Previously, Laura Sigsworth explored the importance of world knowledge in providing learners with the necessary context to communicate and understand successfully. Here, in the second post in this series, Unlock author Sabina Ostrowska considers how teachers can use photography to help draw on what students already know about other cultures.
Teaching students about other lifestyles and cultures, their history and geography, and general knowledge about the wider world can be an integral part of the ELT classroom. Given what we know about the effect of cultural knowledge on students’ understanding, some might even argue that it should be compulsory. However, some of us can be wary of bringing up general knowledge subjects to an English classroom because we may fear that we lack general knowledge ourselves. I think it’s quite liberating, though, to admit to your students that you are not the fount of all knowledge, and to start exploring new topics and answering questions together. A great way to do this is through photography.
Modern photography is quite spectacular, and many award-wining photographs are easily available to view online. These photos may be interesting for their artistic value, but – importantly for our purposes – they can also be very emotive, intriguing, and informative: ideal conversation starters for an ELT classroom!
Photography not only elicits key vocabulary but also stimulates class discussion, and allows students and teachers to share what they already know about the subject. For me, it’s all about learning what the students think, what they like, and what experience they already have. For example, in one lesson a student identified the Sydney Opera House in a photo and started to tell everyone about her holiday in Australia. The teacher’s role in such a situation is simply to elicit more information by asking questions.
Modern course books contain many attractive photos and one often sees students discussing a particularly striking, funny or intriguing photo before class starts. Instead of ignoring your students’ interest in the course book photos, it may be a good idea to build upon this natural curiosity and discuss the photos together. This type of discovery and sharing of information is informal, but extremely effective.
The photo at the top of this post, used in Unlock not only introduces the topic of food, but also exposes students to unusual food that they might not be familiar with, promoting discussion and engaging students’ interest. It gives the teacher a chance to learn about other unusual food that students have seen or know about. Crucially, it enables a lesson to take the form of collaborative discovery; so much better (and less pressure for you!) than a lecture.
For more information, visit our third post in this series: The importance of world knowledge to the ELT Classroom.