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Using Pictures in English Class |
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I. Introduction
1) Pictures provide an excellent
source of information and ideas in all curriculum areas.
2) Teachers are showing students how
to comprehend the information found in pictures.
3) It gives them an opportunity to
learn how to obtain information from nonprint material.
4) Students can use graphic data to
enhance their understanding of content material.
II. Steps to Designing
and Implementing a Viewing Guide in the Classroom
1) Decide what information you want
your students to acquire from the picture.
2) Identify the pictures that
contain the information and concepts that you want the students to view.
3) Reflect on the relationships
between the content objective and the ideas presented in the pictures.
III. A frequent
strategy for helping students extract information from pictures is :
1) Start by having students examine the
picture.
2) Ask students to describe what they have observed.
3) Have the class discuss differences in
observations.
4) Ask students to interpret what they
have seen.
5) Have students defend any conflicting
interpretations by referring to the original picture.
IV. Major Learning
Activities
Have your students think of their own
answers to the following question while looking at the pictures :
1) What do you see?
2) What would you hear if you were in this picture?
3) What would you smell if you were in
this picture?
4) What emotions do you feel as you view
this picture?
5) What would you taste as you view this
picture?
6) What place would you like to choose to
go?
7) Why did you choose the place?
8) Why would you like to go there?
9) Who would you like to go there with?
10) What are you going to do there?
11) How long are you going to stay there?
12) When are you going to return home?
V. Paintings to teach
grammar
1) Present continuous verbs
Any painting with a person or people doing something can be described in the
present continuous form.
2) Present simple verbs
Many portraits, especially those set in some kind of background, invite us to
speculate about the lives of the person portrayed. (Describing his/her daily
routine)
3) Verb forms in the past
Using paintings as a starting point for story-telling for practicing various
past tense forms.
4) Question forms
Take a portrait and ask your students individually to write down fifteen
questions they would like to ask the character.
5) Vocabulary
Use the remarkable paintings in which faces are made up of fruits, vegetables,
animals, fish, etc. Ask your students to identify the fruits, vegetables,
animals, and fish.
VI. Paintings to teach functions
1) Likes and dislikes
Use the paintings which often provoke strong reactions of like and dislike.
2) Preferences
Use the paintings with land, sea, and cityscapes. Ask your students
which paintings they would prefer to visit for the day/the weekend/a holiday.
3) Can and can¡¯t
Use the paintings depicting sports as a starting point for discussion of what
you can and can¡¯t do in a given sport.
4) Describing
(a) Paintings, like photographs, can be described.
(b) Ask your students to put themselves in the picture with land, sea,
and cityscapes and describe what they see, hear, smell, taste, and feel.
(c) Have your students imagine the character of the person portrayed.
(Crime/Criminal)
(d) With portrait, have them decide who to be invited and why?
VII. Paintings to
encourage fantasy
1) Still life
(a) Take a still life painting and ask your students in pairs to write a
dialogue between any two objects in the painting, without mentioning the names
of the objects speaking
(b) When finished, the pairs take it in turns to read out their dialogues
while the rest of the class guess which two objects were speaking.
2) Human as seen by animals and
objects
(a) Use paintings with people and animals or objects
(b) Ask your students to describe the people from the animal¡¯s
(object¡¯s) point of view.
(c) The description can take the form of a dialogue between animals or
objects and people.
3) Where would you nest?
(a) Use pictures with a variety of places where birds might nest, e.g. some
buildings, trees, and a river.
(b) Ask them where in the painting they would choose as a nest and what kind
of bird would they be?
VIII. The Museum
If you are within striking distance of an
art gallery or museum with suitable paintings, the ideal is to take your
students there or have them visit those places via internet.
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IX. Conclusion
Paintings, or pictures are a less
versatile medium than music as a stimulus for language work.
However, the language students can produce with them is very rich and they
derive enormous pleasure in using this unexpected medium. The tasks have
also opened the students¡¯ eyes to hidden qualities in many paintings.
X. Materials and
Resources
1) Book :
Silver B. & Morristown (1990). The World of Language, , NJ.
Herber, H. (1978). Teaching reading in the content areas. 2d ed. Englewood
Cliffs, NJ : Prentice-Hall.
2) Community resources :
Art museums and galleries
3) Technology resources :
Internet access : http://www.louvre.fr/louvrea.htm
http//www.kids-space.org
http://www.ks-connection.org
http://artscenecal.com/
http://www.nmaa.si.edu/
http://sunsite.dk/cgfa/
http://artscenecal.com/
http://www.amn.org/
http://www.phxart.org/
http://www.maltwood.uvic.ca/
http://www.nytoday.com/artmuseums
http://www.asianart.org/
http://www.bampfa.berkeley.edu/main.html
