THE USE OF PICTURE TO IMPROVE STUDENTS’ ENGLISH

SPEAKING SKILL

Rahmi Aulia Nurdini

Rahmiaulianurdini@gmail.com
Bina Sarana Informatika University, Indonesia

Abstract. This qualitative study aims to investigate the use of pictures to

teach English speaking or conversation interestingly and more efficiently.
Data from observation and library research show that using picture is one of
an excellent way to create an exciting learning process, so the students can
understand the lesson more efficiently and can be more enthusiastic to speak
English to others. Also, the use of pictures has enabled students to practice
speaking English regularly even outside the class, to memorize the material
better and to improve their English speaking skills.

Keywords: Teaching Conversation, Communicative Approach, and Picture.

INTRODUCTION
Language is as an ability to obtain as well as use complex systems of communication.
The language also becomes a central role in the development of intellectual, social, and
emotional leaners. Nowadays, as an international language, English has been taught in all levels
of formal schools in Indonesia. Although English is only as a second language in Indonesia, it
becomes an essential means of communication in some Indonesian’s occasions, for example, job
vacancy opportunities, education, trade transactions, social-cultures, and many others.
Principally, teaching speaking is not far different from teaching English for other skills
such as writing, grammar, vocabulary, listening, and many others. Based on Balitbang
Depdiknas (2002:42), it is explained that the goal of teaching and learning English is improving
the four English skills consisting of the mastery of the receptive skills (reading and listening) and
the knowledge of the productive skills (speaking and writing), within a specified word level and
relevant grammatical structure. Thus, before teaching in the classroom, it is suggested that the
teacher has to know about what the materials needed are and how the condition required for
teaching in the class. Furthermore, teaching English by using syllabus and lesson plan is the
essential and alternative way in teaching because it contains pre-teaching, process-teaching, and
post-teaching which can help the learning process run effectively. A teacher also has to know
about what the appropriate approach method like is to identify the students’ characteristics in

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daily activities. Therefore, a teacher can then decide the proper way and use learning media
which can help to teach English especially speaking skills successfully in the classroom.
However, there are some problems with students when they practice speaking English in
the classroom. They have less self-confident, feel bored or reluctant to practice communication
with other students or even people in daily life. To solve this problem, the teachers use a method
to teach English speaking. The communicative approach is an appropriate method for teaching
English conversation to make students feel better and more confident to communicate by using
media. The proper media to explain conversation is through the picture. According to Raimes
(1983:27) in Mahfud Effendi, the use of the picture in the classroom provides a stimulating focus
for students’ attention.” The picture can commonly interest the students to keep the spirit in
learning English because the picture has much arts value which makes them more interested. By
using a picture, a teacher can make any creativity that are appropriate with the students’ needs.
The students will feel excited as well as a teacher can keep following lesson planning that they
made. In short, using picture media has benefits for EFL students to improve English speaking
skill.
There are some researches on the use of a picture to improve speaking skill, but there are
a few studies about the use of pictures on conversation activities in the Indonesian context. Most
studies have conducted the test for an impromptu speech. Filled the gab, this study is therefore
interested in exploring the topic qualitatively, and it poses the following research questions: (1)
How does the teacher teach conversation through pictures? (2) What problems do the students
face in learning conversation? (3) What are the benefits of learning speaking skill using pictures?

REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE

Teaching English speaking
Teaching speaking is difficult. Some factors are underlying this, for example, most
students do not have the confidence to speak up possibly because they have less vocabulary and
are influenced by their visible mother tongue. Additionally, they naturally have less motivation
to improve their English, so their speaking ability is never improved. The other factor from
teaching method and can also be the cause, for instance, the teaching method is not appropriate
with the condition classroom, teaching material is not suitable with the students’ needs, student’s
ability to receive and understand English subject that is various and the environment is not right
to teach English.
Occasionally, the dominant or smart students are grouped into the same group.
Meanwhile, the students who are a poor reader or low thinker will often get difficulties in the
group at the same level. It becomes a complicated problem if it goes on. It is important for a
teacher to understand and to solve this problem in other that there is not social discrepancy
among one student to the others. Besides, before the teachers teach in the class, they should take
into consideration these following elements, based on Shavelson and Stern (1981:478) such as
content, the material is the thing that learners can observe, activities, goal, students’ learning
styles, and social community.
Getting a good conversation, a teacher needs a characteristic feature and teaching
procedure. The unique features of conversation include greater spontaneity and freedom, and
greater equality among the students than other discourse types. All these features are at odds with

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the nature of the classroom. Where language is directed toward as a specific purpose, and where
a teacher is traditionally charge of the students. Teaching conversation has a procedure which is
flexible. The conversation focuses on developing student’s speaking and interaction skills while
raising their awareness.

