Using Pictures in the English as Foreign Language (EFL) Classrooms: Exploring its Potential Contribution for Developing Students’ Writing Skill

Abstract

With the spread of technology and internet across the world, written communication has received more momentum, and therefore, due attention should be paid to developing English as a Foreign Language (EFL) students’ writing skill. The present study tries to examine the potential contribution of using pictures for developing EFL students’ writing. For so doing, 34 Iranian EFL learners were selected and randomly divided into two groups, namely control group and experimental group. Before the experiment, both groups answered a writing task as the pre-test. Then, in the experimental group, pictures were used for teaching writing. Thus, when students were asked to write about a topic in the classroom, they were shown some related pictures about that topic. However, in the control group, no picture was used. After 16 sessions of instruction, the same writing task was administered as the post-test in order to measure the effect of using pictures on students’ writing development. Then, the performance of the two groups in the pre-test and post-test was compared using ANCOVA. The results indicated that the experimental group could write more words, had less grammatical errors, and used more cohesive devices compared to the control one in the post-test. These findings substantiated the positive effect of using pictures in teaching EFL writing.