Teach english new edition r

Stage 4 
- three students are chosen to play the different characters. They come to the front 
of the class and are interviewed in the same way.
Quite apart from its intrinsic appeal as an activity which provokes students into looking more 
closely at a work of art (which is satisfyingly ambiguous in many respects), this speaking
12 7

---

Chapter 9
sequence works extremely well because of the speaking and interaction it provokes. In the 
first place, the original groups 
activate
their English knowledge as they talk to each other to 
plan and negotiate the questions they want to ask. In the second place, when playing one of 
the characters in the picture (in small groups), the students have to come up with answers 
(however profound or amusing), and think of follow-up questions when they have heard 
an answer from one of the others. This acts as a rehearsal for the interview in front of the 
whole class. The teacher will now have a lot of language use to com m ent on, and can work 
on the questions or any of the answers that came up if appropriate.
This kind of activity is suitable for almost any age group, including younger learners, 
who often find imaginative role-play like this very enjoyable. And there are many other 
possibilities: for example, we can have students react to anything that is said to them as if 
they were one of the characters in the picture. We can get them to talk about their typical 
day (as one of the pictured characters). We can ask them to have the conversation that two 
portraits have with each other when the m useum lights are turned off and the doors are 
shut!
This interview technique can work with any pictures of people - including portraits 
and photographs - or, for children, puppets or computer-generated characters. It can also 
be employed when students have worked with a reading text: they can interview the people 
they have read about, asking them how they feel, what they do, etc. And of course these 
interviews can be turned into written profiles.