Communicative Approach
Conversation is based on the principles of a learner-centered curriculum and
communicative language learning. A teacher needs a unique approach to teach. An approach to
conversation development is the communicative approach. This method is considered to be able
to take charge of the students in the classroom. Based on the Richards and Rodgers (1986:15)
said that there are three levels of conceptual and organization which called approach, method,
and technique. The arrangement is hierarchical. The organizational key is that procedures carry
out a way which is consistent with an approach. “….An approach is a set of correlative
assumptions dealing with the nature of language teaching and learning. An approach is
axiomatic. It describes the nature of the subject matter to be taught…..”
The communicative method is used in teaching English as a foreign language with direct
communication. This approach appears because the language’s expert realized that there is a
mistake on the last 1960s. This changing is caused by teaching English with an old fashion that is
a situational English teaching. Communicative is taught with practice the activities based on the
meaning situation. Moreover, this method is recognized that they are not faced with an oral
situation when they are faced with the free class situation. The communicative approach in
language teaching starts from a theory of language as communication. At the level of language
theory, there are some of the characteristics of this open view of language. The primary function
of language is to allow interaction and communication, the structure of language reflects its
functional and communicative uses, the fundamental units of language are not merely its
grammatical and structural features, but categories of technical and communicative meaning as
exemplified in discourse.
Although the communicative approach is one of the best ways of teaching English
conversation, it does not guarantee for the students to communicate to the target language well.
But rather ineffective if a teacher does not also support the students. In this case, giving
motivation is also an important thing to encourage being better in conversation.

Conversation Using Picture

In the process of teaching and learning English, a teacher should be creative to find out
the technique of education, so that the students can easily understand the material of the subject
that they teach. One of the methods is using a picture which is used as the learning media. Based
on Competence-Based Curriculum and KTSP, picture media have proved to be effective and
encourage the students in the learning process that are purposed to improve their skills of English
subject, especially in conversation. Pictures can be employed for very creative use in
communicative language teaching. Using picture is intended to be the technique of teaching aid
and constitute the material of which language can be generated. The students can be divided into
a group or in pairs.

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Based on Brown (2001) state that group work helps to solve class’s problem. A group or
in pairs can be asked to produce communicative sentence and giving expression from the picture.
Occasionally, in this case, is needed to guess and giving a concluding. The picture used has to
have the real form. For that reason, the students can imagine it explicitly. By doing this, their
imagination can be exerted. The activity of each group can work on a different picture, and
attempt some kinds of a description which should involve question and answers related to the
matter on the picture.

