Enriching Oral Practice through “Picture Drill”

Mary Jacob 靳茉莉

以图片操练来丰富口语练习中文提要：

学一、二年级中文的学生需要做有关语法结构的练习。做这种练习最难的就是设计有效而不刻板的活动，让学生自己说出有交际意义的句子, 而不单是念课本上的东西。本文介绍利用图画训练语言结构的教学法。这个方法通过改变《中文听说读写》中的句型练习，用 PowerPoint 把汉字、图片和句型结合起来，成为上课时口语练习的引导。上课的时候，用这种方法可以让学生多开口说话，学生和老师都不用说英文，但是能让学生把生词的声音和意义联系起来，而且老师可以利用图片引导学生从单纯的结构练习上升到交际性的会话，同时也可以加强学生的阅读和听力训练。现在的学生比以前更依赖视觉学习, 用这种方法可以增强学生的学习兴趣。I. Introduction

Over the past few years, I have developed a method for “picture drill.” Picture drill is

an in-class oral exercise in which visual images are used as cues for student production of

spoken Chinese. This way the instructor can give students structured practice without merely

having them read, or repeat what they hear, or translate from English to Chinese. Designed to

be used as a bridge between introduction of sentence patterns and communicative practice,

these exercises can also incorporate short communicative exchanges. In most cases they are

intended to be used primarily as reinforcement, not presentation. They are built in

PowerPoint with images from Microsoft Office Online and loosely based on the drills in

Integrated Chinese Level 1, Parts 1 and 2, thus there is one slideshow for each lesson.1

In this paper, I will first discuss my key goals in designing the exercise and then

describe implementation of the exercise within a lesson plan. In the section on examples,

there is a detailed step-by-step explanation of what the teacher does with the class during the

exercise, alongside screen shots of sample slides. Finally, there are some additional

comments on the most effective ways to use this exercise.

II. Key Goals

In designing this application, I was trying to solve a problem that I believe many

instructors face. Beginning students need a great deal of practice in order to master a sentence

pattern, yet traditional types of drill are often boring and not very effective. I wanted to avoid

the rote nature of most approaches to practice. We often use substitution drills or

transformation drills, giving students a sentence pattern and then asking them to generate

variations on the pattern. The practice is good, but students must be actually generating the

sentences themselves and keeping the meaning in mind in order to benefit.

Part of the problem lies in the nature of the cues. If students are reading the cue from

a book or other source, then the exercise becomes a reading exercise—they read the model

sentence and then scan down to the new word to be inserted into the pattern. Later on, when

they need to produce similar sentences without the support of a written text, they may not be

able to use the pattern correctly. On the other hand, if the instructor gives students the cue

verbally, students often merely parrot what the instructor has said without understanding their

own utterances. A third approach is to give the English meaning of the word as a cue. The

drawback of this method is that students are always keeping part of their minds grounded in

English, rather than the target language. We want students to speak Chinese smoothly and

correctly, while knowing what they are saying. We want to train them to think in Chinese, not

to think in English while translating or code-switching constantly between the two languages.

Moreover, as an instructor I want to speak as much Chinese, not English, as possible in the

classroom.

My solution to this problem is two-fold. First, I use pictures as cues. This way,

students are neither reading, nor translating, nor repeating by rote. They start with a non-

verbal representation of meaning and must be able to express the idea in Chinese. To support

the desired structure, I provide a coded sentence pattern at the same time. In most cases, I

give the sentence pattern in hybrid form combining characters and parts of speech, such as: S

想 V-O. Thus students can process the structure and are reminded of key words needed for

the pattern, without being given the entire sentence for reading.

Another part of the problem lies in the nature of the medium. Writing on the

blackboard is time-consuming, messy, and not conducive to adding pictures. Overhead

transparencies are faster and somewhat easier for students to read, but they are not dynamic

and the use of pictures is limited. Images printed on letter-size paper or cut from magazines

can be vivid, but are somewhat small to use in the classroom, and hard to keep organized. I

found myself spending class time shuffling papers and transparencies trying to find just the

right image to use as a cue for the sentence I wanted students to produce.

