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| Finally, if these activities have still not persuaded you to make your own picture flash cards or even borrow someone else's, here is one flash card activity that needs 'No flash cards'! Divide the class into 2, the right hand side and the left. Tell the class you are going to show some pictures to one half of the class, but the others will not be able to see them. Tell half the class who cannot see, that by judging the reactions of the students who see the picture, they should try and guess what each picture is like. Make a gap between the two sides, stand in it and turn and face one side, with your back to the other. Now show the 'pictures', which are not pictures at all, but pieces of paper with instructions written on them, eg 'Laugh' 'be silent' 'talk excitedly', 'Say 'aaaaaaahhhhh' ', which the students should do, hopefully without further prompting. After each picture, those who cannot see the picture should shout out their guesses as to what the picture is. After 4 or 5, show them what the 'pictures' really are. Other ways to use pictures I hope these activities have shown what a flexible and convenient tool picture flash cards can be. Most students like looking at pictures and they bring variety into lessons; because each picture is different the language produced by each is different. Some other aspects of pictures useful to teachers could be the distance between, and height and weight of things in it, guessing what is outside the picture, and imagining what it is like to be in the picture. Probably you could think of many other ways of using the cards for motivating and enjoyable language activities. Sometimes a picture itself will suggest one kind of activity, but also you can use each picture in different ways. There is no need to be limited by a picture; with some imagination you will be able to find many uses for it, as a cue for language, in information gap activities, or as part of a story. A little bit of theory I think that the secret of a successful activity is to have several different elements, but not so many that the activity becomes too complex. In 'Describe Around' there are 3 elements, the passing of the picture, the descriptions, and memory. If the students didn't have to remember what was said before, the exercise might not be challenging enough. On the other hand if another element was added, forexample some students introducing sentences which were not true, which the other students would have to eliminate from the description, then the activity might become over complicated. These kinds of activity are fine for a bit of fun at the end of a lesson, or even a change of pace in the middle of a lesson, but they are serious activities because I have found them to be very effective ways of practising language. Some of them could be integrated into grammar input lessons, eg 'Fly on the Wall' as the practice stage for a lesson on prepositions, and 'Future Faces' could be the presentation stage of a lesson on the future perfect tense. In fact , I feel we can use pictures for both 'fun' games and 'serious' input activities, showing that sometimes there is not much difference between the two and that using pictures can be 'serious fun!' simumford@yahoo.com |
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