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English Teaching Forum
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Using Practice Posters To Address EFL Challenges
Peter Reilly
English as a foreign language (EFL) programs throughout the world
face numerous challenges, not least of which are a lack of English
proficient teachers, large classes, student passivity and apathy,
over-reliance on traditional methodologies, and insufficient authentic
materials to offer students. These and other problems add to the
burden of students in EFL programs, most of whom already must
contend with limited contact with native speakers and difficulties
with pronunciation and structuring of English sentences.
In Mexico, where I work, such challenges and problems contribute
to an increase in the use of L1 by both teachers and students
in the EFL classroom. At the same time, learners in Mexico are
prevented from making the progress they should in English because
of the limited activities provided them, which may not go much
beyond translation and practicing the verb to be. The literature
suggests that these challenges and consequences are not specific
to Mexico, but are also present in EFL classrooms in other parts
of the world (see, for example, Asato 2003; Zhao and Grimshaw
2004).
This situation is worrisome. Professionals from around the globe,
both in and outside the EFL field have noted the high demand for
proficient English speakers who can enable their respective countries
to participate more fully in international communication and partnerships
(Pew Research Center for the People and the Press 2003).
This article focuses on how one EFL institute in Mexico uses practice
posters to respond to these challenges. Specifically, this author
observed—after using practice posters in class and reflecting
on their use—that the use of posters seems to counter in
a modest but noticeable way the challenges and problems mentioned
above. The article is divided into four sections: (1) a description
of practice posters, (2) an explanation of how posters can be
used, (3) the benefits of using posters, including how they help
meet the challenges mentioned earlier, and (4) possible drawbacks
to using posters.
1. What are posters?
Posters, as discussed in this article, are mounted pictures or
photographs accompanied by textual cues or captions. The purpose
of the posters is to encourage student participation and provide
controlled practice in a given English structure or concept.
Each poster is created on 11x17-inch bond paper. The layout may
be horizontal or vertical. To increase durability and make the
poster firm, it is first adhered to a piece of polycarbonate of
the same size, then covered with contact paper to protect the
ten to twelve pictures or photographs that may accompany the textual
cues.
The photographs or pictures can be from the teacher’s personal
stock or they can be downloaded from websites. The captions serve
as cues to prompt student participation. In one poster, the captions
consisted of a person’s name, country of origin, and nationality,
but obviously the captions (and photos) would differ depending
upon the focus of the lesson and the level of the students. The
back of a poster can show additional cues or, in the case of a
difficult grammar point, a student-friendly grammar presentation.
2. How can posters be used?
Posters are tools that can be used in a variety of ways to overcome
challenges and problems of the EFL classroom; the particular way
they are used will depend on the teacher’s experience and
the students’ needs.
The sample sequence below shows how one EFL institute used a poster
to provide students with practice asking questions and giving
affirmative and negative answers. The sequence required no more
than ten minutes of class time and, based on a survey of the students,
was well received. The poster had twelve photos of people from
different countries and captions that named the person, said which
country he or she was from, and listed the nationality; for example:
“Mikhail Gorbachev, from Russia; Russian.”
Sample sequence
- The teacher asks students to chorally repeat cues on the poster,
e.g., “China, France.”
- Individuals, small groups, or all students repeat the cues:
“China, France,” etc.
- The teacher writes one affirmative sentence on the board—e.g.,
“Jacques Chirac is from France”—then has students
chorally repeat it.
- The teacher asks students to work in pairs taking turns saying
sentences based on the cues. Student A says: “Vincent
Fox and Marta Sahagún are from Mexico.” Student
B says: “Pope Benedict is from Germany.”
- The teacher writes the interrogative form above the affirmative
sentence on the board and has students chorally repeat the question
form—e.g., “Is Jacques Chirac from France?”
- The teacher asks students to work in pairs and take turns
asking one another questions. The partner answers affirmatively
- The teacher writes on the board the negative form of the
sentence—e.g., “Jacques Chirac is not from Germany.”
Students repeat it chorally.
- The teacher asks students to practice questions and affirmative
and negative answers in pairs.
While this sequence initially seems long, it quickly becomes
familiar to teachers and students. In the next class, the teacher
can demonstrate or model the sequence and ask a student to imitate
the modeling. In subsequent meetings the teacher can take two
copies of the same poster, divide the class, and have students
take turns cueing their half of the class.
