A Picture Paints a Thousand Words

The first sight of the picture may ring a warning: Beware of what you eat outside your home. However, this is not my main point in this entry.

Yesterday evening, while doing the cleaning out of my home, I came across several cuttings of the newspaper or the magazine like this and quite a few flyers, most of which I collected when teaching at junior high school. They used to be my teaching aids, especially before the Internet became popular. Most of the time, I used them to "lure" students to speak English.

Take the above picture for example. It can be used when students learn verb tenses or modal auxiliaries:

1. Present simple: T: What does the man find in the noodles? S: He finds a cockroach.

T: Does he look angry?/How does he look?  S: (No,) he looks surprised/shocked.

OR

T: Why does the man look so surprised? S: (Because) he finds a cockroach in the noodles.

2. Future simple: T: What will he do? S: He'll ask the vendor for a new bowl of noodles.

T: Will he come to this noodle stand again? S: No, he'll never eat there.

3. Past tense/Past perfect: T: Did you ever have the same experience? /Have you ever had the same experience? /What other "bad things" have you ever found in your noodles?

4. Modal auxiliaries: What might happen next?

The picture can also be used when senior high school students are learning subjunctive mood. For example,

5. T: What would you do if you were the man? S: I would leave right away/I would complain to the vendor.

T: What would you say to the vendor?

T: What would you say to the man if you were the vendor?

Surely, the picture can be used as a prompt for writing a story. Using this picture in class, what other possibilities can you think of?

Here are a few more in my collection:











Used creatively, pictures can be an effective lead-in to a good conversation in English between the teacher and students or among students.

Thanks to the digital camera, I took pictures of the pictures before bidding adieu to them.