Idioms,
phrasal verbs
and proverbs
"A picture is worth a thousand words ..." blog
Learning English and creative writing through the use of photographs: discussions and interactive exercises
“A picture is worth a thousand words.” More than the mechanical recording of events, photography has the power to convey a mood or share our insights with others. It has the power to capture not only our perfect moments of love and happiness, but also searing images of cruelty and poverty. It has the power to preserve in a rectangular frame the beauty of a thousand sunsets, the joys of parents seeing their child just learning how to walk on its own, and the sublime happiness of students graduating after years of hard work and sacrifice.
Photographs (whether your own, those of others, or cut out from newspapers and magazines) can be a very effective way of teaching and learning the English language. Joep van der Werff, in his very informative article entitled “Using Pictures from Magazines” from The Internet TESL Journal, discusses how pictures can be a good source of material for practicing speaking, listening, writing, vocabulary and grammar. In this article, van der Werff relates the inspiring story of how one student overcame his shyness and reluctance to participate in the English class through an activity involving pictures.
We will be posting pictures in our blog “A picture is worth a thousand words.” As a good way of learning how to write in English, you can write descriptions, narrations, dialogue, expositions, etc based on your thoughts and feelings about these pictures. For a good discussion on how to describe pictures, please read the article “Picture Description” from www.ego4u.com.
You can compose short essays about any of the pictures, e-mail them to us, and we will publish them in the blog. Other ESL and EFL teachers and students from around the world can then read your essays and give their comments on your grammar, coherence or unity of ideas, style of writing, and areas for improvement. We will just publish your essays without your name or e-mail address to protect your privacy and prevent spam. You can just give a general description about yourself like nickname, age or school level, gender, country, etc.
Below are some pictures you can use as a starting point. For other pictures, please go to the blog “A picture is worth a thousand words.” If you are an ESL or EFL teacher, you are free to use these pictures in your classroom activities. You cannot however use these pictures commercially, post them in the Internet, or publish them in yearbooks, newspapers, magazines or any other publication. The proper credits must also be given. The pictures below were taken by Atty. Gerry T. Galacio and have been published in the yearbooks of Rizal High School, Pasig City, Philippines from 1989 up to 1996. If and when you use any of these pictures, the credit must read, "Picture by Atty. Gerry T. Galacio, www.betterenglish.org.ph".
Listed below are some discussions and activities on the teaching and learning of English through the use of pictures.
[01] Teach Them To See - Higher Level Thinking And Tasks Through Photojournalism
[02] Picture games, from Compass
[03] Picture Stories and Thought Groups, from Developing Teachers.com
[04] Catchy Captions: Students write captions for pictures cut from newspapers and then match the real captions to the pictures, from Education World
[05] Fun with pictures, from ELT Newsletter
[06] Here’s Me – Showing Photographs (Lesson plan: showing pictures to describe personal experiences and share information), from English Language Institute (The University of British Columbia)
[07] Activities from EnglishLearner.com
[08] Activities from eslflow.com
Adjective Gallery
Pic Tac Toe (A fun visual-linguistic lesson plan for presenting, reviewing and comparing verb tenses)
Pic / sentence prediction for present continuous
Superlative island
[09] Lesson Plan - Describing Picture Scenes, from ESL Lesson Plan (Carol Rueckert)
[10] Advanced picture dictation (science), from ESOL Online
[11] ESL Work with illustrations, from Heinle and Heinle Grammar Activity Inventory (Georgia State University)
[12] Adapting a picture story, from Malta Association of Teachers of English as a Foreign Language
[13] Activities round a Group Picture, from Pilgrims English Language Courses
[14] Modern art (PDF) using connectors to compare and contrast, from Skyline-English
[15] Picture Stories, from Strategies for Empowering Students (Urban Programs Resource Network)
[16] Teaching ideas for using pictures, from teachers.net
[17] Activities from teAchnology.com
Award Certificate Maker
Bus Pass Maker
Grammar Lesson Plans
Grammar Teaching Theme
Ideas For Teaching Writing
Meeting New Vocabulary Graphic Org
Memory and Observation Skills Worksheets
Phonics Worksheets
Photographs
Pictures Internet Secret/Tricks
Project Rubric Generator
Sentence Building Worksheets
Spiral Vocabulary Worksheet Maker
Visual Art Lesson Plans
Word Game Sites
Writing Lesson Plans
[18] Activities from teaching English
Dating Game: describing people activity using pictures with the aim of getting students talking
Picture Dictation
[19] Junk Mail Catalogs: A Treasure-Trove for Language Teachers by Susan L. Schwartz, from The Journal of the Imagination in Language Learning and Teaching
[20] Partial Pictures teaching idea, from Three Wise Monkeys
[21] Pairwork
with pictures, from Using
English for Academic Purposes
A Guide for Students in Higher Education
[22] Picture dictation, from University of Virginia
[23] Improving writing through the use of imagery, from Workforce Education LAB
Notes:
Online journalism training, from JPPROF the website for teaching journalism (by Prof. James Glen Stovall of the University of Tennessee): Discussion of skills (reporting, writing, editing, graphics design, photojournalism,, web journalism, opinion writing and broadcasting), issues (news, practices, law, history, ethics), industry (newspapers, magazines, radio and television, news web sites), and with grammar exercises for students.