To solve this aspect of the problem, I decided to use computer projection with a

laptop computer. I chose PowerPoint as the easiest software package to use. PowerPoint

presentations can be dynamic, clear, and visually interesting. Using the clip gallery package

that came with MS Office, supplemented with clips from Office Online by Microsoft, I could

select and use a wide range of images easily. I no longer needed to fumble around with

folders full of printed images, but just enter a key word and select the image I wanted. To

build a presentation from the beginning including curriculum design, it took about six to eight

hours. Subsequently, I have refined and added to the presentations each quarter. Now that the

design of the activity is well developed, it only takes a few hours to build a new one from the

start. Moreover, the activities can be used from year to year with minimal additional

preparation time.

Thus, rather than starting with an existing computer program and trying to find

something interesting to do with it, I let pedagogy drive the use of technology. I first defined

the problem, what I wanted to accomplish in the classroom, and then sought the best solution.

Besides enhancement of oral practice, there are a few more key goals and principles

underlying the design. I wanted to achieve mutual reinforcement of material across activities,

accommodation of various learning styles, enriched input, and active student participation.

Mutual reinforcement of material across activities is an important component of this

teaching style. Language learning is cumulative, and beginning students need as much

reinforcement as possible. The textbook, Integrated Chinese, is well-designed for such

reinforcement, with pattern drills for each lesson in which both new and old vocabulary

appear repeatedly. Inspired by the textbook pattern drills, my picture drill exercises give

teachers an additional channel of instruction for classroom work. Students are exposed to the

same sentence patterns and vocabulary in various combinations through the textbook

grammar notes, sentence pattern web pages, drills in the textbook, and the picture drill. The

picture drill and web pages echo, amplify, and reinforce the material in the book. Thus

students can revisit the same patterns in various forms on line, in the classroom, and at home.

Moreover, both new and old lexical items are incorporated in the picture drill so that students

are always reviewing vocabulary from past lessons as well as the current one.

With regard to learning styles, today’s college students are increasingly oriented

toward visual learning. Picture drill is designed to be used as multi-modal teaching, enabling

teachers to reach learners of various styles with a single exercise. There are many different

models of learning styles, so rather than adhering strictly to a single model, I tried to make

the exercise as multi-modal as possible so that it would fit into almost any of the current

learning style paradigms. The key principle is that instruction is delivered along several

channels simultaneously. One of the most frequently-used models is visual-aural-kinesthetic.

In picture drill, students first see the picture and produce the sentence themselves, after which

they hear it modeled by the instructor, thus providing input through all three channels. Neil

Fleming adds a fourth category, reading/writing, to differentiate between viewing pictures

and written language.2 Picture drill includes the complete sentence in characters to reach

those learners who need to see the written form of the language. Another way to depict the

dimensions of learning style is to construct intersecting continua. There are many models of

this type, including the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator3 based on Carl Jung’s concept of

psychological types, Richard Felder’s Index of Learning Styles,4 David Kolb’s5 model, and

the cognitive approach developed by R. J. Riding, which intersects the imagery-verbal

continuum with the holistic-analytic one.6 For many of the dimensions of learning style

mentioned in these models, picture drill accommodates both ends of the spectrum. Picture

drill reaches both students who prefer doing and those who prefer watching. Both introverts

and extraverts have a chance to apply their strengths in learning Chinese. Picture drill gives

students both imagistic and verbal input. The sentence patterns give holistic (global or top-

down) thinkers the overview, while complete sentences address the needs of more linear

analytic thinkers. To give you an example of how intersecting continua work, I have provided

a visual representation of Riding’s model in Figure 1, below.

