Hi this is Russell Stannard from Teachertrainingvideos.com as you can see I'm
not in my office today I'm actually out here in Mauritius working and traveling I've got a lovely
idea for you today and it's something I published more than 20 years ago it's a couple of ideas that
we can use when we're getting students to describe pictures so it's great for speaking and if you
apply these two ideas it will really give your students a strong framework that will help them
to feel like they're a bit more fluent and giving them the ability to describe a picture in a really
kind of uh organized way I'm also for those of you that are really interested gonna do an advanced
idea so if you watch this video all the way through you're going to get some great ideas every
time you work with a pitcher really hope you like the video and as always if you do please like it
please share it please comment on it I'd love to know if you've got your own ideas when you
work with pictures let's get started I used to write lots of teachers books for ELT and I always
used to include this in them because it's a really nice way of explaining to students how they can
describe a picture in terms of the positioning so this is the first part of the idea so for example
you've got at the top at the bottom in the middle etcetera on the left on the right but you can also
combine these so you can say in the middle on the left in the middle on the right you can say
for example at the top on the right at the top on the left at the bottom on the right at the bottom
on the left so it's a brilliant way of helping students to kind of explain where things are
in the picture and immediately it gives them a sense of fluency because they can say things like
at the top on the right there is a chimney or at the top on the left there are some clouds and
a sun now that's the first idea I'm going to show you one more idea about helping students
to describe a picture and then I'm going to show you an example of what I've done and then
I'm going to take it even to a further level and get your students to actually record themselves
describing a picture so let's look at part two of the idea now when we describe a picture we often
talk first of all about the general things in the picture what the picture actually is then we
go into detail and that's when we can use at the top at the bottom etcetera because we can describe
everything that's in the picture and then we can personalize the picture and say well I like this
picture because or you know I like doing this so this is a really useful model for students and
combined with the first kind of grammar tip that I've given you you can really get your
students to speak and describe pictures really well and I do a lot of work with my students
to get them to go from general to personal let me give you an example just to make it really
clear and i'll do an example first and then i'm going to take this idea a little bit further
so if i was to model to students how to describe this picture i would start with the general so
i might say something like this is a picture of a house it's in the countryside the picture was
taken in the summertime as we can see it's a lovely blue sky uh day and uh it was actually
taken very near to the border between Poland and Belarus so that would be like the general and then
I might get more specific by saying as you can see in the picture the house is very very colourful if
we look over to the right we can see that there is a fence and on the left we can also see that
there are some bushes and also a fence as well at the top we can see that there's actually a chimney
on top of the house and if we look in the middle on the right we can see that there's a really nice
entrance into the house so that's when we start to give more detail now I'm going to personalize
it third part this is a really nice picture for me to look at and it gives me good memories of
a trip that I took to that part of Poland very interesting for me because I've never been near
to the border with Belarus we did lots of hiking I went there with my wife and my wife's family
about two years ago and also the food is very different blah blah blah so that's the model
general specific personalized and using this on the left on the right or even combining
on the left at the bottom etcetera so really really useful now I'm going to take this whole
idea even further what about doing this as an idea particularly for homework with your students
just a super quick piece of publicity if you want to get more free videos please come over to
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normally advertise at the top of the screen let's get back to the video now now I'm going to show
you a lovely tool called Screencast-o-Matic which I talk about all the time it's a free
tool that we can use to record ourselves get our students to recall themselves describing a picture
all you need to do is click on record for free on that button there and then click on
launch free recorder the first time it might take a few seconds you have to kind of download
a little app but it's very very simple to use and you're going to see it now open up onto the
screen and what i'm going to do is i'm going to record myself basically describing that picture
and then save it as a video so the t students could do this and then they could share the videos
with the teacher or they could put them onto their google drive or they could put them onto YouTube
or they could send them to their teacher or upload them onto Edmodo or Moodle all sorts of things so
we've opened up the recorder now once the recorder is opened you can kind of minimize that web page
you don't need that anymore and now all I'm going to do now is just simply move that recorder
like that and this could be the homework of the students to describe the picture so I'm
going to go through the process that I did a bit earlier but I'll do it much quicker
so this is a picture of a house in the countryside the picture is taken in Poland it's actually taken
in a part of Poland that borders with Belarus near to Belarus which is a country I've never visited
but also because it was a chance to do a lot of hiking and experience the local food
stop just click on the pause button there click on
done and that recording I just clicking on save and upload that recording is now ready
to share so this is how easy your students could make and do for homework pictures
talking describing pictures and using that model that I said of talking from general to
kind of more specific to personal let me just play that back a little bit so you can listen
so this is a picture of a house in the countryside the picture is taken in Poland it's actually taken
in a part of Poland that uh borders okay so we can see that the recording works perfectly now
we've got loads of options here we could save it onto our google drive so if the students have got
google then they could save it on their google drive or we could just save it on that computer
so I'm just going to click on save as and it will just simply open up it just gives me a chance here
to kind of put in a title etc so best of as I said click here to give it a name oh it doesn't matter
whatever name you're giving it I'm just saying that you do that and then I'm going to just save
this on my desktop and I click on publish and that video is now being saved onto the desktop
of my computer and let's have a look on the desktop of my computer and see if that has worked
so if I look on my desktop on my computer I can see there it is let's just see if it's worked okay
and this is how easy so this is a picture of a house in the countryside the picture is taken
in Poland absolutely fantastic really easy way of getting students to make videos and get them
to record themselves describing pictures okay really hope you enjoyed that video please come
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thank you very much and I'm going to share a few other videos that you might be
interested in now on the screen around the whole topic of encouraging students to do speaking
you