IMPACT OF PICTURES IN ENHANCING STUDENTS’ DESCRIPTIVE ESSAY WRITING IN SENIOR SECONDARY SCHOOLS

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Cover Page – – – – – – – – – i
Declaration Page- – – – – – – – – ii
Approval Page – – – – – – – – – iii
Dedication Page – – – – – – – – iv
Acknowledgements – – – – – – – – v
Abstract – – – – – – – – – – v
Table of Contents – – – – – – – – viii

Chapter One
Introduction
1.1 Background to the Study – – – – – – 1
1.2 Statement of the Problem – – – – – – 4
1.3 Purpose of the Study – – – – – – – 5
1.4 Research Questions – – – – – – – 5
1.5 Significance of the Study – – – – – – – 5
1.6 Research Hypotheses – – – – – – 6
1.7 Delimitation – – – – – – – – 7
1.8 Scope of the Study – – – – – – – 7
1.9 Operational Definition of Terms – – – – – 7

Chapter Two
Review of Related Literature
2.1 Writing – – – – – – – – – 8
2.2 Writing Process – – – – – – – – 11
2.3 Descriptive Essay – – – – – – – 21
2.4 The Nature of Picture – – – – – – – 25
2.4.1 Kinds of Pictures – – – – – – – 26
2.5 Use of visual aids in teaching English composition – – – 28
2.5.1 Use of pictures in language teaching – – – – – 28
2.7 Role of Pictures in Motivating Learners during English Composition
Writing Lessons – – – – – – – – 32
2.8 Challenges Experienced by Teachers while Using Instructional Resources to
Teach English Language – – – – – – – 33
2.9 The Advantages of Using Pictures – – – – – 34
2.10 Summary of Literature Review – – – – – 34

Chapter Three
Methods and Procedure
3.0 Introduction – – – – – – – – 35
3.1 Research Design – – – – – – – – 35
3.2 Area of Study – – – – – – – – 36
3.3 Population and Sample of the Study – – – – – 36
3.4 Sampling Technique – – – – – – – 36
3.5 Research Instrument – – – – – – – 38
3.6 Validity of the Instrument – – – – – – 39
3.7 Procedure for Data Collection – – – – – – 38
3.8 Method of Data Analysis – – – – – – 39

Chapter Four
Results and Discussion
4.0. Preamble – – – – – – – – – 40
4.1. Presentation of Students’ Results – – – – – – 40
4.4 Discussion of Findings – – – – – – – 49

Chapter five
Summary of Findings, Conclusion, Recommendations and Suggestions for Further Studies
5.0 Preamble – – – – – – – – – 51
5.1 Summary of Findings – – – – – – – 51
5.2 Conclusion – – – – – – – – 52
5.3 Recommendations – – – – – – – 52
5.4 Suggestions for Further Studies – – – – – – 53
References – – – – – – – – 54
Appendixes – – – – – – – – 60

Abstract
This study was carried out in order to investigate the impact of pictures in enhancing students’ descriptive essay writing in senior secondary schools in Pankshin Local Government Area of Plateau State. The experimental research design was adopted. A sample of 100 students from two public schools was used. The students were divided into experimental and control groups. The instrument for data collection was the test. The method of data analysis was mean score. The findings indicated that students in the experimental group performed better than those in the control group. The students in the control group had a total mean score of 16.64 while students in the experimental group who were exposed to picture in the course of their descriptive writing had a total mean score of 19.8. The researcher concluded that the use of picture enhances the teaching of descriptive essay. The following were recommended among others: teachers of English should adopt pictures in teaching of creative and descriptive writing, the use of pictures should be made an integral part of teacher education programme in the teacher training college and colleges of education, so that those teachers in training would make it a handy tool, English curriculum planners should fashion curriculum to incorporating the pictures in the senior secondary school syllabus, especially when teaching descriptive essay.

