To celebrate the publication of Discussions and More Second edition, here’s one of our favourite activities from the Cambridge Handbook – ‘Say something about a picture’.
Outline
Students brainstorm all the things they can think of to say about a picture.
| Level: Beginner-Intermediate (A1-B1)
Age: Any Time: 10 minutes Language focus: (See Variation 3) Preparation: |
Procedure
1. Do not (yet) display any pictures to the students
2. Put students into groups of three or four and elect one of them to be the ‘secretary’ (but reassure them that the secretary does not have to write very much!)
3. When they are ready, explain that from the moment you display the picture, they should start saying sentences about it. They may not start until you say ‘Go’ and will have exactly two minutes until you say ‘Stop’. The secretary has to write a tick (✓) for every sentence that is said, but should NOT try to write them out. The secretary may also contribute sentences of his or her own.
4. Look at your watch to check the time, display one picture and say ‘GO’.
5. Stop the talking after exactly two minutes and ask how many ticks they have.
6. Tell them they are going to do the same again, but with another picture, and must try to break their previous record; if they got 15 ticks the first time, they now have to get at least 16!
7. Repeat the procedure with the second picture.
Follow-up
For homework, ask students to write out at least ten sentences about one of the pictures. These can be ones they remember from the activity or ones they invent themselves.
Variations
For younger learners, one minute is enough for producing sentences.
Beginners can be asked to say only words or brief phrases about the picture rather than complete sentences.
If you want to practise a particular grammatical feature, you can limit the student responses accordingly: for example, you might ask them to focus on prepositions of place, or action verbs in the present progressive, or the phrase There is/are.
Tip!
When you need to display a particular picture to the entire class, it’s best best to project it on the board if you have the necessary technology. Alternatively, you may be able to enlarge a picture to an appropriate size using a photocopier, or walk round the class by displaying an A4-size picture as you talk about it so that all the students get to see it.
Example pictures