1 When I first created picture drill exercises for my Chinese 1-4 classes at UC Davis about four years ago, I built them as part of my weekly teaching preparation. As I implemented them in the classroom, I refined the concept, added new material, and modified existing portions. Now I have made them available on the web. Other teachers are welcome to use them, providing that you retain my name on the title and summary slides. If you modify them for your own use, feel free to add your own name to the title slides but do retain my name as well, as the creator. Please also keep in mind that they are always under development.2A complete discussion of Neil Fleming’s VARK model, together with a free on line assessment instrument, may be found at Neil D. Fleming and Charles C. Bonwell, “VARK: a guide to learning styles,” 2001, <http://www.vark-learn.com/english/index.asp>.3 Information on the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator may be found on line at Dianne Hilliard, “Learning Styles and Personality Types,” 2001, <http://www.wncc.edu/studentservices/counseling/styles_types/> .4 Students may take Richard Felder and Barbara Solomon’s test on line for free at Richard M. Felder and Barbara A. Solomon, “Index of Learning Styles,” <http://www.engr.ncsu.edu/learningstyles/ilsweb.html> A discussion of the four dimensions of learning style may be found at Felder and Solomon, “Learning Styles and Strategies,” <http://www.ncsu.edu/felder-public/ILSdir/styles.htm>.5 David A. Kolb, Experiential Learning: Experience as the Source of Learning and Development (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1984). Donald Clark has a good explanation of Kolb's ideas at Donald Clark, “Kolb’s Learning Styles,” 1999, <http://www.nwlink.com/~donclark/hrd/history/kolb.html> 6A good discussion of Riding’s cognitive approach and its practical application to teaching can be found in Tilly Mortimer, Dyslexia and Learning Style: A Practitioner’s Handbook (London and Philadelphia: Whurr Publishers, 2003). The diagram in Figure 1 is based on Mortimer’s diagram of two intersecting continua, ibid. p. 19.

Figure 1: Riding’s model includes two intersecting continua: the verbal-imagery dimension and the holistic-analytic dimension. Learners may be situated anywhere within the four quadrants. For instance, a student may lean heavily toward the holistic end of the spectrum and have just a slight preference for imagistic as opposed to verbal learning.

Although picture drill is, at the core, a grammar drill, the visually-enriched input

provided by picture drill also can be used to support language teaching using a modified

natural method, giving students comprehensible input that is just beyond their level so that

they not only learn but also “acquire” language in Stephen Krashen’s sense.7 The pictures

provide contextual clues to the meaning, thus expanding the range of comprehensible input.

Teachers wishing to apply a hybrid approach may extend the time for each slide to include

more unscripted student interactions.

It is all too easy when teaching any subject for the instructor to use a teacher-centered

approach in which the teacher lectures or demonstrates for much of the class period. Active

participation on the part of the students is needed for student retention of the material,

however. Students must engage with the material, internalize it, and test their new

understanding by expressing themselves. Picture drill allows the teacher to retain control over

the structure of the exercise, while shifting the focus onto the students. The implementation

may be as open-ended, or not, as the teacher wishes. A student-centered focus is especially

desirable when class size is large, because it is hard to give every student a chance to speak.

With picture drill, even a class with as many as 24 students can afford every student multiple

opportunities to speak under both structured and open-ended conditions. The follow-up

7 Stephen Krashen, The Input Hypothesis (Beverly Hills: Laredo Publishing Company, 1985). An article about Krashen’s comprehensible input hypothesis, with extensive quotes, may be found on line at Reid Wilson, “A Summary of Stephen Krashen’s Principles and Practice in Second Language Acquisition,” published in Language Impact, 2000, first appearing in Language Learning #9 and 10 <http://www.languageimpact.com/articles/rw/krashenbk.htm>.

portion of the exercise is almost entirely student-centered, providing an opportunity for

collaborative learning and communication in the classroom.

III. Implementation

Picture drill is intended to serve as a bridge between presentation of new material and

communicative practice consolidating that material. Therefore, it should be used in the

middle of the lesson. A typical lesson plan might look like this:

Introduce vocabulary Introduce sentence patterns Guided oral practice (picture drill) Read text Communication activity Lesson test or graded role-play

Ideally, the picture drill should be used the day after the pattern has first been

presented, and before the students are required to use the pattern in a homework assignment.

Most lessons have many sentence patterns, so presentation of sentence patterns and practice

using picture drill might be spread out over several days with several patterns overlapping.

Classroom use involves three stages: preparation, PowerPoint picture drill, and

follow-up. As mentioned above, preparation includes introduction of the sentence pattern.

Usually that takes place the day before the picture drill is going to be used. During

preparation, the teacher might give explanations of the pattern in English followed by

examples in Chinese. The grammar notes in the text, overhead transparencies, or other

supplementary material may be used.

When ready to use the picture drill, the teacher first opens the presentation in

PowerPoint using data projection. It is recommended that the instructor arrive a few minutes

early to class so that she or he may set up the computer before class begins. This makes the

class time go smoothly without having students wait for the computer.

