Using PowerPoint to improve speaking and writing skills

Mr Nurdin Sumantri Senior High School No. 8 Yogyakarta, Indonesia

Writing is the most difficult skill to develop among my students. It is most likely the most difficult activities among the four basic language skills. It needs basic knowledge that enables students to cover all necessary things to communicate clearly, such as grammar, vocabulary coherence, cohesion, idiom, expression, and so on. That's why it's quite hard to improve.

Among English teachers themselves, especially English teachers in Indonesia, we still find a lot of difficulties. What should we write? We need not to write anything because the government has already facilitated with the books and materials for teaching. We have no problem. So we just come to the class with the book. We are satisfied enough with what we have done and reached so far.

I could not stop asking why J.K. Rowling can write the tremendous book, Harry Potter, in seven volumes or more? What about Danielle Steel? Maybe it's not only me who asks such question, but also others. The next big question is, if English teachers themselves are still confused about writing, what about the students? And what are the obstacles that hamper us?

Cultural background

In my opinion, writing is part of culture. What I mean is that a nation which has a long tradition in writing will find its people have great capability for writing. England has William Shakespeare, for example. It's not only in literature but also in other fields of life. What about Indonesia ? Of course, there are many great writers here, too, but if we compare their number to the number of the total population, it's not equal with that of other countries. Why is this so?

The culture we have has shaped us not to be a writer, but mostly to be someone who loves talking. In my childhood, I used to spend my time listening to my grandma telling fairy tale or a legend, or an imaginative story, before I went to sleep.

In our past, the writing capability belonged to a specific group in palace that was needed by the king to write a kind of document or agenda, or something like those, as a remembrance for the people. Although the Dutch government had tried to deliver an education in the end of 19 th century, that was too late. People had devoted their life to speaking.

Appreciation

We have now entered an information technology where there are many publishers, as well as newspaper and magazines. However, I think writing is still dominated by a small group of people. They who teach in university, but even so, the group is still limited to lecturers who have a very good skill, authors or novelists. But what about teachers? If writing still an uninteresting thing to do or is it just a burden? However, there is a rule for teachers in Indonesia which states that every teacher who wants to upgrade his position, title or salary, from rank 4A, must write a book. Only a few teachers from around the country have succeeded. What about the rest? They still do nothing. How they can write a book if writing an article, or even a material for teaching in the class, is considered as a hard thing?

Among us, we still think: why write? The same question was asked by Paul Robinson, a professor of intellectual history at Stanford University, USA, in Dialogue (vol. 12, 1979, no. 2). He argues that the impulse to write books is ‘hedged about with insanity'. Most books have few readers and even fewer careful readers. They earn a pathetic amount of money; they add little to one's status or reputation; and they mostly end up unread in dusty library stacks.

If teachers still think like that, don't hope that we will develop good writers in the future. That's why I tried to do something related to improving writing skill. In my opinion, teachers must try to find a suitable method for their students. This is what I am trying to develop in my school.

My objectives

• Students will be able to write well about their ideas on certain topic they like most.
• Students will be able to write sentences that are in accordance with right tenses.
• Students are able to put their creativities on computer by using Power Point.
• Students are able to express their ideas, opinions and feelings orally.

Presentation

The method of presentation is a method of how a presenter expresses his or her ideas, feelings, or thought in public, by providing paper or not. This method requires the presenter to make a summary of the presentation.

The goal of applying presentation methods in school is to train students to develop writing and speaking skills, as well as analytical and critical thinking. We use two aids to conduct this, an overhead project or LCD (Liquid Crystal Display) monitor connected to a computer.

To carry out this method, teachers must:

• prepare a list of topics or discuss the title of the presentation with the students and what kind of information they want to put on the document;
• provide dictionaries to use in the process of writing the paper and the point of talks, and explain or give examples of how to make a presentation;
• divide the class into groups and explain what the roles of each member of the group is; and,
• prepare tools, for example, an OHP or an LCD connected to a computer.

Using MS PowerPoint means that teachers need to discuss how many frames students plan, the segment of each frame, the multimedia material to be included on each frame, and so on. Concerning the conditions in Indonesia, the presentation needs to be made in a specific room, because not all the classes have the necessary resources.

These following steps will be taken by the teacher:

• divide the class into groups consisting of four or five students;
• discuss the topic that will be presented, based on the research or reference studies;
• guide students to write a complete paper (each member of the group will have his or her own role, such as who must write the background, problems, goals, the content and the conclusion);
• guide students to create point of talks, and the main idea of the presentation; and,
• guide students to create slides in MS PowerPoint.

Evaluation

Teacher must keep evaluating the students in order to give them encouragement and scores. If there is no LCD in the school, we can use a splitter to multiply the content through some monitors. One splitter usually can be used for eight monitors.

Results

During one semester of teaching, when I did this method in 2003 at 11th grade of public senior high school number 8 in Yogyakarta Indonesia, I got 32 titles of presentations, which varied in their standards. Mostly students can significantly develop their writing skills and the most encouraging result is the noticeable improvement in speaking skills that happens, not only to active students, but also to silent ones. As they made their presentation in a group, they tried hard to perform their presentation as best they could. This provided a good model for the silent students, who had to train themselves to defend their opinion and maintain the audience's interest in their presentation.

After these students graduated from the school and continued their studies at university, where they got the same method from their lecturers there, they told me that they didn't have any difficulties in doing this method, compared to other students from other school where they didn't get the PowerPoint presentation method. These facts give me a strong drive to continue the method and to improve it better.

Advantages

Some benefits of conducting this method of teaching written English are:

• a class that feels ‘alive';
• enthusiastic students;
• students' pride;
• new experience of using technology;
• improvement of writing skills;
• improvement of speaking skills; and,
• the development of critical and analytical thinking.

Road blocks

Students are not interested in presenting a topic that is far beyond their life. They prefer talking about topics that are closely related to their life.

This method can not be conducted in a passive English class and is quite difficult to conduct if the facility school has can not support this method.