Food flashcards

Preparation

These activities take little or no preparation. You can either cut pictures from magazines, or download and use the images we have supplied here.

Food flash cards 576k zip

© All images are copyright Chris Tribble, King's College, London University and used with his kind permission.

Procedure

• Learners look at the pictures and try to name as many items as possible.
  This could be limited to food or could include other items in the picture.
  • If your learners are competitive you could put them in groups for this and set a time limit.
  • You could even supply bilingual dictionaries to help them discover the new vocabulary for themselves.
• Get the learners to describe the setting for the meal.
  • Is it formal / informal, in a house, restaurant, romantic etc?
  • Which meal is it (breakfast, dinner, etc.)?
• There is a common saying "We are what we eat." Get the learners to try to describe the people who may be eating this meal.
  • What can you guess about a person from the food they eat?
  • Describe the person you think cooked the meal / will eat the meal?
  • Where are the people now?
• You can get your learners' personal reactions to the pictures.
  • Which meal would they most / least like to eat?
  • What country does the food come from?
  • How is the food like / different from the food from their own country?
• You can also use the pictures in a popular oral exam type of format. Ask the learners to choose two pictures and compare and contrast them.
  • Ask them to try to discuss the pictures in pairs for two minutes.
  • You could make this more fun, if you have confident students, by getting pairs to do this in front of the class.
  • The rest of the class should listen and award marks out of ten for their performance.
  • Extra marks for clear speaking, good interaction and vocabulary and minus points for mumbling and repetition.