Describing people workshop
Workshop notes and worksheets written by Alex Case (alexcase@hotmail.com, www.tefl.net/alexcase) for Shane Language Services, July 2008
Materials
One copy of Worksheets 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 per person, including suggested answers (some are optional and some are not needed until you give them to the participants at the end of the workshop to take away)
Workshop notes
Part A: Why teach the language of describing people?
Brainstorm reasons for teaching the language of describing people, e.g. (make sure you mention the last point, as it leads onto Part B below):
1. It comes up in textbooks
2. It comes up in exams such as IELTS speaking, and is a tricky task if you haven’t prepared
3. It’s a nice way of combining lots of vocabulary with a little bit of grammar
4. It’s a good introduction to stretching how much you say about a topic and saying things that keep the listeners interested
5. There are lots of nice games for it, including tasks in most photocopiable activity books such as Communication Games or Reward Resource Packs
6. It’s easier, more interesting and more personalized than describing objects or pictures, but can bring up some of the language you need to describe your workplace, products etc.
7. There are some interesting little tricky points involved in it such as “What is he like?” not having “like” in the answer and the difference between “How is he?” and “What is he like?”
Part B: The difficulties of the language of describing people
Brainstorm some difficulties, such as the ones on Worksheet 1 below (the worksheet doesn’t need to be given out until the end of the workshop). Elicit ways of dealing with one or two of the difficulties. Divide the class into groups. Divide the difficulties between the groups and get them to discuss solutions, e.g. practice activities, ways of presenting the language, ways of correcting mistakes and ways of explaining the difficulties.
Each group presents at least one of their solutions.
Move onto the last point on the worksheet (making it realistic) then move seamlessly into Part C below.
Part C: Realistic situations for describing people
All together or in groups, brainstorm situations when we do describe ourselves and other people in our daily life, for example those on Worksheet 2. Discuss some ways of bringing those situations into class, or give out Worksheet 2 so that they can discuss it in groups. Play a couple of the practice activities/ games on Worksheet 2 Suggested Answers, then either move onto the filler stage below, or talk about what makes good practice activities and move onto Part D.
Filler- Games and practice activities for the language of describing people
Play some of the games on Worksheet 3 (without giving out the worksheet, which can just be given out at the end for them to take away) and brainstorm other games.
Elicit some of the characteristics of good games for this topic, as shown in the examples you have talked about, e.g. amusing, range of skills, truly communicative. Finish with longer discussion of the most important factor- personalization, and then move onto Part D on that topic below.
Part D: Personalization
Give out Worksheet 4 for people to work on in pairs or threes, as per the instructions on the sheet. Go through some possible answers, for example those on the Worksheet 4 Suggested Answers sheet (but don’t give this out until the end of the workshop)
Filler: Personalization rules!
Make generalizations about what things you can do to personalize a classroom/ textbook activity, for example those on Worksheet 5 (but don’t give the worksheet out until the end of the workshop).
Part E: AOB
Take any questions. Give out the copies of any worksheets you haven’t given out so far for people to take away.
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Describing people workshop
Worksheet 1- 15 difficulties of teaching the language of describing people (and how to cope with them)
With your partner(s), discuss how you could deal with the following difficulties in the classroom, e.g. ways of explaining the grammar, practicing not making typical mistakes etc.
1. What is he like? / What does he like?
2. What is he like? / How is he?
3. The answer to “What is he like?” doesn’t have “like” in the answer
4. What is he like? / What does he look like?
5. The answer to “What does he look like?” does not have “like” in the answer
6. What does he look like? / Who does he look like?
7. He is medium height/ build/ his hair is medium length
8. Is/ have
9. Personality words
10. Insulting language
11. Cultural differences
12. Offending each other
13. Racism and PC language
14. We actually don’t describe people that often in our lives
15. Most practice activities and games are unrealistic
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Describing people workshop
Worksheet 1- 15 difficulties of teaching the language of describing people (and how to cope with them)