The Procedure of Using Picture in Teaching Speaking

Commonly, a picture is more interesting than written. Sometimes a cartoon is more
unique for teaching English conversation. A cartoon is delineations in painting form or caricature
about a person, idea, or situation which is designed to influence society opinion. A cartoon is
intended to amuse the reader. Thus, it is made as beautiful as possible. Before a teacher begins to
learn in the classroom, a teacher should prepare some procedures. It is intended to keep the
learning process smoothly. In teaching procedure, the writer will use three-step techniques which
are including pre-conversation, process-conversation, and post-conversation. In pre-
conversation, the teacher brings some picture and sticks on the whiteboard. Then, students are
divided into some groups, each of the group consist of two to five students. In process-
conversation, ask the students to analyze the picture for 5 minutes and ask them to discuss each
group or in pairs. After that, the students make one sentence or more using WH-word followed
by asking them in pairs to practice speaking up or telling what the picture is about. There is
sometimes question from other groups, so they try to answer it. In post-conversation, assure all
of the students to understand with the picture about and sometimes it can be helped by the
teacher. Then, ask one or pairs of each group to speak up the concluding or summarizing in front
of the class. The last is the discussion which will be led by the teachers, giving some comments,
giving a concluding, and also closing the lesson.
While the students practice the dialogue, it is advisable that the model conversation is
recorded. So, the students can hear their interaction nature. The students may use this model to
repeat and compare their conversation with other students. By doing this, it is hoped that the
students can assign their own mistake. Consequently, they will get good motivation and self-
confidence to speak up the next day. Pragmatically, conversation lessons and exercises are
intended to improve conversational skills. For this reason, a teacher is helpful to firstly focus on
building skills by eliminating some of the barriers that might be on the way of production.
The last section of this procedure is an assessment. Assessment is intended to measure
the speaking ability of every student. Many techniques would be appropriate to assess the
students, depending on their background and levels ability in English. In this case, the writer
thinks that to assess has to be flexible. Flexibility is there must be consistent evidence of the
ability to turn-taking in a conversation and to adapt to new topics or changes of direction
(Arthur, 1989). There are six assessments which can be used by the teacher in conversation
among them; self-confidence in that the students have to take upon to speak up about anything
whether using incorrect structure or correct and they do not think about it in advance, fluency
which means that they are asked to conversation fluently, accuracy which means that how the
students are using and word selection that is considered to be proper sentences, thereby they can

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be a critical thinking and communicative skill, complexity which means that whether the
students give a concluding and giving argument or not during their conversation or speak up.

The Benefits of Using Picture

As a good teacher, they should know what the condition and needs of the students are.
There are some reasons to teach conversation by using the picture. The first and foremost, it is
remarkably interesting for students because using picture can generate creativity that kills
boredom. More importantly, using picture encourages spontaneous speaking with pairs. It can be
done by giving a picture, then one of them describe it with directly practicing or speaking up.
The students have to work in pairs or together to get the primary goal of this learning. They
cannot succeed unless they work well together in pairs. This cooperation is made by designing
interaction among all of the students in the classroom.
Moreover, pictures are media which are often used to explain an event clearer.
Sometimes news is considered less describable if there is no picture following it. Through
pictures, the reader will know and imagine, although it is not entirely. Based on Latuheru (1988)
in Mahfud Effendi stated that “picture can translate abstract ideas into a more realistic form, can
be easily obtained, can be used in different academic levels, can save teachers’ time and energy,
and can attract students’ interest.” Lastly, the reader also may have different views about the
same picture. Thus, it will arouse the learners to speak up.

RESEARCH METHOD
The researcher used the descriptive qualitative method, and the data were collected
through observation and library research. The research took place at a state senior high school at
Jakarta for the second grade of social class. For the procedure of the research, the researcher
firstly found out theories used to support answering the research questions. Secondly, it used
observation in the classroom when the teacher was teaching conversation. Next, the researcher
analyzed the data to be proven with the theory explained before.

FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION

From the result of observation, most teachers did not teach English by using a media or
even a picture. They only delivered and explained a lesson verbally by using the whiteboard as
well as a handbook and then followed by doing exercise from the book. They did not get
something new or exciting activity that can trigger students’ motivation to learn and speak
English. Every meeting, they always got the same learning activity from the teacher. The result
was students felt bored and didn’t have improvement in learning English especially to speak
English even to their friends in the classroom. The next day, the teacher tried to teach speaking
English by using a picture, the students looked more enthusiastic than before. They also felt
motivated to speak because they had many ideas to speak up from the picture they saw.

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CONCLUSION
This study found that teaching English speaking or conversation for students using
picture media is an excellent way to improve their ability in speaking English as well as to
trigger the students’ motivation. Students do not feel bored and enjoy as long as learning English
in the classroom. This situation is different when a teacher does not use any media for teaching.
Therefore, it is essential that language teachers provide a rich environment where meaningful
communication takes place, rather than leading students to pure memorization. By using various
or useful speaking activities such as using pictures can contribute a great deal to students in
developing basic interactive skills that are necessary for life and at the same time can make their
learning more meaningful and fun for them.
Finally, the researcher hopes this study could give inspiration and be useful for the
readers, students and English teachers. Additionally, for the next researchers, hopefully, this can
be used as references to develop research dealing with the method enhancement for teaching
speaking skills to analyze the theory deeper and further.

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