Teaching English Dialogue to 10th-Grade Schoolers: Visual Art Activities in the Classroom

Abstract

Background. The article investigates the educational potential of visual arts for teaching English dialogue to high school students. The analysis of literature indicates the importance of using visual arts in teaching dialogue to secondary school students as it enables increasing the motivation of students to communicate, creates favourable conditions for creativity, and also reduces anxiety in the classroom. Purpose. Numerous studies have examined the educational potential of visual arts for teaching foreign languages, but no research has been found which give insight into the impact of visual arts on teaching spoken dialogue to high schoolers. Therefore, the goal of this paper is to study the effectiveness of using painting in an English classroom for enhancing dialogic communication. Methodology. The methodology of the research rests on the experimental instruction of the 10th-graders (n=42) which was carried out in three stages. In the first stage, the survey was conducted in order to identify the difficulties that students face while doing tasks on the development of English dialogic speech. The second stage of the experimental research was the instruction in English targeted at the development of dialogic speaking skills in students using works of art. In the third stage of the experiment, the results were analyzed and the conclusions of the research were formulated. Results and discussion. The analysis of the surveyed difficulties faced by the students in the process of instruction indicates that 59.5% of the respondents feel anxiety because of fear to make a mistake, 42.9% of the students have difficulties because of limited vocabulary, 35.7% of the schoolers are passive in class for fear of receiving a poor mark, and 35.7% of the respondents feel shy to speak up. The survey made after the experimental instruction showed that 99% of students exercised positive emotions in the classroom; 88% of the students found it interesting to communicate with each other while discussing fine arts and 70% of the respondents did not feel anxious when it was necessary to participate in the dialogue. The obtained data confirm the effectiveness of using visual arts for teaching spoken dialogue to secondary school students.