Suggested answers
1. What is he like? / What does he like?
This can be a classic example of students mastering one form then coming across a form that is similar in some way and the confusion seeming to put them back to zero- which at least we can say is part of the natural process of learning a language (both L1 and L2)! It will help in this case if you have already taught them that questions and answers tend to have the same verb, but “do”/ “did” is used when there is no auxiliary verb in the statement form. Therefore “What is he like?” is usually followed by an answer with the same verb “He is…”, whereas “do” does not need to be in the answer to “What does he like?”, making it “He likes…” Lots of practice activities use both these forms, for example when talking about personality, appearance and hobbies during blind date games or choosing presents for family members.
2. What is he like? / How is he?
Students will almost certainly already know “How are you?”, but probably answer it as a fixed phrase and so not be able to generalize the meaning of “How + be …?” You can prepare for this moment by expanding their repertoire of these questions, for example “How was your weekend?” and “How was the homework?” They should then be able to make the rule that “How…?” means “Is/ was … okay?” You can then elicit a similar question that means “Describe…” (“What… like?”) and so make the distinction clear. You can concept check by asking which question is asked about someone you have never met/ heard about before. This can then be practiced with pictures of people whose mood is clear in their expression, describing both their mood and appearance.
3. The answer to “What is he like?” doesn’t have “like” in the answer
Get students to answer the question “Describe…” or “Tell me about…”, then ask them to find a question on the board or worksheet that means the same as those two questions, the answer being “What is he like?” They should now be able to understand that the answer is the same for those three questions. Alternatively, add “like” to their answer to “describe…”, e.g. “My brother is LIKE tall”. They should easily be able to tell you that it is a mistake. If you then write “What is your brother like?” “He is like tall”, they should also be able to explain that it is always a mistake. You can practice this by one person giving the answer to a “What…. like?” question and the other person trying to guess the question, e.g. “He is taller than me” “What is your father like?” “No, my father is shorter than me”
4. What is he like? / What does he look like?
This is fairly straightforward. Brainstorm answers to “What is he like?” starting with “He is…”, then ask if the answer “He is intelligent” matches the question with “look” (= the question about looks). This can be practiced with a dating agencies game, where the best looking people have the worst personalities and people have to choose what balance of the two they will go for.
5. The answer to “What does he look like?” does not have “like” in the answer
See 3 above for the grammar explanation. This can be practiced with any activities where they describe people, e.g. testing each other on their memories of a crime scene.
6. What does he look like? / Who does he look like?
Students should already know that a “who” question is answered with a person, so you should be able to elicit the answer “He _________ his father/ Michael Jackson/ someone famous” to “Who does he look like?”. If they fill the gap with “He looks his father”, elicit that other phrases they know with “look” like “He looks after his little brother” and “He looks at the TV” always take a preposition. This can be practiced with photos of people who are doing impressions or who work as celebrity look-alikes.
7. He is medium height/ build/ his hair is medium length
Students often expect a simpler expression, similar to “He is tall/ short/ fat/ thin”, often trying “He is middle”. You can try and avoid this problem by teaching “He is quite/ a little fat”, “He is slightly taller than me” or “Her hair is shoulder length”. This will come up in any activity where you describe people, especially real people- even if you are trying to avoid it!
8. Is/ have
Students often make mistakes by mixing up “have” and “be” in sentences like “He has a big nose” and “He is blond”, even when the same distinction exists in their own language. Try brainstorming phrases that can go after each verb, perhaps as a board race.
9. Personality words
Personality words tend to not translate easily and also have similar words with very small differences in meaning in English. This is therefore a good opportunity to use monolingual dictionaries, making students concentrate on the positive and negative connotations and opposites in the dictionary entries. They will still need to think about the meaning quite a lot before they can really understand the fine differences. A good one for this is a pyramid ranking debate, e.g. ranking what are the most important characteristics for a wife or husband and seeing if the two lists match.
