The effects of task materials techniques and other classroom variables on motivation and the learning outcome plan: I. Introduction 3 II. Main part 5

Teaching Grammar through games schools
This chapter presents and analyzes data that answer the subsidiary problems of the study. Table I showed that out of the 20 student respondents, 50% were males and 50% females. Of the male students respondents, only 2 males belong to the high group while 8 males from the low group. For the females, each of the group had 5 respondents. It also showed that there were 7 respondents from the high group and 13 came from the low group.
Justification:
Nowadays, the teaching of English language must respond according to the development of updated teaching techniques. It is known that learners need extra instruction for them to understand better contents, and comprehend a second language. When teaching English, educators must find ways to exemplify and clarify contents to reach different kinds of learners. For this reason, the design and management of visual aids take an important role for the development of linguistic skills in the target language inside the EFL classroom. As Cauley (1954) states, with a broader, richer and more functional concept of the purpose of teaching of English in mind, the search begins for material around which a problem or unit involving the use of English skills can be built.
Nowadays the Chilean Ministry of Education has made a great effort to provide public schools with appropriate materials. For instance, manifold kinds of games, stories full of pictures, didactic text books, and images for students to learn. In regard to the educational material, it can be said that the MINEDUC has also created audio-visual material due to the effective impact they have on students. This visual support consists of high technology devices with the main purpose of supporting better learning which also motivates the continuous updating of them. According to ReCrea (2013), a publishing company, these new visual elements have to be entertaining, mixed with learning elements, innovating and interesting for the students.
The Ministry of Education has also made emphasis on the kind of educational audiovisual aids that are being created, including games and softwares that motivate children and have them interested in such a way that they utilize them correctly so that the main purpose of enhancing the learning process can be accomplished. ReCrea also emphasizes that one of the mayor necessities that audiovisual aids must satisfy is to have the capability of addressing the different stages learners go through (2013).
How appealing the educational material is, is an important factor. In this sense, one can say that if the material is not motivating for students they may lose interest and the purpose of the material may be lost. The importance of the designed material for children and teenagers is also essential (ReCrea, 2013). In regards to the kind of visual
aids, the Ministry of Education considers essential the kind of supplies that are presented to the students, and as they usually do not know how to read, the material needs to be “plenty of sounds, simple and easy to comprehend” (ReCrea, 2013). The creators of these educational materials also emphasize the fact that if they want to succeed with the material for adolescents, they must focus on the context of the students, they must feel identified and the stories must be real. This company also mentions that another possibility is to make those materials interactive motivating the participation of the students (ReCrea, 2013).
Educational material creators have also thought about the educators when designing visual aids. Teachers of English use videos and other devices to present and contextualize situations in which the vocabulary can be used in such a way that students can appreciate the real setting in which they can use the contents (ReCrea, 2013). It is not a surprise that the schools which have used these materials have obtained good results because the students learn more and adapt the contents to real life situations.
Oral communication and visual aids in Chile
Chile is growing in all senses, economically, socially, technologically and
especially in education. It is worldwide known that English is essential nowadays and Chile has intended to be inserted in an increasingly globalized world in which a certain level of English proficiency is an indispensable element. There are certain competences people must develop in order to take part of this globalized world. The MINEDUC (2013) states that “Through English, it is possible to gain admission to a great range of information, and by means of the mass media to know other cultures and realities” (p.
30)¹.Therefore, the competences to develop in education are focused on oral communication.
Language learning comes from the necessity of all the aforementioned. In education, English has taken an important part of the curriculum where the teacher, the students and the contents are the main components. Therefore, “there is a didactic triangle that should allow students to construct their own knowledge, a process that is not always easy to grasp and produce autonomously” (Diaz, C., 2011). Crooks, 2003, (as cited in Diaz, 2011) states:
“The purpose of teaching English as a foreign language via Chilean public education, semi-public and private education is to give students a linguistic tool that can enable them to understand and communicate information, knowledge and technologies as well as to appreciate other cultures, traditions and ways of thinking”. (para. 4)
One of the major issues when teaching a foreign language is how to prepare learners to develop their linguistic competences and enable them to use the language.
The Chilean curriculum is concerned with the development of skills “according to the methodological and communicative approach” (MINEDUC, 2013, p. 34) to enhance students’ competences. The English curriculum establishes that: “by means of the development of communicative skills, our students will have the possibility of acquiring the necessary tools to get access to information and participate in communicative situations, through conversations, reading and writing” (MINEDUC, 2013, p. 30)². This means that with the enhancement of the communicative skills students will be able to use their knowledge and will be part of communicative in situational contexts nowadays.
In relation to the communicative skill the English curriculum (2013) contends that “the development of oral skills [...] opens the possibility to start using English to communicate information and to interact with the language in meaningful and familiar situations of daily life and personal interests” (p. 30)
One of the tools that can be used to enrich the Chilean English language lessons is the use of visual aids. The Chilean curriculum also proposes that “to develop and present information through the use of text processers, presentations (power point) graphs, tools and audio and visual applications” (MINEDUC, 2013, p. 15)³.
The contents proposed by the Ministry of Education are topics appealing to the students’ level, but they also consists of grammar and structures that the students should be able to show and manage. In this regard, the curriculum indicates that “grammar should be taught contextualized through interesting contents, relevant and motivating, available to interact and communicate” (MINEDUC, 2013, p. 34)⁴. All these suggestions help the teacher conduct and guide (Harmer, J. 2007) the teaching process in benefit of the students and their learning progress, with the final purpose of enhancing their communicative skills in English language.
At Universidad Austral de Chile, some researchers have carried out some investigations about these topics as well. For instance, in relation to visual aids, there is a proposal called “On the Possibility of Teaching English Grammar through Visual Aids: You Will See What We Mean” (Bravo, G. & Villalon, M., 2011). This study attempts to teach grammar through visual aids since the Ministry of Education emphasizes the Communicative Approach. Another research paper “The Impact of Multisensory Teaching Material on Elementary Schools Students’ English as a Foreign Language Acquisition Process under The Focal Skill Approach” (Bennett, D. & Zubber, k., 2012) looks for acquiring English through the use of multisensory teaching materials, but it is not directly focused on communicative skills. It can be said that visual aids have always been an issue of investigation for all the benefits they offer but not all of them intended to foster oral skill specifically.