Relevant links
Masters
of Photography (a four-minute video by Ilay Ron of classic pictures
by the world’s best photographers)
Family
Code Philippines
(free legal information)
the
kristo (if
you want the Spanish version,
click
here)
The
Cross
Romans
Road
Knowing
God Personally
Got
Questions Ministries
Spiritual
Counterfeits Project
Probe
Ministries
Radio
Bible Class
Crosswalk
Living
Hope
Women
Today Magazine
Silver
Ring Thing
Purefreedom
True
Love Waits
Every
Student
You
Are Someone Special
True
Love
Starting
With God
Cloud
and Townsend Resources
Love
and Respect
Real
Relationships
Legal
Updates
Baptist
Churches in the Philippines
Families
of Faith
Salt
and Light
Father's
Love Letter
Oneplace.com
– Listen for Life and
Faith
Talk Web Radio
Academics, fun, career, living, people, sex,
love, spirituality
Online sources of free images (Please take note and comply with these websites' term of use for their photographs)
Corbis Images (more than a million royalty free stock images including celebrity, fine art, contemporary and historical images
Flat Earth (over 16,000 royalty-free photos)
FreeFoto.Com (Over 100,000 images free for non commercial use (link back and attribution required. Also non-commercial users may download web size images to use off-line in school projects, church services, cards, leaflets, etc. Images can be purchased for commercial use)
Freephotographs (Copyright and royalty free photographs taken by Blaikiewell Animal Sanctuary; may be used for commercial and personal Web sites.)
FreeStockPhotos.com (nature, landscape, wildlife, outdoor recreation, and cityscapes for commercial or personal use, plus links to public domain government photographs)
The Stock Market Photo Agency (stock photographs and royalty free images in an online searchable database, and free research from a library of over 3 million images)
The Ultimate Image Archive from Pics.am, The Homeworld of Pictures
(archive of thousands of free high quality pictures in various categories, free to use as desktop wallpapers or a part of any design)
Online magazines
Women
Today Magazine
Chinese
Women Today
Relationships; Sex & Love; Advice; Beauty;
Fashion; Food; Money; Work; Chat; Online Studies; Life Stories; Wellness
& Spirit; Self-Esteem; Family & Home; Health & Fitness; Wit
& Wisdom
SOON
Online Magazine
Learning English Index
free world-wide easy-English literature programme; free
hard copies available on request
Men Today Online (A high adventure magazine for men)
Power To Change (English); for other languages, click Arabic; French; German; Italian; Japanese; Malay; Russian; Spanish; Chinese; Thai; and Czech
Read 6000+ Online Newspapers @ ThePaperboy.com
Improving
your vocabulary
Pictorial
Vocabulary Guides, from LanguageGuide.org
Learn the pronunciation and spelling of thousands
of words using an image based interface, with supported
languages as English, French, Spanish, German, Portuguese,
Polish, Russian, Italian, Greek, Chinese, Chinese
(traditional characters), Hindi, Japanese, Korean,
Arabic, Turkish, Vietnamese, Thai, Indonesian
A Word A Day, from Wordsmith
Explore the world of words, share, and delight in the joy of words with a community of more than 600,000 linguaphiles in at least 200 countries, from Australia to Zimbabwe
British to American / American to British - Vocabulary Converter
TOEFL Vocabulary, from English Daily
Over a thousand real multiple-choice questions for TOEFL test preparation
Online resurces for reading and listening
The Reading Room - English Comprehension, from English The International Language
Practice your reading skills and improve your vocabulary through selected Articles and Stories, with instant feedback in the True/False questions
100 free short stories for ESL learners (with listening, grammar, comprehension, and dictation exercises), from Rong-chang Li
Wired for Books, from WOUB Center for Public Media, Scripps College of Communication, Ohio University
Hundreds of hours of spoken audio in English of a tremendous range of poems, stories, plays, essays, lectures, and interviews for children and adults
Online Language Laboratory, from www.fonetiks.org
Christian alternative to YouTube with videos, music, prayer wall, Bible reading and chat room; This website does not necessarily endorse all the views, comments or opinions expressed in GodTube. Viewers must be persuaded in their own minds (Romans 14:5), consult their Bible teachers, and must be like the Bereans who in Acts 11:10 "... searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so."