10. Insulting language
There is a big difference between saying someone is “fat”, “chubby”, “big boned” etc. You can practice this by giving students a list of things that could be considered insulting and asking them to change each sentence to soften its impact.
11. Cultural differences
There may be cultural differences on whether telling someone they have a big nose etc is a compliment or an insult, whether it is okay to ask about and describe female family members, and which characteristics people use to distinguish themselves from others (does everyone have black hair?) You could practice this by having a list of cultural differences that students have to spot the misunderstanding, offensive statement or other mistake in.
12. Offending each other
There is a slight chance that if you ask students to describe each other they could say make their partners feel self-conscious or even offend their classmates by mentioning a factor such as weight that they would rather not talk about or have noticed. You might know your class well enough to be sure that this isn’t a problem or to be able to put people in groups with people they are sufficiently comfortable to discuss these things with. Alternatively, you can let them form their own groups. Otherwise the best thing is to avoid any of the games that this could be an issue with, or do the same games but with photos of famous people that the students have brought in.
13. Racism and PC language
For example, students may be aware of “the N word” from English language rap or a similar word in their own language, but be totally unaware of it being very offensive. One way of dealing with this is to have a list of example sentences with common and sillier PC language, and get students to decide which ones are silly and which ones are common and necessary replacements for language most people find offensive.
14. We actually don’t describe people that often in our lives
This means that students are unlikely to get a lot of practice outside the classroom and/or that the number of great games you can play on this topic will make you spend far more time on this topic than is justified by how useful it is. Ways round this include only doing this topic when the grammar that comes up matches the rest of the syllabus, or using it as an easy introduction to describing objects etc.
15. Most practice activities and games are unrealistic
For example, how often do we describe the physical appearance of our families to other people? If that is such a central part of the textbook that we want to use it, we should at least think of what precise situation or during which topic we would do that (maybe saying who you take after or trying to persuade your friend to date your brother) or try to add some more artificial but effective reason to listen (“Which of the family members your partner described were just made up?”) See the separate article on this topic for more realistic situations and how to use them in the classroom.
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Describing people workshop
Worksheet 2- 15 real life situations for the language of describing people (and how to use them in the classroom)
Discuss how you could use the following real life situations for describing people in the classroom, e.g. how you could turn them into a game or make the topics truly communicative with a real reason to listen.
1. Meeting someone at the airport/ meeting someone for a blind date
2. Reading descriptions to find if you want to go on a blind date
3. Trying to fix someone else up for a blind date
4. Filling in a dating agency application form
5. Describing a new boyfriend or girlfriend or someone you are interested in to your friends or family
6. Trying to explain which famous person you mean when you can’t remember their name
7. Talking about what kinds of people you usually fancy (= your type)
8. Deciding which job candidate is most suitable for the job
9. Deciding which actor is most suitable for each part
10. Describing who you most take after in your family
11. Describing what people are like in a particular region or country/ correcting people’s misconceptions
12. Describing why you felt different somewhere or at some time
13. Writing job descriptions for jobs that demand particular kinds of appearance
14. Pen friend letters
15. Suggested birthday presents
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Describing people workshop
Worksheet 2- 15 real life situations for the language of describing people (and how to use them in the classroom)
Suggested Answers
Many of the activities commonly used with the topic of describing people such as ranking personality words and picture dictations are totally unlike anything we do in real life. Although this doesn’t have to be a bad thing if these are the most effective and fun ways of practicing the language, there are several potential dangers: that students will be put off what can be a difficult language point by thinking it is trivial; that teachers will spend the majority of classroom time on the most difficult parts of the language rather than the most used; or that the teacher will get carried away with the great games available for this language point and lose sight of how much students might or might not need this kind of language in real life. Here are 15 suggestions for situations where we do use this kind of language outside the classroom, and ideas for how we can use that fact in our classroom activities.