Another option is for the teacher to include with the original
poster three new ones, each containing different cues (e.g., forms
of transportation, actions in progress, professions). After giving
the students controlled practice with each of the new posters,
the teacher can divide the class into three or four groups, give
each group a different poster, and have members of each group
take turns facilitating the use of the poster. After several minutes
the posters can be rotated, allowing each group to practice with
a different poster. The teacher monitors the groups, offering
individual correction discreetly or noting and giving feedback
to the entire class about common errors.
3. Meeting challenges: The benefits of posters
By using a cyclical process of observation, reading, reflection,
and trial, I have concluded that posters respond in many ways
to the challenges mentioned earlier.
Posters foster oral practice
Using posters at the beginning of class serves as a wake up call
for students, telling them that it’s time to switch to English.
This is essential in an EFL context, where learners are immersed
in the L1 in their daily lives. However, the key benefit of using
posters is the significant opportunity for oral practice that
they offer students.
In the first ten minutes of class, the teacher can use posters
to guide student pairs to practice several common English language
structures and vocabulary. Even before the learning goal is presented,
the students practice fifty or more affirmative, negative, and
interrogative sentences in English. Cooperative learning advocates
Abdullah and Jacobs (2004) have stressed the value of such small
group interactions in EFL contexts because they allow for a significant
increase in opportunities to create output.
Moreover, because posters enable students to experience language
learning actively, rather than receptively, apathy is reduced
and student interest grows. Oral practice using posters seems
to breed confidence; students notice they become more effective
in the L2 each time they revisit a particular poster.
Posters enhance traditional methodology by empowering
students
The good habit formation often resulting from the repetition and
substitution drilling described above were at the center of Richards
and Rodgers (2001) Audiolingual Method (ALM). The difference with
the use of posters, however, is that students are empowered: they
cue, listen to, correct, and help one another. ALM classrooms,
on the other hand, bred dependence because they were mostly teacher-fronted.
Richard-Amato (2003) contextualized the value of controlled practice,
suggesting that it is most effective during the pre-proficiency
stage of learning. Paired drilling is not sufficient, in fact,
to prepare creative, spontaneous speakers. Learners must also
process linguistic elements in a creative, meaningful way so those
elements are available to learners when they attempt to speak
freely. Posters help achieve this.
Posters encourage authentic communication
Posters can serve as a springboard to more authentic and creative
language use. For example, by taking advantage of students’
interest in well-known personalities, posters can be used to spur
the students to identify, say, ten famous people from around the
world. After some brainstorming, student pairs could create new
exchanges based on the people they identified; for example:
Student 1: “Is Tom Cruise Canadian?”
Student 2: “No, he isn’t.”
At the intermediate level, students could use the same poster
to practice tag questions; for example:
Student 1: “David Beckham is English, isn’t he?”
Student 2: “Yes, he is.”
Again employing students’ interest in public figures, posters
could be used to contribute to a pre-writing task. For example,
after some brainstorming, the students could write a paragraph
about why a person on the poster is famous; for example: “
Antonio Banderas is Spanish, but he lives in California. He is
39 years old. He is famous because….”
Posters increase self-confidence
Effective teachers create safe environments as a way to encourage
students to take risks. Thanasoulas (2002) and Dornyei (2001)
have discussed a secure environment as fundamental to L2 learner
motivation. Posters are non-threatening because teachers and students
trust the cues. Learners know they can count on them to make grammatically
correct sentences. Further, as learners use the posters for a
second and third time, they become familiar with their use and
value. Students’ confidence grows and risk-taking is more
likely to occur. Adolescents, in particular, need to believe they
have a good chance of speaking correctly because it is all too
common for peers to ridicule their errors.
Posters also enhance the confidence of teachers with limited background
in English by giving them a structured way to promote student-speaking.
Controlled practice, such as teachers use with posters, serves
as scaffolding (Yu 2004) to enable learners (and teachers) to
move with confidence from their current level of development to
a higher one.
