Films and the language of description

In many of the course books that we use they have units devoted to describing people. Often they are dull to the point of catontonia. Students have to trudge through pages of boring and meaningless vocabulary, doomed to forget most of what they’ve learnt within the week. Don’t you just love course books ?

Anyway, here is an alternative to that, which actually asks students to do something other than just sit imprisoned in their seats.

For this you’ll need five to ten photos (preferably large A4 size taken from magazines, papers etc.) and a short extract from a movie which shows somebody committing a crime. For example the scene in Nikita when the trainee assassin has to shot a businessman in a restaurant or the first bank robbery scene from Point Break

lesson plan

1 Ask students to think of a famous person. They then have to describe that person’s appearance to the student next to them. The other student tries to guess who their partner is talking about.

2 Ask students to say what things they mentioned when they described the famous person. Elicit a list of different characteristics we use;

eg age, build, height, hair, clothes, complexion etc.

3 Put the students in groups/pairs and then ask students to think of as many words as possible for each category. If necesary allow students to use Greek and translate for them.

4 Pin the photos on the board and ask students to give each person a name.

5 Put students in pairs and ask one of them to choose a photo from the board (allow to approach the board, if necessary). They then chose a person go back to their partner. The other student then asks them a series of questions to which the answer can only be yes or no.

BTW Tell students that they can’t mention the person’s sex and instead of using “he/she is” should use “they are”

6 Students then swop roles.

7 Explain to students that you are going to divide them into two groups; police officers and eye witnesses. You will show a short part of a video to the witnesses which shows a crime. After the police officers will have to interview the witnesses get the details of the crime and most importantly get accurate description of the perpetrator. The police go out of the class and write down relevent questions which will be used to interview the witnesses.

Eye witnesses will watch a short extract from a movie and try to remember as many details as possible.

8 Play the extract to the witnesses once only.

9 Bring the police back in. Each police officer interviews one witness, the two groups then reform and share their information.

10 A representative from each groups presents their version of events and description.

11 Show the extract again (more than once if needs be).

12 Students discuss the differences between their versions and the real one.

Basically, this is a variation on the car accident plan that I posted a few weeks ago. However, the emphasis is on the language of description.

This could also form the basis for a creative writing exercise.