1. Meeting someone at the airport/ meeting someone for a blind date
This can be reproduced by students writing emails describing themselves, but putting fake names or numbers instead of their real names. Students then read one of the emails and as quickly as possible go up to someone and say “Are you number 1/ Ezekiel?” and get one point for each right guess but lose one point for each wrong guess. The person with most points after 5 minutes is the winner. Alternatively, do something similar with a picture of an airport full of people or a town square with lots of people waiting.
2. Reading descriptions to find if you want to go on a blind date
For example, “internet dating”. Students can read descriptions of famous people, choose which one sounds best and check it against the photos to see if they made the right choice.
3. Trying to fix someone else up for a blind date
For example, describing a male colleague to a female friend to see if she wants you to arrange for them to “accidentally” meet. To make it into a game, students are given the name and/ or photo one person each and without giving the names or showing the photos, they match up the males and females in the best combination they can. This works best if the people are chosen for their comedic potential, e.g. Hannibal the Cannibal and Queen Elizabeth.
4. Filling in a dating agency application form
Students can deliberately add a certain number of inaccuracies, and see if other students can spot them.
5. Describing a new boyfriend or girlfriend or someone you are interested in to your friends or family
One student does this with a photo or with the description of a famous person (without showing it to the other people or saying the name, and trying to just say good things), and the other students pretend to be the parents or friends, ask questions and say if they approve or disapprove. The student then reveals the photo or name of the famous person, who should be someone obviously attractive or totally unacceptable. Alternatively, people can describe real and imaginary boyfriends and girlfriends, and the others have to guess if they are real or not.
6. Trying to explain which famous person you mean when you can’t remember their name
This can be with people describing until others guess, or as the game 20 Questions.
7. Talking about what kinds of people you usually fancy (= your type)
The other person listens, asks questions and tries to find the most suitable person in a magazine
8. Deciding which job candidate is most suitable for the job
Activities like this are available in many textbooks and supplementary books, especially Business English ones.
9. Deciding which actor is most suitable for each part
If you use a real film or TV series that the students don’t know yet, matching the physical descriptions or photos to the descriptions of the characters’ jobs/ personality etc (but not appearance), you can then watch part of the TV series or movie and find out what the real casting director decided.
10. Describing who you most take after in your family
This can be difficult to turn into real communication in the classroom. One way is for one student to describe their two parents in detail, perhaps in reply to questions, and then the person listening says which parent it sounds like they most take after (or most take after in certain aspects), and check if the person agrees. You can also extend this to grandparents.
11. Describing what people are like in a particular region or country/ correcting people’s misconceptions
Students start off saying and correcting obviously wrong thing like “There are so many blond people in India” and move onto trying to find exceptions etc to things that people usually say, such as “Swedish people are all really tall”
12. Describing why you felt different somewhere or at some time
For example, “At primary school, I was the only girl with short hair”. This can be played as a bluff game, for example by giving students a card that says “Tell the truth” or “Tell the story of how you were the only person in the country you visited who had dyed hair”
13. Writing recruitment ads for jobs that demand particular kinds of appearance
And deciding if writing desirable appearance in job ads is allowable, and if so, for which jobs.
14. Pen friend letters
The problem with this one is that the task tends to be uncommunicative and lack fun- unless a real pen friend is reading it of course! Alternatively, they can exchange pen friend letters and write back to each other, including one untrue detail that their partner has to spot when they read it. A funnier but less realistic variation is to do it as a “chain letter”, where each person writes one line without seeing the previous lines and then hands it to the next person to continue.
15. Suggested birthday presents
As a shop assistant/ shopper roleplay or as friends giving advice. More communication and fun can be added by people not showing pictures of the objects they are recommending or the famous people they are shopping for until after they have made their decisions.
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Describing people workshop
Worksheet 3- 15 games for the language of describing people
1. Blind date quiz show
One person asks questions of 3 to 4 students, who should answer about the person on the photo they have. The person who asked the questions should then decide who would make the best date, and after being shown the photos of the one they rejected will finally be shown the photo of the one they chose. This works well with photos of famous people.
