Hughes - Etpedia

All students need to be able to talk about themselves and to ask other people about their lives, so the topic of personal information, including talking about families, homes and physical appearance is one that often comes at the beginning of a course. Here are 10 activities linked to this topic which you could integrate into your lessons.

Filling in a form

For teaching the language of personal description at low levels, the types of forms we fill in online or in places such as hotels or at a doctors surgery provide a really useful context. You can either create a form for your students to fill with headings such as name, surname, age, street name, city, postcode, date or try to find some authentic forms to use in class. For example, you could use an enrolment form for a magazine subscription or the registration form from a hotel. Ask the students to read the form and fill it in with their own details.

Asking for personal details

As an extension to activity 1, put the students in pairs and give Student A a form to complete with information about Student B. In order to do this, Student A asks questions such as Whats your name? Whats your address? etc. and fills in the form with Student Bs answers.

True or false

Another activity which deals with the language of people and personal information is to get each student to write three sentences about themselves. Two sentences must be true but they invent the information in the third. Then they work in pairs and take turns to read out their three sentences. The other student listens and guesses which sentence is false.

Family tree

Draw a family tree on the board going back to grandparents or great-grandparents. It could be the family tree of a famous family, a fictional family or it could be your own family. Present the family to the class and teach the words for describing the different relatives ( eg. father, mother, uncle, aunt, cousin, sister-in-law, etc.) . For practice, the students draw their own family tree and then present it to a partner, describing their relationship to each relative.

Describing clothes

Introduce the language for describing clothes (eg. colours, type of materials, etc.). You can either use pictures or ask different students to stand up and use the clothes they are wearing to teach the vocabulary. For practice, ask each student to choose a person in the classroom and write down what they are wearing today. Afterwards, the students take turns to read their descriptions and the other students have to identify who they are describing. (If you want to make sure that everyone in the class is described, write the names of the students on pieces of paper and hand these out, one to each student.)

A fashion show

With younger learners, you can use the context of a fashion show to practise the language for describing clothes (see 5 above). The students work in groups and each group prepares the script of a fashion show for the others to watch. They decide who will deliver the commentary and who will be the models. Each group rehearses their show and they then take turns to present them. When they present their show to the class, the models walk up and down the classroom as if they are on a catwalk, and the commentator describes what they are wearing. To add real interest, the students could bring in some fun clothes to wear for the event and they could play background music.

Describing appearance

To teach the language of peoples appearance (dark/fair, tall/short, blue/brown eyes, long/short hair etc.) you can use the same techniques as for describing clothes in activity 5 by referring to students in the class and getting the students to guess the identity of the people being described. However, because talking about personal appearance can be embarrassing for some students, another option is to put photographs of people (perhaps celebrities) up on the board. Each student chooses one and writes a description of their appearance. They then take turns to read their descriptions out for the other students to guess which person is being described.

Describing your home

To teach the vocabulary for describing homes, you can show students photos of houses and rooms. They then write descriptions of their own home or a favourite room. However, a more interesting type of writing activity is to get them to imagine they are selling a house or apartment and to write an advert for it. You could bring in some examples of house adverts from estate agent sites for the students to study first. They can underline any useful phrases and note what the advert includes. Then they write a similar one for their own house. Afterwards, pin up the adverts and allow the students to read each others.

Prepositions of place

When we teach the vocabulary of furniture and household objects, it also makes sense to introduce prepositions of place (in, on, next to, behind, opposite, above, below, between, etc.) . To practise the language, give two sheets of blank paper to each student. Ask them to imagine that one piece of paper is an empty room and tell them that they must draw furniture in it. Once they have done this, they work in pairs and sit opposite each other so they cannot see each others drawings. They take turns to describe their room and their partner tries to draw the room on the other blank piece of paper. Afterwards they compare their rooms to see if they drew them correctly.

Giving directions

For practising the language of directions (go straight ahead, turn right, turn left, stop at the end etc.) ask the students to imagine a friend is going to visit their home. They write the friend an email and give directions either by road or by public transport.