English Picture Stories
Visual materials can be one of the most effective tools to teach a foreign language. However, their major disadvantage is that they are time-consuming and difficult to create. To save you time, I would like to share three exercises here that use pictures to teach English. All of the materials concentrate on the topic of food, and they are extremely easy to use.
I met this kind of exercise a very long time ago. It has been popular for very young children who used these stories to learn to read in Czech. These stories have been published in many magazines for young children, and I loved them when I was younger. However, I could not use the original stories as they are very difficult for learners of English so I created some myself.
A lunchbox picture story
The first story is called a lunchbox story. Print the following worksheet. It contains four parts – twice the picture story and twice the correct solution. Print the worksheet and cut it. You will need one part for each student.
Students work in pairs. One of the students has got the picture story and the other has got the correct solution. The student with the picture story reads it aloud in English and their partner checks their answers. Once they read the whole story, they swap their roles.
As repetition is essential in learning a foreign language, do this activity at least twice in the first lesson and then repeat it in the following lessons.
Recipe – picture story
Here is another picture story to revise the food vocabulary. Moreover, this time students learn how to write recipes in English.
On the left, you can see the picture recipe. The whole activity works the same way as the one above. Print the following worksheet. It contains two picture recipes and you will need one picture recipe and one solution for each pair of students.
Here is the correct solution:
1 Peel the apples and slice them.
2 Put the apples in a saucepan with a little water and 50 g of the sugar. Boil the apples for ten minutes.
3 Put the flour, the butter or margarine and the rest of the sugar into a bowl. Mix them with a fork.
4 Pour the cooked apples into a dish.
5 Cover the apples with the flour, butter and sugar mixture.
6 Put the dish into the oven at 180C for 30 minutes.
7 Serve the apple crumble with cream or ice cream.
You can copy the correct solution and print it once for one student in the pair or you can display it on the board.
Stone soup – picture story
I have been teaching this story for over twenty years. Even though the textbooks (Project 2 in this case) change, the story remains. At the beginning, I disliked the story, but I no longer mind it. However, it still does not mean that I am happy about it. There are never enough tasks for the students, and thus, they do not get involved. That was why I created the picture story to make them read the story repeatedly.
Once again, download and print the following worksheet. You will need one copy for each pair of students.
The activity works in the same way as the two above. The students who hold the pictures read the story, and the one with the correct answers checks their replies.
Share please!
These picture stories are incredibly useful, and students like them. If you have stories like this for which you own the copyright, please share them in the comments.
Thank you.