2. Internet dating chain letters
Another fun variation on the dating theme is for students to write one line about the person wanting a date (from their imaginations), fold over the paper so what they wrote can not be seen, pass the piece of paper to the next person to continue the description etc. When each piece of paper has been passed around at least 6 people, the next person can unfold it and decide if the letter makes sense and/ or sounds like a good date.
3. Describing people 20 questions
Students ask yes/ no questions about the people whose photos or written descriptions they have (“Is it a woman?” “Does she have long hair?” “Does she have a high pressure job’”) until they guess which person their partner was thinking of.
4. Describing people memory games
For example, students test each other on what people in class look like and are wearing while the person answering the questions has their eyes closed.
5. Guess my description
Students write 10 sentences about themselves and then pass the piece of paper to someone else. The person who received the paper reads the sentences out, starting with the most difficult clues to guess from, until everyone guesses who it refers to.
6. Ranking traits
For example, rank personality words by how important they are for a particular job. Other groups then guess what the job is from the ranking and then say if they agree or disagree
7. Brainstorm sentence endings board race
Teams race to write as many correct ending to a sentence stem as they can, e.g. “He has blue…”, “He has a big…” or just “He is…”
8. Picture dictation
One person explains a picture of a person to their partner, and their partner tries to draw what they hear. This can be done with the person explaining being allowed to see it being drawn or (more difficult) not being able to see and just having to ask and answer questions to make sure they have got it right. It can also be done with the original picture being a line drawing or a photo, with the former obviously being much simpler.
9. Alibi game
Each pair of students is told that they are a suspect for a murder last night and that person’s alibi, and must construct a story about what they were wearing, what the people around them looked like etc when they were at the pub rather than at the scene of the crime at the time of the murder. The two people are then questioned separately on all the details, and the pair in the class with most inconsistencies between their stories are the guilty ones.
10. Project/ research
Students are set a task to find out as many things about a famous person as they can. They get points either for the number of details they found, or for every detail they found that no one else did.
11. Dominoes/ jigsaws
Students are given different parts of a cut up picture or pictures showing many different people, and have to match the pictures up without showing them to each other.
12. Magazine search
Students challenge each other to find people of a certain kind in the magazines or textbooks that they have (e.g. “Look for someone wearing a blue hat/ with a six pack”), and then race to be the first to find that thing. This works with different people having both the same and different books, but if they have different publications you might want to allow them to swap occasionally.
13. Guess the nationality
People describe one person or make generalizations about someone from a particular country, and the others try to guess the nationality. You can do the same thing with regions of their country. This can lead onto language of generalization such as “Most people think that…” or “People in this country tend to…”, which is good for speaking exams such as IELTS, or discussion of the truth and acceptability of stereotypes.
14. Sentence expansion
Give students a very short description of someone, e.g. “He has hair”. They then take turns to make that sentence longer and longer, until someone makes a mistake or gives up.
15. Generalization vary the sentence
This is similar to Sentence Expansion above. Start with a sentence that is an overgeneralization, e.g. “Spanish people are short”, then take turns expanding or changing the sentence to make it more generally true.
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Describing people workshop
Worksheet 4- 15 typical textbook activities you can personalize
With one or two other people, discuss how you would bring personalization into these typical classroom activities (before, during or after the textbook, worksheet etc)
1. Correct the sentences
2. Mark the sentences true or false
3. Fill the gap with the correct tense
4. Test each other on the contents of the table
5. Fill in the gaps with “the” or “a” etc.
6. Match the sentence halves
7. Find words in the text that mean the same as the words below
8. Match the questions and responses
9. Find what these numbers in the text refer to
10. Choose the correct answer: A, B, C or D
11. Roleplay interviewing the person described in the text
12. Put the words/ expressions in the right column/ Put as many words as you can into each column
13. Match the sentences/ words/ expressions/ grammatical forms to their meanings
14. Write example sentences for each of the grammatical forms/ with each piece of vocabulary
15. Guess the story in the text from these words from it
Describing people workshop
Worksheet 4- 15 typical textbook activities you can personalize
Suggested answers
Below is a list of ideas on how you can bring personalization into classes where you are using typical textbook activities such as gapfills. The tasks mentioned can be done instead of the task given in the book (sometimes the textbook exercise will need rewriting in order to make this possible), as a warmer/ lead-in and/ or as a personalized extension activity.
