Purpose: This communicative activity helps students practice question forms and vocabulary by talking about an imaginary person. It can be used with lower level students by limiting the number of questions and the topic areas covered.

Preparation Time:  This depends on your access to pictures of people in

magazines, calendars, or picture files. 

Materials:  You’ll need at least two large pictures of people for modeling the

activity and additional pictures for learners to work with.  If you have a small

group of 4-6 learners, they could all work from the same pictures. If your group

is large, try to provide 2 pictures for each set of partners.

Preparation:  Decide which pictures you want to use to model the activity and think about which questions you will pose regarding the person in the picture. You might want to mount the pictures on heavy paper to make them easier to work with.

Procedure:

1. Tell the students you are playing an imagination game, and they get to make up the answers. You hold up a picture and ask, “What’s her name?” Elicit an answer from the students. “Where is she from?” “What does she do?” “What does she like to do?” “Is she married?” “How old is she?” “Does she have any pets?” “Does she play any sports?” “What kind of music does she like?”
2. The students take turns providing the answers.  Encourage them to be creative in their responses. For example, someone might say “She likes to collect spiders.” Or “She is from another planet in the solar system.”
3. Now hold up the second picture and go through the same questions again, or ask different ones if you have a higher level group.
4. Next, ask students to work with a partner. Give each pair a picture or, if the group is small, ask them all to work with one picture.
5. One partner asks the questions and the other answers.
6. When they’re done, provide a second picture and have the partners change roles.  

Variations: If the class is very small, you could also go around the circle and have the students take turns asking the questions.