Eight Activities
i. Giving details
Picture Type: a person or animal; a place (i.e., hotel lobby or living-room); a scene or event (i.e., celebration or accident).
Implementation: Students described their pictures to their partners.
Observation: Students developed confidence in speaking English.
ii. Describing processes
Picture Type: a tool or machine; a piece of furniture or equipment; a kind of food.
Implementation: Students used a picture or series of pictures to describe to their partners how the object is made, how it is used, and how it may change.
Observation: Students improved their oral expository skills.
iii. Raising cultural awareness through comparison/contrast
Picture Type: two related subjects or objects from different cultures (i.e., Chinese family vs. western family, Buddhist temple vs. Christian church).
Implementation: Students compared and contrasted two cultures.
Observation: Students learned how to talk about their own culture and other cultures in English.
iv. Predicting
Picture Type: a real-life situation (i.e., students picnicking in the mountains, a man coming out of the airport with several large pieces of luggage).
Implementation: Students predicted several logical endings to an imaginary story based on their pictures.
Observations: Students applied logical reasoning to discourse based on their understanding and prediction. For example, in the airport situation, one student said, "He looked worried and unhappy because his girlfriend had promised to meet him at the airport. She didn't show up until half an hour later. She had been caught up in a traffic jam because of the fog." Another student said, "The announcement that the flight had to be canceled because of the fog let him down. He had to move out of the airport again and stay in that city overnight."
v. Summarizing
Picture Type: a universal theme (i.e., interpersonal conflict, the environment).
Implementation: Students first made of a title for their pictures by themselves, and then tried to convince their partners to accept their titles.
Observations: This activity developed three complex skills: (a) interpreting meaning from a picture; (b) summarizing the interpretation; and (c) persuasion.
vi. Critical thinking
Picture Type: a natural phenomenon or social problem (i.e., pollution, traffic jam, child labour, unemployment, education).
Implementation: Students identified the themes in the pictures and described the implications.
Observations: Students with a solid knowledge base did better in this activity as it drew on their knowledge of both the world and the subject matter. Students learned to combine their own thoughts with informed judgements on a particular problem.
vii. Storytelling
Picture Type: a combination of pictures related in setting, characters, and actions.
Implementation: Students worked in pairs, taking turns telling each other stories based on their understanding of two or more assigned pictures, according to the following structure: the beginning (introduction of characters), the body (building of conflict), and the climax (resolution of conflict).
Observations: Story-telling brought the students' imagination and creativity alive. In addition, it gave students a rich and versatile experience with language and culture.
viii. Role Playing
Picture Type: a real-life situation (i.e., making a phone call in the office, shopping at a grocery, guiding a tourist at a scenic spot).
Implementation: In pairs, students clarified the situation, discussed the interaction between characters, the perspectives of everyone involved, then made dialogues based on the pictures and acted them out for the class.
Observation: All students participated actively, even those who were usually shy or nervous.
The Role of the Teacher
Before class, the teacher prepares the pictures and designs activities. During the class, the teacher acts as a facilitator, observer, and consultant. The teacher should also break into conversations to ask questions, add information, or help with explanations. At the end of an activity, the teacher asks students to share what they had done with the rest of the class. The teacher then comments on the whole process and gives tips for further development in classroom interaction and actual communications.
Evaluation During and After Class
The teacher selects a small number of students to evaluate the speech performance of each activity in terms of form (Is it correct, natural, and appropriate?), content (Is it clear and accurate?), organization (Is it logical, coherent, and cohesive?), and presentation (Is it adequate, skillful, and successful?). This evaluation increases classroom interaction and encourages peer learning.
Evaluation after class helps to establish whether what we are doing is meeting our primary goal. To evaluate the use of pictures for promoting English conversation, we usually hand out a questionnaire to get feedback and suggestions on materials after they have been in use for two or three weeks. Regular discussions and interviews with students are held throughout the course to collect information about the materials, activities, classroom management, classroom interaction, and cultural input so that adjustment can be made. Students are sometimes invited to join the picture search and activity design.
At the end of the term, pictures are the basis of a test in which the teacher joins groups in speaking activities and grades each student according to teacher-student interaction andstudent-student interaction. Thus, our method of assessment is based directly on what we did in class.
A Final Word
Our use of pictures arose from the need to develop students' general communicative competence, specifically their confidence to speak. After several years of experience in integrating pictures into the whole conversation program, we have identified a number of benefits:
- It promotes cooperative learning.
- It increases opportunities to develop spontaneous interactive language skills.
- It strengthens awareness as independent language learners.
- It raises cultural awareness.
- It strengthens the ability to disintegrate details.
The use of pictures has improved communicative competence of most of the students in the class. As a Chinese proverb goes, "Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man how to fish and you feed him for a lifetime." The use of pictures can be a very useful part of the process of language learning for life.
References
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Prabhu, N. (1987). Second language pedagogy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Richards, J. C., & Nunan. D. (1990). Second language teacher education. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Wheeler, J. (1994). Overcoming difficulties in pair and group work. English Teaching Forum, 32(3), 48-49.
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