Picture dictation 1

This activity can be adapted for use with many photos from the magazine, but is particularly suited to the Vocabulary page. It gives students a task to carry out while they are listening, and trains them to remember language that they have just heard. It's an activity to do if the students have not seen the picture before.

Who it's for:
All levels

What it's for:
Intensive listening, quiet time

What you need:
The Vocabulary page from any issue of Spotlight.

What you do:
Before the lesson, have a nice cup of tea and relax; there's no preparation for this activity unless you want students to have copies of the Vocabulary page after the activity. If so, (get someone else to) download and print out copies from www.spotlight-online.de/teachers

Tell the students that you are going to describe a picture to them and that they should listen and draw the objects you describe.

Suggest that the students take a new piece of paper and lay it sideways (in landscape format). Depending on the type of picture and the nature of the vocabulary, you may want to give them a frame before you start. With the picture in 1/2010, you want your main focus to be on the bags. Tell the students that you are looking into the window of a bag shop, and that there is a woman going into the shop through the door on the right, and give them a minute or two to sketch this frame in. This is a useful warming-up and focusing exercise.

Start describing the bags in the window. Take one bag at a time, say where it is in the picture and describe it. Repeat each description a couple of times.

Make sure you give students enough time to finish drawing one bag before you move on to the next. It is a good idea to walk around and look at the pictures as the students work, as this is a useful gauge as to whether you should repeat the information about the position of the objects, or their descriptions.

You can tell the students that they can ask questions during the activity to complete or refine their drawings, or you may want to leave this until you have finished your dictation.

When you have finished dictating, give the class a minute or two to finish their drawings, then put the students in pairs to label the items in the picture from memory.

Remember that you don't have to dictate every object in the picture. When you check their versions with the original, discuss the missing items, getting students to supply information about them.

You may want to work further on describing pictures. Otherwise you can carry on working on bag vocabulary using the rest of the page, or continue your lesson as planned.