Chapter One
Introduction
1.10 Background to the Study
English is used as an international language. When someone wants to learn English, he or she has to try to do his or her best in order to be able to understand English, especially in developing the four language skills: listening, speaking, reading, and writing. Writing is an activity to express ideas, thoughts or even experiences in the form of paragraphs. It is not an automatic process. Writing skill involves how to write a text or essay. It means that during this activity, students play roles as active participants rather than the others. Students are hoped to know how to make a good sentence, to arrange a text and to express ideas that come from their minds.
According to Nation (2008) and Siahaan (2013), writing is an activity that can be usefully be prepared for by working in the other skills of listening, speaking and reading. Writing is a good support for the other three skills. At the basic level, writing is an act of committing words or ideas to some medium. As Richard and Renandya (2002) state, writing is the most difficult skill for second language learners to master. The difficulty lies not only in generating and organizing ideas, but also in translating these ideas into readable text.
Writing is difficult for the students of the Senior Secondary School. The difficulties are that the students cannot transfer their ideas because they are confused. It makes them think they cannot produce a written text. The pictures are one of the solutions that can help the teachers to explain language meaning and construction. The teachers are able to cope with the problems in teaching English. A picture is an illustration that can be used as a two dimensional representation of a person, place or thing. It means that picture is one of the media of communication that can show people, places and things that are far from us. A picture can make anyone to get clearer ideas or information than language term. Picture is a kind of good media, which can be used in teaching writing. The students will be more interested in learning writing if the teacher teaches writing by using pictures. Picture is one kind of media that is easy to find in magazines, books, newspaper or we can create it by drawing it ourselves. Pictures are very useful media in teaching language. Because of that, they are also useful in teaching writing skills. In addition, pictures will motivate the students to write.
In the second year of Senior Secondary School, the basic competency that should be realized in the writing aspect of the English subject is that the students have ability to develop and produce written simple functional text in the descriptive text, recount text, and narrative text. In the context of this study, the writer will only focus on descriptive text. Descriptive text is one of the functional texts which is difficult enough to be learned by students. Wardiman (2008) states, descriptive text is a text that describes the features of someone, something or a certain place. Descriptive text consists of introduction and description. Introduction is the part of paragraph that introduces the character, and description is the part of paragraph that describes the character. The students can use the simple present and adjective clause in writing descriptive text. In writing the descriptive text, students often find some difficulties. The students usually find it difficult to organize their ideas. Furthermore, many students make some mistakes and face difficulties to build and develop their imagination. Anderson & Anderson (2003) and Siahaan (2013) mention that descriptive text is different from information reports because they describe a specific subject rather than a general group. Furthermore, Johnstone & Morrow (1981) in Novita (2014) state that the purpose of descriptive text is to describe objects or person in which the writer is interested.
Based on the researcher’s experience that was conducted on June 2019 in her teaching practice, many Senior Secondary School students were not interested in writing descriptive text because it seemed difficult for them. They did not know how to write correctly, especially in choosing a word or vocabulary to put in the sentence.
Therefore, in order to overcome the problems above, the teacher needs to find and use appropriate media to help the students in teaching writing descriptive texts. Media are the means for transmitting or delivering messages. In teaching – learning perspective, media are used to deliver content to the learners for achieving effective instruction (Naz, 2010). In this case, the use of media in teaching – learning process is needed to attract students’ attention and to make teaching – learning activities more interesting and effective.
According to Sa’diyah (2011) and Novita (2014), the picture can increase students’ interest and make writing activity more interesting. The picture also enhances the students’ participation and interaction during the learning activities. Pictures can also be used as one of the interesting means of learning to improve students’ motivation. Pictures are instructional media. Pictures can be guidance in writing activity (Siahaan, 2013).
In this research, the researcher uses pictures because pictures will help the students in exploring their ideas and motivate them in writing. As a result, the teacher needs an alternative medium that can solve the problems in writing descriptive text. Using pictures is important in writing descriptive text because it’s one of the most appropriate method that boost the students’ motivation in writing.
1.11 Statement of the Problem
In native language environments, productive skills develop differently. Writing unlike speaking, involves a process of formal learning, while speaking develops naturally through a process called “acquisition” (Krashen, 1987). Although they undertake a process of formal learning of writing, most native speakers never master this skill (Nunan, 2009). In the same line, Nunan also confirms that when facing writing the “challenges for second language learners are enormous” (p. 271). In addition, the researchers dares to add, based on his own experience, that in foreign language teaching settings, the challenges for students to develop writing skills are even the most demanding but with the lowest levels of achievement.
In the educational setting where this study has been carried out, most of the students faced serious problems when it comes to writing in English, in spite of the emphasis the school has given to enhance productive skills in the foreign language class. As a result, writing has the lowest percentage of achievement of all the communicative skills. This situation encouraged the researcher to explore alternative strategies to approach the above mentioned problem. Thus, the researchers expects the learners to improve their writing skill and develop a higher degree of involvement in their learning process through the use of pictures as a means of enhancing descriptive writing.

