Describing a picture/photo
Age: 10 years and above
Level: Intermediate/Advanced
Set up time: 5 mins
Running time: 15-25 mins
This is a fun ESL lesson to teach and the students also really enjoy the challenge of it. In the lesson, one party describes a painting in detail and the other party or parties listen and sketch out the scene, including as many small details as possible.
The painting on the left is ‘American Gothic‘(1930) by Grant Wood.
As a teacher how would you begin to describe it to your students?
Which part of the painting would you start describing first?
In what order would you describe things in the scene and what minor details would you include?
Lastly, what language structures would you use so students can listen and sketch out the picture and the fine details that give the painting its unique feel?
Lesson Plan
This exercise should first be modeled with the teacher taking the describing role. In this way, the teacher can methodically and clearly describe a picture which is a model for the students to follow the next time. Subsequent exercises should see the students working together in pairs.
Teacher to Student
Below is a part transcription of the teacher (me) describing American Gothic to a class of my students. I’m trying to use language and structures that the students have already had some practice in previous lessons. If I need to describe an object they may not know the word for (in this case dungarees), I talk about the object itself so they can guess what I am describing.
Underneath the transcription, you can see a few examples where the students have sketched out the picture. Don’t scroll down yet though! Read through the transcription and refer to the original picture.
For readability, the teacher’s voice is in this color and the teacher’s actions are in this color.
‘Ok, first of all, turn your sheet of paper to portrait style like this (..the teacher holds up and turns their sheet of paper to portrait style).
So in this picture there are two people a man and a woman. I think maybe they are a husband and wife. They are standing at the front of the picture. The man is on the right and the woman is on the left. I will describe the man first….he is quite old I think he is in his late fifties or early sixties… He looks tall and slim he is a little taller than the woman… and his head starts about here (points to the paper). Starting from about here, I can see his body in the picture (the teacher points to their waist) but I can’t see his left shoulder or his left arm they are outside of the picture.
So his head…he has a long thing head and a long thin face….looking at his hair…well he is very bald but I can see a little, just a little hair on the top of his head and the sides of his head….As I said…he has a long thin face and he also has a long straight nose. Describing his eyes, he has big round cold eyes. Oh, and he’s wearing glasses but the glasses are round (indicates). He looks unfriendly you know…kind of grumpy and he isn’t smiling.
He is wearing a white shirt but the shirt doesn’t have a collar. I can see two buttons on the shirt….and over the shirt, he is wearing a pair of dungarees….so dungarees are kind of like jeans but they are longer and they come up to here (indicates) and they have straps here.
Then over the dungarees he is wearing a long black jacket. So as I said, his left arm is outside of the picture, but in his right hand he is holding a fork.. but um it isn’t a small fork …it’s a long thin fork ….like a farmer’s fork! …and it has three points (indicates)…..Ok so now let’s talk about the woman…..‘
So here are the students’ sketches….aren’t they great? I love the glasses on the third one …lol (maybe I’m biased)
Student to Student
The exercise aims to produce an accurate sketch of a picture or photo. Therefore the student in the describing role must try to include as much detail as possible in their descriptions. In turn, the student in the sketching role can double-check and ask for any additional information they may need.
In the exercise, students are first divided into pairs. One student is given a picture or a photo to describe in detail to their sketching partner
It is important to ensure that, as well as the ‘listening sketcher’ not being able to see the original picture, the ‘speaking describer’ can also not see how the sketcher’s picture is progressing. One way to achieve this is to have the students sit face-to-face but at a slight distance from each other. Another option is to have the students sitting back to back, facing away from each other. This has the added benefit of eliminating any ‘helpful’ body language by the describing student.
This is by no means an easy exercise and students may soon find that they are out of their ‘language comfort zone’ and struggling to describe the picture. It is here that the exercise takes another useful turn. All second language speakers will find themselves in a situation where they lack the necessary vocabulary to communicate what they want to say. So this exercise leads students to paraphrase and negotiate around the gaps in their language to communicate their meaning.
Of course, the choice of picture is important for the exercise. When selecting material, it is a good idea to look at the picture from the student’s viewpoint and imagine the challenges they would face in describing it. In reality, the picture shouldn’t contain many more than a few details of interest, so as not to make the activity too difficult. Challenging but not impossible is the mantra. During the exercise, it is important for the teacher to actively monitor the class to ensure that the students are not cheating and only using English and to guide and help as much as possible.
I’m sure you will already have a few ideas of pictures/ paintings to choose from, but if you are struggling here are a few pictures I’ve used in the past. All of them have their challenges to describe but they are not so difficult that either the describing student or the listening student gives up on the task.
‘Girl with a Red Balloon‘ (2002) by the street artist Banksy is a nice simple one to try. There is no real difficult vocabulary. Most students usually make a good attempt at describing and sketching this painting.
‘The Son of Man‘ (1964) by Magritte is, like ‘American Gothic‘, an iconic yet relatively simple painting. I like it because even low-level students can describe and sketch out the basics of the picture. Additionally, higher-level students can try to describe and sketch some of the minor details of the painting.
Anything with the Simpsons in is going to be great because they are reasonably simple to sketch. Anything, where a Simpson invades a classic painting, is double good!
‘The Caveman‘ (2008) is another fun painting by Banksy and offers the students plenty of challenges to negotiate meaning in describing this fine fellow. To help the students and to defend his modesty I would pre-teach the word ‘shadow’.
Debrief Session
At the end of the activity, the students can compare the original painting with their sketches. They will be aware of details they struggled to describe or sketch in the painting and will have an interest in how it should be done. So whilst everything is fresh the teacher can just talk through how they would describe details in the picture. In this way, the students can listen to the teacher’s description to see what they were saying right and wrong and hopefully improve on it for the next session.
Ok let’s crack on to the next lesson!