12 Describing Appearances Games

Although it can be interesting and useful to learn “medium height”, “curly hair”, etc, the way that this kind of language is covered can be overwhelming and/ or boring, and it is difficult to come up with many realistic situations for describing appearances. This article therefore gives ideas on how to make the topic more fun and manageable with games.

Describing appearances drawing games

Describing appearances pick and draw

Students choose descriptions of appearances to add to a picture. This can work with them choosing what to draw themselves or choosing what their partner will draw, and with them choosing anything they like or choosing at random from different options. All four variations work best with cards that they put together to decide “She + has + no hair”, “They + are + really short”, etc.

Describing appearances coin drawing games

As well as or instead of taking cards, students can flip a coin to decide:

• if the sentence to be drawn should be with “be” or “have”
• if the next sentence should be positive or made (grammatically) negative (“She doesn’t have long eyelashes”)
• if the next thing to add should be something that people generally think is good (“big eyes”) or often have negative impressions of (“messy hair”)
• if the next thing is added to the picture of “He” or the picture of “She”
• who decides the next thing to be drawn
• who draws next

Appearances picture dictation

Students listen to descriptions and ask questions to draw the best picture that they can to match the picture that someone has but hasn’t shown them.

Describing appearances miming games

Although drawing is more common and obvious with the topic of appearances, it is also fun and useful for students to mime “ugly” and “bushy eyebrows”. This can be done by students:

• working together to make the best mimes
• competing to make the best mimes
• miming for other people to guess

Appearances guessing games

Guessing games for this point include:

• students describing someone until their partners guess that it is “Your mum”, “Your favourite actress”, etc
• students guessing the colour of their partner’s brother’s eyes, the length of their postman’s hair, etc

Describing appearance simplest responses

Students listen to words, phrases and/ or sentences to describe appearances and raise one of two cards depending on what they hear. This works best with students having cards with “be” and “have” to raise when they hear those two words or related language.

Instead of raising cards, students could raise their two hands, aim at the two categories on the board, run and touch the two words on opposite walls, etc.

Appearance opposites tennis

Students practise “long”/ “short”, “curly”/ “straight”, “fair hair”/ “dark hair”, etc as they throw a ball back and forth. To score and change who “serves” by giving the first word of each pair, you can follow the rules of tennis, volleyball, etc. To stop impossible challenges, a word that the server also doesn’t know the opposite of (perhaps because there isn’t one), counts as a bad serve.

The game can also work by bouncing a balloon, or having only a few seconds to reply as if a ball was coming without anything physically going back and forth.

Searching for appearances races

One student describes someone with a word, phrase or sentence and the other students race to find an example in pictures from the (whole) textbook, the classroom, famous people who everyone knows, a magazine, etc.

Appearances competitions

Students design and write a description of the best person for a date, to sell a particular product, etc, then vote on the best one in the class.