Teachers use all kinds of
material in class: from course books which are a safe guide through grammar and
gradually built vocabulary to images, magazines, books, videos and websites.
The same type of material can
serve different purposes in a language classroom depending on the teacher’s
imagination and goals but also on the students’ response, level and ability.
 |
| La Strada di Casa by Carlo Carra, 1900 |
The image can be used as a
visual stimulus for prompting descriptive language at any level. It has, I
find, a haunting air about it which makes it appealing to any age.
Therefore, at an
elementary level one would limit oneself to such descriptive language as:
Ø
It is night
time.
Ø
The
street is empty.
Ø
The
windows are shut.
and so on.
At a more advanced level,
however, one would try to elicit
Ø
A cloak
of darkness spreads over the town.
Ø
The stump
of a tree is too conspicuous to ignore.
Ø
The
bright moon sheds an eerie glow over the dwellings at the end of the street.
The next question could be about the atmosphere, and again depending on the
students’ level, one would expect a range
of vocabulary and structures:
Ø
The place
looks spooky.
Ø
The
street is deserted.
Ø
Not a
soul to be seen in the street.
Ø
A ghostly
light illuminates the last houses in the row.
Ø
The place
is steeped in mystery while the ominous sky foreshadows an imminent
catastrophe.
Ø
The tree
forms a stark silhouette against the sky providing no safe refuge for any
stragglers.
Description apart, there
is a dramatic quality in the image on which the teacher could capitalise.
My suggestion for further
language development is inviting the students to populate the place in the
image with any creatures – human or non-human – that they find appropriate
justifying perhaps their choices and proceed to ask them to write a
conversation or a story including all the creatures they have added or an
extract of an imaginary book.
Again, the projects would
vary depending on the level and age of the students but would fire their
imagination, nevertheless.
I have created an animation to help anyone who might be short of ideas or needs a little bit of
impetus to get started and I have written a sample extract to use with my
advanced students.
Here you can see the animation.
And here is the sample extract:
With adults one could ask
whether they can think of a film or more that they associate with the image,
which would lead to further discussion and exchange of ideas. It could even
develop into a class debate about which film bears the most striking similarity
with the picture and the atmosphere it evokes.
Just a clue at this point:
it strongly reminded me of a film made in 2004 entitled The Village.
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