International House conference, Barcelona

He looked suspiciously at everyone that got off the plane.

In this workshop, I wanted to demonstrate that drawing in the classroom is not just for children. About 30 teachers came along and as far as I know, everyone got artistically involved.

The cat will bite you if you pull her tail.

One of the activities involved creating flashcards. Participants were asked to draw random sentences that had been taken from a standard learner grammar book.

He answered the questions foolishly.

Her little girls are always prettily dressed.

I deliberately chose sentences like these in order to demonstrate the effectiveness of image. Look how they are brought to life when they are drawn.

I go to church on Sundays.

Activities like this allow learners to experience, personalise and own target language.

He is going to be a dentist when he grows up.

Students don’t have to be artists to draw. The images that they create don’t have to be time-consuming masterpieces. We are merely considering quick sketches that take 2 or 3 minutes to produce.

My dog barks a lot but he isn’t barking at the moment.

It was quite a surreal experience to have Andrew Wright in the audience as I remember his drawings from 1000 Pictures for Teachers to Copy.

Thank you so much for the binoculars. I’ve been wanting a pair for ages.

Here are 10 reasons for getting students to draw in the language classroom:

1. It is fun and engaging

Variety is always good and an activity that involves drawing might be a refreshing change for some students. In my experience most adult learners are very happy to draw in class and actually appreciate how it can enhance language learning. Of course, there will always be a few reluctant artists. But at least getting your students to draw is nowhere near as difficult as getting them to sing.

2. Convenience

Looking through books of flashcards to find exactly what you want can be time consuming. All you need is paper, pencils and your students. In fact flashcards can be spontaneous - created on the spot in response to students utterances.

When one of my students - Coral - tried to tell me that she would be happy if her English was as good as her cooking, you can probably imagine the problems she ran into. We worked with the language she wanted to produce, drilled it, kept coming back to it and finally, Coral drew it so that we could recap it at later dates.

If my English was as good as my cooking I would be happy.
(NB I think that is supposed to be a chick pea on the right hand side.)

3. There is virtually no language that can’t be drawn

The example images that have been included here demonstrate how easy it is for individuals to draw random sentences that are put to them.

4. Noun phrases

In his Saturday morning plenary, Michael Lewis was talking about the importance of addressing noun phrases. Flash cards are a great way of introducing these to learners. Consider the following:

What is this?
A Mexican frying an egg (a noun phrase)

5. Student-generated flashcards can be used for games and drills

I recently heard Ron Carter speak at TESOL-France in Paris. One of the things that he spoke about was a call for language teachers to get back to drilling (it seems to have been out of fashion recently).

Click here for some flash card ideas.

6. Student-generated flashcards can be scanned and photocopied

This will allow you to display them on a laptop, desktop, ipod, etc.

7. Drawing allows your students to engage with imported texts.

In the workshop, we saw an activity in which participants were asked to draw a picture of a teacher tying an unruly pupil to a chair with a skipping rope.

We then imagined how this incident could have come about as well as the outcomes. Finally, it was revealed that the incident was a real one. The text that was given out can be seen here.

Printer-friendly versions of online articles are learner-unfriendly. If a text is devoid of images, think of ways in which a student drawing activity can be incorporated into the lesson plan.

8. Drawing is a good for creative writing and speaking.

In another activity, participants were asked to draw a woman buying flowers. We speculated on her motives and discussed whether or not men and women buy flowers for different reasons. The next step in the classroom would have been a role play or a story-writing activity.

9. Memory

Student drawings are great for revising, recapping and reactivating the language that is associated with them.

10. The classroom wall.

When short texts are put on the classroom wall in association with student drawings, they help keep the language fresh in learners’ minds.

Will you help me to lift the piano?

Thank you very much to everyone that came to my talk and thank you to International House, Barcelona for a good conference.

(The T. rex lesson plan can be downloaded here: tyrannosaurus-rex-joke.pdf)