Posters work with various learning styles
Consideration of learning styles is critical in today’s
classrooms, including the EFL classroom. Studies using the Keirsey
Temperament Sorter suggest that 40 to 45 percent of people throughout
the world are Sensory-Perceivers (Keirsey 1998). As learners,
such people are visual and kinesthetic. They are keenly aware
of and seek interaction with the physical environment. When students
hold, pass, and flip the posters, they interact with the environment
and are visually stimulated. This writer has observed that poster
work helps teenagers, who can become easily distracted, stay on
task. In contrast, EFL texts, useful as they are, require less
movement on the part of learners, and often provide fewer visual
cues than posters do. Posters also promote interaction that responds
to another learner type: the extrovert. Such social interaction
has been associated with L2 motivation as well (Dornyei 2001).
Posters foster learner autonomy
Students handling a poster take a greater role in their learning
because they can make choices about which cues to use and even
how to help their classmates. Further, teachers can say, “Select
the cues that are most difficult for you,” which gives learners
the chance to self-evaluate and focus their practice accordingly.
These actions are uncommon in a teacher-fronted class. Such control
empowers learners and fosters their autonomy. Dornyei (2001) has
associated increased autonomy with higher motivation, which in
turn counters, to some extent, the student apathy that teachers
in Mexico have reported for their students (Johnson 2000). An
additional benefit of transferring control is that when learners
are encouraged to make decisions, they show greater attention
to and awareness of target structures and vocabulary (Schmidt,
as cited in Al-Hejin 2004).
Posters are effective in large, heterogeneous groups
Heterogeneity is an inherent characteristic of large groups and
can be a challenge for teachers of such classes. However, since
posters are easily adaptable to small groups, they can provide
the teacher with the opportunity to differentiate instruction.
If distributed thoughtfully, the posters can be matched to each
group’s level and capacity for challenge at any given time,
thereby countering the problem of large group size, challenging
learners with the right level of difficulty, and reducing apathy.
Posters help minimize incorrect language
Errors and incorrect language are limited with poster use because
most posters focus on a single concept (e.g., professions, actions
in progress), and the English structure to be practiced is shown
on the board and orally demonstrated prior to practicing. The
narrow range of structures being practiced at one particular time
reduces the possibility of confusing linguistic elements; hence,
fewer errors occur. Further, peers with a higher level of language
development are more likely to detect an error and correct their
classmates accordingly.
Posters’ visual cues reduce reversion to L1
The over reliance on their native language by EFL students is
a discouraging characteristic of classrooms in Mexico (Johnson
2000). This is especially true of the large groups in public middle
and high schools. However, using posters can mitigate the problem
of reversion to L1 because learners benefit from the English caption
that accompanies a photograph or other visual. Viewing such cues
helps students know what to say in English and reduces the need
to revert to their native language.
Posters allow teachers to monitor student speech
Many activities included in current EFL texts require teachers
to set up tasks, provide examples, cue students, indicate who
is to participate, and ask for volunteers. In contrast, pair work
using posters gets students talking immediately in class and enables
teachers to monitor student speech. Teachers can discreetly make
on-the-spot corrections with specific students or make anonymous
corrections afterward. Monitoring time also provides teachers
with an opportunity to reflect on what is occurring in the classroom.
Teachers need this chance to think, not just to perform in class.
It makes their role more meaningful and allows them to make better
decisions about how to promote learning.
Poster practice improves pronunciation
Posters that list words that are difficult to pronounce allow
the students to learn them directly and efficiently. The words
to practice can be generated by experienced teachers who know
which words tend to be distorted in their region or country. Although
there is controversy regarding the extent to which correct pronunciation
should be emphasized (Fraser 1999), in my nearly 20 years of EFL
teaching, I have observed that it makes sense to attend to difficult
sounds and words early, before fossilization occurs.
Posters permit integration of material
Posters can provide a useful and efficient method for integrating
material and structures. They can include, for example, common
verbs (e.g., cook, skate) as well as examples of sequences
that use can, do/does, did, going to, etc. An example
of a sequence is:
Student 1: “Can your brother speak English?”
Student 2: “No, he can’t.”
Student 1: “What can he do?”
Student 2: “He can swim well.”
Student 1: “When does he like to swim?”
By using the poster as a catalyst, in a mere five minutes, pairs
of students can practice twenty to thirty sentences with various
auxiliaries, verbs, time expressions, and vocabulary.
Students are motivated when they realize that they can integrate
tenses in this way, particularly when the teacher informs them
that being able to do so freely without the poster is evidence
that they are developing into intermediate level learners. When
teachers use posters, as with everything else in teaching, it
is important to help students understand the learning goal (here,
integrating tenses) and believe that it is reachable. Doing so
motivates students and undermines much of the apathy teachers
observe in classrooms.