Then the teacher reviews the pattern based on the summary slide. This is the only step

during which English is sometimes used. This activates prior knowledge by reminding

students of the pattern introduced the previous day, and ensures that they will understand the

activity itself. The next stage is to work through the first slide as an example. For subsequent

slides, the teacher interacts with students, having them generate both questions and answers.

For the most part, the picture drills have been designed in a question-answer format. This is

to simulate real communication to the greatest degree possible. Some patterns do not readily

lend themselves to a question-answer format, so they may appear as simple transformation or

substitution drills. The instructor may choose to implement them in a question-answer format

during class.

The exercises are to be done interactively. First the instructor has one student generate

the question based on the picture, only then is the correct question displayed. Then the

instructor asks the question of another student, using a conversational tone. It is important to

use a natural, conversational tone, rather than a declamatory one, in order to simulate real

communication. The second student generates the reply. In some cases, there may be more

than one possible reply, in which case the instructor might comment in Chinese and ask

guiding questions to lead the student to the reply that is in the presentation. Once the student

has made a correct utterance, the reply is displayed. In other words, first the student sees the

picture, and then speaks. Only after that do the students read and hear the complete sentence.

The sequence is essential in order to preserve the interactive quality of the exercise. If the

correct sentence is displayed before the student generates it on his or her own, then the

activity becomes a simple reading exercise. Depending on time, class size, and the desire of

the teacher, teacher modeling and choral repetition may or may not be used after an

individual student has generated the correct utterance.

The follow-up exercise is a key component to picture drill. Immediately after doing

the set of slides for one pattern, have the class work in pairs or small groups making up their

own mini-exchanges based on the pattern. The instructor may wish to improvise here. I am

currently in the process of adding “practice” slides with suggestions for follow-up work.

After a few minutes of pair work, the teacher may ask several pairs of students to perform

examples for the class. The instructor can validate the students’ speech with praise, or make

any corrections that are necessary. In most cases, students will be able to use the pattern

correctly by this time, so little correction is usually needed.

IV. Examples

The following chart illustrates how the stages of the activity are implemented with

screen shots from an actual exercise. For each step of the slide presentation, there is an

explanation of what the teacher actually does in the classroom. The PowerPoint files as they

currently exist on the web are available in traditional characters only; therefore the screen

shots are in traditional characters.

Patterns for lesson 6

This is the title page listing all patterns for Lesson 6. By clicking the arrows, the teacher may jump to the page for each pattern.

If there is enough time, all the patterns may be done during class. If there is not enough time, the teacher may need to select the most important ones.

Summary page for 要 pattern

First the teacher reviews the pattern, to make sure students understand what it means and how it should be used.

The teacher may use a combination of English and Chinese at this stage.

First example for 要The teacher may want to work through the first slide in order to demonstrate the steps of the exercise. For example, the teacher may say, “‘明天’就是一个 time-when expression.”

The teacher may also prepare the students by asking a simple question about the picture, such as, “ 他 们 做 什 么 ？ ” This activates prior knowledge and prepares the student for the more complex utterance to come.

First example for 要Here the teacher may read the question him or herself to show the students how the exercise works.

The class then repeats the question chorally after the teacher.

The teacher then asks an individual student, in a conversational tone, “明 天 你 要做什么？”First example for 要If the student generates the correct reply, the teacher may model the sentence for the whole class to repeat.

If desired, the teacher may ask other questions branching from the picture, such as:

你喜欢跳舞吗？ 你什么时候去跳舞？Another example for 要For subsequent examples, the teacher may adjust the balance between conversational question-answer and choral repetition.

If desired, prepare students by asking questions such as

他是谁？ 他们在哪儿？ 那个男孩子做什么？

Another example for 要Once students have figured out that the two people are in the teacher’s office, the expression 老师的办公室 is displayed.

Now students are ready for the patterned question and answer.

Showing this stage of the slide, the teacher calls on a student to generate the question.

Another example for 要Once the student generates the correct form of the question, display the question.

If desired, the teacher may repeat the question and have the whole class repeat chorally.

Then ask another student the question, using a conversational tone of voice.

Another example for 要Once the student has generated the correct response, display the response.

If desired, the teacher may repeat the correct response and have the whole class repeat chorally.

