Paper Visual Aids in Teaching English as a Second Language

Menciptakan suasana yang menyenangkan dalam menyampaikan pelajaran akan membuat siswa lebih mudah memahami pelajaran yg diberikan oleh guru. Pertanyaannya adalah bagaimana caranya? Ada banyak cara untuk mengajar kelas, salah satunya adalah alat bantu visual dapat membantu memudahkan guru untuk mengajar hampir semua subjek dan membuat kelas menyenangkan bagi siswa dan guru. 
Alat bantu visual digunakan untuk meningkatkan efektivitas kelas pada proses belajar mengajar sikap, motivasi, dan minat pelajar yang merupakan faktor dominan dalam menentukan prestasi belajar siswa. Berikut ini saya berikan contoh makalahnya.

                                Visual Aids in Teaching English as a Second Language
                                                     by Susanti Intan Kusumawati

I. Introduction

            There are many ways to teach a class, but visual aids can help fun and easy to teach virtually any subject and make the class enjoyable for both students and teachers.

       Various ways in which the classroom itself and certain kinds of visual instructional material might be used more effectively to develop and sustain motivation, to produce positive attitudes toward English and native English speakers, and to teach or reinforce language-learning skills. Chickiemomma (1961): A visual aid is something you bring to support whatever project or report you are discussing. it gives the listener something concrete to look at to enable a better understanding of what yo are saying. it can be an actual object or a graph or pie chart whatever you feel would support your work.

       Visual aids are used to increase the effectiveness of classroom teaching-learning process the attitude, motivation, and interest of the learner are factors of crucial importance in determining his achievement. 

II. Discussion

        In this chapter will be discussed about certain kinds of visual instructional material might be used more effectively to develop and sustain motivation, to produce positive attitudes toward English and native English speakers, and to teach or reinforce language-learning skills. Their function in helping to make the elements of pronunciation, structure, and vocabulary habitual. Most important, we will make emphasize the contribution that material aids can make in helping the students to communicate-that is, to understand to speak, to read, and to write English.

Instructional aids that are always available:

A.  The teacher, the students, and the classroom (guru, murid dan ruang kelas)

You can effectively use your hands, arms, face, and clothing in several ways. you can, for example:

1. Indicate the kind of pupil participation you would like at any particular moment by:

·    making an encircling gesture with both arms if the entire class is to respond or repeat.

·    making a smaller encompassing gesture when a smaller group is to repeat.

·    raising your right arm with the palm turned away from you when you wish the students at 
    the right side of the room to repeat, and doing the same with your left arm for the left side 
    of the class.

·    pointing to individual students. (you should explain the value of pointing as a 
    language-teaching device if your students normally consider such a gesture impolite. 
    for one thing, it provides the necessary guidance for drill and recitation without 
    inserting utterances extraneous to the material being drilled).

2.  Signal the responses you desire (at beginning language-learning levels) by  pointing to your mouth when you want the student to "say" or to "repeat"; or by cupping your hand behind your ear when you would like the students to "answer".

3. Use a downward movement of your right arm for falling intonation and an upward movement for rising intonation.

4. Demonstrate the relationship of the tongue and teeth in producing sounds. For example, by holding your left hand so that the fingers represent the upper teeth and putting your outstretched right hand directly beneath and beyond it, you can show the position of tongue and teeth when producing  the th-sound in thank you.

5. Show, by the shape of your mouth (rounded or stretched), the position of your jaw (lowered or raised) or the placement of your tongue, how to produce  the desired sounds or sound sequences.

6. Tap out with your fingers or with a pencil the stressed part of two or three syllable words and the rhythm of utterances or sentences.

7. Point to yourself, items of clothing ,or things you may be carrying, in teaching  language patterns, ranging from This is suit (blouse,etc), to I'm  a teacher, or I'm writing on the blackboard now.

B. The Blackboard (papan tulis)

       The teacher's most widely used and most valuable tool, however, is the blackboard. Blackboard is a big strong piece of wood. It’s the oldest associate of the teacher but an essential teaching aid. It is used to reading and writing to the pupil. With using blackboard, teachers can draw the attention of the pupil  for example teacher writes  difficult word, structure pattern, phrase pattern, etc. In this way, the teacher finds her lessons more interesting. Among its major uses, we can cite the following:

1. When introducing a dialogue, you can sketch sick figures on the board and point to whoever is speaking, thus clarifying the changing roles of characters in the  conversation. After the students have practiced the dialogue orally, you can write it on the blackboard, then read it, and later refer to it as needed while it is dramatized by you, individuals, or the class. similarly, in teaching such expressions as “he's happy” or “I'm happy”, you can draw an upward or downward curving mouth, then pointing to it, ask for the appropriate statement or response from your students. Ensure of a stick figure will assist you in teaching responses to question such as "how many were there?"

2. Expressions such as 'Good morning (afternoon, evening) may be taught in conjunction with a drawing of a clock or a listing of hours appropriate to each greeting.

3. In the case of younger children, you may represent weather by drawings of an      umbrella or the sun.

4. Direction is often grasped more firmly is illustrated in diagram form on the blackboard. A square can represent a park and lines can be drawn to demonstrate the meaning of  around, through, across, near,etc.

