The influence of utilizing visual materials on creativity in teaching description at secondary education sophomore level

The aim of this study is to examine what is being done in the institutions ofsecondary education concerning the teaching of description in literature which opensan area of creation by words in language, and correspondingly in composition, and tospecify what can be done for teaching description as a form of expression incomposition in a way that will have permanent and lifelong influence on students.In this context, the traditional method of teaching description as a form ofexpression in composition as employed in our country is analyzed; it is comparedwith and contrasted to an alternative method of teaching, namely visually aidedteaching of description; and the impact of utilizing visual aids to creativity inteaching description is evaluated. To this purpose, control and experimental groupsare formed, and in the pretesting, the students in both groups are asked to write acomposition in an unspecified topic using the descriptive technique of expression. Inthe posttesting, the students in the control group are taught the subject of descriptionas a form of expression in composition in a rather traditional methodology and theyare asked to write compositions in a specified topic using the descriptive technique ofexpression. The students in the experimental group, on the other hand, are taught thesubject of description in the light of a selected photograph and they are asked to writecompositions using the descriptive technique of expression taking the photograph asthe starting point.The compositions written by the students in pretesting and posttestingprocedures are evaluated by a commission of five Turkish Language and Literatureteachers according to Written Expression Scale and Creative Writing Scale. In orderto determine the level of relation between the evaluations, the correlation betweenthe points the members of the commission give to the students in Written ExpressionScale and Creative Writing Scale after pretesting and posttesting is assessed.According to this, the correlation results of the points the commission members?assign to the students in Written Expression Scale and Creative Writing Scalepretesting and posttesting demonstrates that there is at least a mid-level positivesignificant relation between the points they give for the two scales. The pointsacquired by taking the arithmetic mean of the grades that students are assigned by thecommission members who evaluate the compositions that the students inexperimental and control groups write during the pretesting, which is carried out todisplay the existing situation and during the posttesting in which the claim thatutilizing visual aids would have an influence on creativity are analyzed withIndependent Samples T- Test in order to demonstrate the difference between theexperimental and control groups.The result is that the average of the points that students in the control groupget in pretesting according to Written Expression Scale and Creative Writing Scale,and the average of the points that students in the experimental group get in pretestingaccording to Written Expression Scale and Creative Writing Scale are observed to beapproximate. On the oher hand, the average of the points that students in the controlgroup get in posttesting according to Written Expression Scale and Creative WritingScale, and the average of the points that students in the experimental group get inposttesting according to Written Expression Scale and Creative Writing Scale areobserved to be evidently different. These findings demonstrate that there is asignificant relation between written expression and creative description writing skillsand the methods used in teaching description; and they show that utilizing visual aidsin description writing can improve students? skills in written expression and creativewriting.After the pretesting and posttesting procedures, the points acquired by thearithmetic mean of the grades students get according to both scales are analyzedusing Paired Samples T-Test, in order to determine whether there is a differencewithin the experimental and control groups themselves. According to this, it isobserved that there is an increase in the points students in experimental and controlgroups get at the end of the posttesting with respect to Written Expression Scale andCreative Writing Scale. These findings demonstrate that the practice of descriptionwriting in a specified topic may improve students? skills of written expression andcreative writing; and that the practice of description writing aided by visual materialsmay also improve students? skills of written expression and creative writing.