1. Correct the sentences
Change the sentences to make them true for you/ your partner/ your whole group/ the whole class/ people your age in your country
2. Mark the sentences true or false
Try to make the sentences true for your partner/ Mark the sentences by whether you think they are true or false for your partner/ Make similar true and false sentences about yourself and see if your partner can guess which ones are true
3. Fill the gap with the correct tense
Fill the gap with a tense that you think makes the sentence true for your partner
4. Test each other on the contents of the table
Give your partner an infinitive verb/ adjective etc, and see if they can make a true sentence about you with the correct irregular simple past verb/ comparative form etc.
5. Fill in the gaps with “the” or “a” etc.
Make as many true sentences with “the” (or whatever word you are practicing) about yourself/ your partner as you can in 2 minutes
6. Match the sentence halves
Complete the sentences to make them true for you. Listen to your partner reading out just the part they have written and try to guess which sentence they were completing.
7. Find words in the text that mean the same as the words below
Read or listen to your partner’s personal reactions to words in the text (“I think this is the most useful word in the text because it is connected to my hobby”, “I chose this word just because I like the sound of it”, “This word could be useful, but I think its spelling and pronunciation are so difficult that I will never get the hang of it” etc), and try to find which words they mean.
8. Match the questions and responses
Match the questions to your classmates’ responses/ Decide if each response is true or not for your partner and then ask them the questions to check
9. Find what these numbers in the text refer to
Try to guess what these numbers about your partner refer to/ Try to guess what the equivalent numbers for your partner are (they will tell you “higher” or “lower” until you reach the correct number)
10. Choose the correct answer: A, B, C or D
Three of the answers are about other people in the class and just one answer is from the text. Try to guess which one isn’t about someone in the class, then read/ listen to the text and check. Try to guess who the other three answers are about.
11. Roleplay interviewing the person described in the text
Answer your partner’s question either with the information in the text or with something that is true about you. Can they guess which one each answer is?
12. Put the words/ expressions in the right column/ Put as many words as you can into each column
Do the same thing with more personalized topics like “Uncountable things that I love/ hate” or “Adjectives that I would/ wouldn’t use to describe myself”
13. Match the sentences/ words/ expressions/ grammatical forms to their meanings
Write the meanings of half the things in the textbook exercise with the help of a dictionary, adding something personalized, e.g. “A permanent black spot on your skin. Aiko has one on her top lip” for “mole”. The other team then uses the meaning and personal clues to match the words to the definitions.
14. Write example sentences for each of the grammatical forms/ with each piece of vocabulary
Write sentences using the forms given about your classmates and then read them out so your partner can check if they are true.
15. Guess the story in the text from these words from it
Guess some details about your partner’s life from some one word clues/ short clues they give you.
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Describing people workshop
Worksheet 5- Ways of personalizing classes/ textbook exercises
Match these techniques for personalizing classes to the game ideas you talked about before and/ or the ideas on Worksheet 4
1. Write similar sentences about yourself or your partner
2. Change the sentences to make them true about yourself or partner
3. Try to obtain particular answers from your partner
4. Try to work out if/ when your partner is lying
5. Guess the question that matches a short answer from your partner
6. Fill in the missing information that would make a true sentence about your partner
7. Use the vocabulary or grammatical forms given to write or say something true about your partner
8. Decide which words match you or your partner
9. Match the words or sentences to people in the class
10. Guess how many people in the class each word or sentence refers to
Discuss other ideas for personalizing classes and other ways in which the ideas above can be used.