5. The blackboard is also an excellent device for teaching grammatical structure. you will find it useful to place the sentences in frames so that the recurring feature of a pattern becomes immediately apparent:

you can also practice simple substitution drills at the blackboard (after you drill them). similarly, more complex drills for extended oral practice, written at the blackboard, enable the student to read sentences across and then to make other logical combinations with other words, for example: in progressive substitution drills, you might write the model sentence on the board and draw vertical lines under it representing the slots into which students will substitute other words. as you give successive word cues, you will point to the line indicating the slot (noun, adjective, adverb, and so forth) into which the student will fit the cue words.

6. In teaching reading, the blackboard is indispensable. You can write on the board new vocabulary words together with their equivalents or meanings as well as questions, multiple choice items, matching expressions, and summaries to ensure comprehension.

3. Real objects (obyek atau benda nyata)

        Students understand the meaning of a word better when they have seen or have touched some object associated with it. A collection of this sort will facilitate the presentation of many language items. For this reason, all teachers should make a collection of everyday objects. These should include such items as newspaper, bus tickets, menus, flags, bottles, cans, container, and toys.

        To illustrate, you may exhibit a plane ticket and map and begin a dialogue about travelling. Restaurant menus also from an excellent introduction to students to words for different kinds of food and to expressions related to eating. They may pretend they are ordering a meal or that some piece of the china or silver service in a restaurant is dirty or missing  from the table.

4. Games and play-acting (permainan dan bermain akting)

         Games can be used in the classroom depends on the age group and the methods of presentation employed. Games provide an excellent opportunity for the use of grammar structures and vocabulary. The game, unless it is a general review exercise, should point toward the use of specific constructions. At beginning learning levels, you may ask students to take prearranged objects out of the box and practice such expressions as "what's in the box?"

            Play acting can also be very effective. Students acting out the roles may speak in the present tense, as “I am Hamidah” and “I'm a senior high school student.” We can use props such as a toy telephone, paper, hand puppets.

5. Charts and picture files (grafik dan file bergambar)

        Another valuable aid is the chart or picture file, which should be an integral part of every classroom. it should contain at least three major types of illustration. first, pictures of persons and single objects. second, pictures of people engaged in activities presenting the relationship between individuals and objects. third, a series of six to ten pictures mounted on one chart  of count nouns (as piece of furniture) or mass nouns (as foods) or of sports or work activities. it will be helpful to arrange the file according to socioeconomics categories (places, transportation media, recreational activities, and so on).

           Teacher may use individual pictures in the introduction and testing of grammatical or vocabulary items. Pictures have great importance in the sense that what cannot be described by words. Teacher can use pairs of pictures to teach and practice such structure:

Who is washing the car?

is the boy in the hospital?

6. The flannel board (papan flanel)

          Another widely used visual technique is the flannel board. Flannel board is a piece of wooden board covered with flannel to stick on some stiff and sanded strips of paper. This inexpensive device is an excellent way to present and practice both structures and vocabulary. In the case of younger students, it can also provide an effective medium for dramatizing stories.

          The flannel board consists of a piece of low-cost flannel , pinned to, glued on, or simply laid over, a back board. On it teacher can place pictures (backed with flannel or sandpaper to make them stick to the flannel) or paper or cloth cutouts of various items. Teacher may use the board as a device for demonstration when teacher is telling a fairy tale, or for showing role changes  in a dialogue. It is very useful too, in illustrating various structures and vocabulary items.   

         The advantages of this aid are that items can be prepared beforehand, can be moved about on the flannel and preserved for use on further occasions.

7. The pocket chart (grafik saku)

        Even more useful, perhaps, in demonstrating word order is the pocket chart. Teacher can make this simply by stapling four or five narrow strips of heavy paper or cardboard to a larger sheet so as to form pockets into which you can place cards bearing individual words and punctuation marks.

         A pocket chart is a specific type of storage system with plastic pockets that many teachers use in their classrooms for organization and lesson planning. Usually made of vinyl, a pocket chart has metal eyelets at the top for easy hanging and plastic pockets sewn on the front. Pocket charts vary in size, color, and style and can serve many different purposes.
         Pocket charts can be used for many activities in an elementary classroom. Teachers use them for reading and language activities such as vocabulary games, sentence building or sequencing practice. Teachers also use pocket charts to keep track of behavior, homework or which children are using the restroom. Teacher can also easily make a pocket chart for her classroom.

Pocket charts can be used for so many purposes such as:

·         Reconstruct poems, songs and chants

·         Sequence alphabet or pictorial story lines

·         List days of the week, months of the year

·         Word banks for themes or journals

·         Word tricks such as the,they,them,then/no,not,now

·         Pattern sentences for reading and journal sentence prompt

8. The vocabulary wheel

        Vocabulary wheel is simply a large circular piece of stiffened paper on which pictures of uniform size appear at regular intervals, they may be related to  one theme or for review purposes, have no specific relationship. over the circular piece is a second circle with a small window the size of a picture. a fastener at the center enables teacher or student to move the second circle so that different pictures appear at the window. as children spin the circle, they should identify the object seen and be encouraged to make further statements about them.

III. Conclusion

         Visual aids give many advantages such as: they are popular and interesting way for the student’s learning. They give necessary variation and provide the classroom change-of-pace so essential to maintaining a high level of interest. They go beyond the limited school and home environment of the students and allow discussion of a wide variety of situations and circumstances. They illustrate that, in the basics of life, most people in the world share similar experiences.