Teachers’ perception on the effectiveness of using pictures in ESL classroom at SMK (P) Raja Zarina, Klang Selangor, SMK Seksyen 11, Shah Alam, Selangor, SMK Seksyen 19, Shah Alam, Selangor, SMK Sg. Kertas, Gombak, Kuala Lumpur, SMK (L) Methodist, Sentul, Kuala Lumpur

Pictures are used very widely in schools. Pictures can be considered as one of the most effective teaching materials. It is believed that with the use of pictures in ESL classroom, pictures can develop oral language, stimulate interest towards lesson, enhance reader’s comprehension and improve memory. In Malaysian context, teachers often use pictures as teaching materials in ESL lesson when dealing with students with low proficiency in English language. Therefore, this study is aimed to identify the effectiveness of using pictures in ESL classroom, to find out which types of pictures appeal to the students and to study the difficulties that the teachers need to face when using pictures in ESL classroom. The research questions for this study are 1) Are pictures really an effective teaching materials for ESL lesson? 2) What type of pictures appeal to the students’ interest? 3) What are the difficulties faced by the teachers who use pictures in ESL classroom? Thus, in order to answer these research questions, 30 sets of questionnaires are distributed to the English teachers of the respective schools that are SMK (P) Raja Zarina, Klang, Selangor, SMK Seksyen 11, Shah Alam, Selangor, SMK Seksyen 19, Shah Alam Selangor, SMK Sg. Kertas, Gombak, Kuala Lumpur and SMK (L) Methodist, Sentul, Kuala Lumpur. From the teachers’ responds, which can be referred in the answered questionnaires, nearly half of them agreed that pictures are effective teaching materials. Furthermore, from the result too, it is found that majority of the teachers agreed that by showing pictures, it can stimulate the students’ interest. Other than that, the findings of this study showed that majority of the teachers agreed that suitable pictures are easy to be found. Besides, majority of the teachers agreed that they had encountered problems or challenges when selecting pictures. The teachers have to take into consideration whether the pictures that they have chosen really suit with the students’ maturity, age and context of environment. In conclusion, this study is beneficial to other English teachers as well as to other future researchers in order to study the effectiveness of using pictures in ESL classroom. It provides the teachers’ perception based on real life classroom situations and literature reviews from other previous researchers in the teaching field.