The teacher may ask related questions, such as 你常常去老師的辦公室嗎？

Practice for 要 pattern

Each pattern has an average of ten slides. After working through all the slides, hold a consolidation exercise that is slightly less structured.

For about 2-5 minutes, have students work in pairs or small groups to generate their own sentences interactively. Then call on several pairs to present examples from their practice to the whole class.

In this particular exercise, students are asked to recall as many time-when expressions as they can. This reviews material from Lesson 3 and some subsequent lessons.

Practice for 得 pattern

Here is another consolidation exercise.

Notice that the students are creating mini-dialogues that simulate real communication. Several variations of useful patterns may be presented. This exercise involves slightly longer exchanges, rather than merely one question and answer.

Words from the current lesson are reinforced.

Summary page for Lesson 5: location of action

Display this page while reviewing the sentence pattern for location.

The teacher may want to ask students some questions about where they do certain activities.

Example for location of action

Displaying just the picture, have a student generate the question.

Display the question, and ask another student the question in a conversational tone.

After the student has answered correctly, display the reply.

Practice for location of action

Students work in pairs or small groups for 2-5 minutes. Then the teacher calls on a few pairs to demonstrate for the class.

Notice the list of suggested lexical items to use with the pattern. In addition to the current pattern, various family and other relationships introduced in earlier lessons are reinforced.

V. Suggestions for most effective use

When implementing this activity, variety is essential. I do not advocate using picture

drill every single day. It should be used in combination with a wide variety of other activities.

The exercise is intensive, so the instructor should use it for less than a full class hour,

otherwise the students will lose focus. This also allows the instructor to integrate picture drill

with other methods of his or her choice. An ideal amount of time to spend in the PowerPoint

portion itself is about 20 minutes. Usually, I do only one or, at the most, two patterns in a

single class session.

Communication in the target language is a goal of language teaching, so teachers are

encouraged to incorporate mini-conversations about the pictures into the structured activity.

Asking short, simple questions prior to having students generate the new sentence activates

existing knowledge and enhances student performance on the structured drill itself.

Moreover, it allows the instructor to interact in a truly communicative way with the students.

The follow-up activity is also quite important, as it gives students an opportunity to transfer

the information from short-term to long-term memory. Moreover, every student gets an

additional chance to speak and generate sentences in a communicative, less-structured way. I

have found that doing a follow-up activity is the key to maximizing student retention of the

pattern, and I am currently incorporating suggestions for follow-up pair work into the

presentations.

At end of the academic term, instructors may wish to hold a review session that

includes a sampling from all the PowerPoint presentations. This is an easy way to review,

requiring little additional preparation on the part of the teacher. Student response has been

very favorable, with an attendance rate of about 50% for the optional session.

VI. Conclusion

There are many reasons to implement an activity such as picture drill. First, in the

spirit of the textbook, Integrated Chinese, the exercise integrates reading, speaking, and

listening. Although designed as an oral activity, the exercise can even be adapted to integrate

writing by having students write down some of their responses. The picture drill activity

achieves the goal of reaching students with a variety of learning styles and preferences by

means of a single exercise, thus maximizing learning without adding a great deal of

additional classroom time. Using computer presentation for visual enrichment allows the

teacher to spend less time writing on the board or shuffling visual aids such as printed

pictures and overhead transparencies. It also makes presentation of material clear, easy to

read, and dynamic. The potential for sparking creativity on the part of both students and

teacher, combined with a sense of fun, enhances student motivation and learning outcomes.

In my experience, the exercises are well-received. Students often ask where they can

download the presentations, and in student evaluations at the end of the year, they frequently

comment that the picture drill exercise has helped them learn. I hope that other instructors

and students may benefit from the picture drill technique.8

8 To download the presentations and see a brief outline of implementation, go to <http://trc.ucdavis.edu/msjacob/ppts>. The presentations were created using PowerPoint 2000, so if you do not have the 2000 or XP version of Microsoft Office, you may need to download the free PowerPoint viewer to use the presentations. Most of the images came from Microsoft Office Online at <http://office.microsoft.com/clipart/default.aspx>. Please note that the presentations are always under revision, and sometimes there are sections that are not yet complete or fully proof-read. If you have any questions, suggestions, or comments, please email me at msjacob@ucdavis.edu.