Poster use reduces discipline problems
Language learners, particularly adolescents, have academic needs
that, when met, increase academic achievement and decrease inappropriate
behavior (Reilly 2001). Those needs include understanding the
learning goal, being actively engaged in a meaningful task, and
receiving feedback regularly. Working with posters responds to
these needs. Because posters focus on particular language tasks,
students can easily understand the goal of the lesson. Using posters,
students actively participate in small groups and receive feedback
from the teacher and classmates. Therefore, students are less
likely to seek attention inappropriately; hence discipline problems
may be reduced.
Poster use is flexible
Johnson (2000) found that only twenty of ninety-eight teachers
surveyed view the curriculum they use as “flexible and…easily
modified.” But language teachers willing and able to incorporate
posters into the curriculum will find them inherently flexible.
Posters allow the teacher to facilitate practice of a target structure
quite efficiently. They can be used, for example, to focus on
particular grammatical problems students may be having, such as
omission of the “s” when expressing something in the
third person or repeated use of do in place of does.
It has been this teacher’s experience that revisiting a
troublesome structure through use of a poster helps learners overcome
the problem.
4. Are there drawbacks to using posters?
Possible impediments to using posters are the cost of materials
and the time involved in creating them. But once posters are constructed,
teachers and institutions are likely to consider them well worth
the effort, particularly when they discover, as I did, that the
controlled practice they enable works well to supplement speaking
activities that may be included in the texts being used.
A general limitation with posters is that they tend to facilitate
only controlled practice, and language is naturally a creative,
open-ended activity. One goal of any EFL program is to develop
proficient speakers. Working with posters contributes to that
end because learners can practice in a controlled manner essential
elements, such as pronunciation, modals, tenses, and vocabulary.
However, this is not sufficient to achieve the ultimate goal of
EFL study.
Conclusion
The use of practice posters responds to certain problems facing
teachers and students in EFL settings, including a lack of English
proficient teachers, too few English speaking opportunities for
learners, large classes, and student apathy. Most importantly,
working with posters allows teachers to increase the amount of
English spoken by students without making teachers who are not
highly proficient English speakers uneasy. At the same time, posters
are more inviting than a textbook because they visually stimulate
learners, encourage participation, and grant students more control
and autonomy in class. It is wise to add that in no way does this
writer consider practice posters to be a perfect solution to the
challenges facing EFL teachers. Posters are simply one more tool
that an effective teacher can use to counter classroom challenges.
References
Abdullah, M., and G. Jacobs. 2004. Promoting cooperative learning
at primary school.
TESL-EJ 7 (4): http://writing.berkeley.edu/tesl-ej/ej28/toc.html.
Al-Hejin, B. 2004. Attention and awareness: Evidence from cognitive
and second language
acquisition research. Columbia University working papers in TESOL
and Applied
linguistics, 4 (1): http://journals.tc-library.org/index.php/tesol/article/view/43.
Dornyei, Z. 2001. Teaching and researching motivation.
England: Pearson Education
Limited.
Fraser, H. 1999. ESL pronunciation teaching: Could it be more
effective? Australian
Language Matters 7 (4): 7–8.
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in EFL teachers in
Mexico. ERIC # ED459605.
Keirsey, D. 1998. Please understand me: Temperament, character,
intelligence. Del Mar,
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classroom. From Theory to Practice 2nd ed. Longman.
Richards, J., and T. Rodgers. 2001. Approaches and methods
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Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Schmidt, R. W. 1994. Deconstruction consciousness in search of
useful definitions for
applied linguistics. AILA Review 11: 11–26.
Thanasoulas, D. 2002. Motivation and motivating in the foreign
language classroom:
http://www.tefl.net/esl-articles/motivation-esl.htm.
Yu, G. 2004. Perception, practice and progress: Significance of
scaffolding and zone of
proximal development for second or foreign language teachers.
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adjustment to teaching
large EFL classes in China. TEFL Web Journal 3 (1): http://www.teflweb-j.org/v3n1/zhao_grimshaw.pdf.
Peter Reilly has been a teacher and trainer in
Mexico for almost 20 years. He currently works at Reilly English
Institute and Universidad Bonaterra in Aguascalientes, Mexico
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