1.12 Purpose of the Study
The main purpose of the study is to determine the impact of pictures in enhancing students’ essay writing in Senior Secondary Schools in Pankshin Local Government Area.
Other objectives of the study are:
1. To determine the performance of students in descriptive essay without pictures.
2. To evaluate the test performance of the students in descriptive essay after they are taught with pictures
3. To compare the mean performance on students in their pre – test and post – test
1.13 Research Questions
In order to have a sense of guide, the following questions were formulated which will be answered at the end of the research.
1. What is the performance of students in descriptive essay who are taught without pictures?
2. What is the performance of the students in descriptive essay after they were taught with pictures?
3. What is the mean difference of students in descriptive writing before and after they were exposed to picture media?
1.14 Significance of the Study
The findings of this study will be of benefit to students, teachers, curriculum planners/developers, textbook writers, ministry of education and future researchers.
Students will benefit from the findings of this study as the use of pictures in teaching descriptive writing will boost their achievement and help to increase their creativity of how a descriptive essay is written. It will also help them to develop more interest in writing, acquiring and developing scientific skills which will help them in their career choice particularly those careers geared towards being novelists, playwright, etc.
The findings of this study will be of benefit to teachers of English as it will help teachers in choosing appropriate instructional methods and materials capable of releasing students’ tension toward the subject. It will motivate teachers to develop interest in utilizing modern instructional material like using pictures in teaching descriptive writing and selecting suitable teaching methods that will be a possible means towards reducing failure in English language.
The findings of this study will also benefit curriculum planners in curriculum planning as well as using pictures in planning a curriculum on a specific topic helps to make the instruction conceptually “transparent” to students. Pictures can be utilized in appropriate strategies of curriculum planning such as modification and revision.
The Federal Ministry of Education can also benefit by using the findings of this study to engage teachers and administrations in training programmes that can model this new educational approaches.
1.15 Delimitation
This study is delimited to impact of pictures in enhancing descriptive essay writing in Senior Secondary Schools.
1.16 Scope of the Study
The study is restricted to two selected Senior Secondary Schools. These schools are Government College Pankshin and Trinity College Pankshin. Despite the fact that this research is limited in scope to Pankshin Local Government Area, th findings can be generic – it can be generalized to other parts of the country as well.
1.17 Operational Definition of Terms
Pictures: An image is that which depicts visual perception, such as a photograph or other dimensional picture that resembles a subject – usually a physical object – and thus provides a depiction of it.
Impact: It may refer to a result or change of something. These change could be either negative or positive.
Descriptive Essay: The descriptive essay is a genre of essay that asks the student to describe something – object, person, place, experience, emotion, situation etc. this genre encourages the student’s ability to create a written account of a particular experience.
Writing: Writing is the process of using symbols (letters of the alphabet, punctuation and spaces) to communicate thoughts and ideas in a readable form.