Using pictures to revise vocabulary

A couple of weeks I posted an idea about how we can use Flickr to help students with their basic vocabulary. I also thought that this would work well with more advanced students and indeed it does when describing concrete nouns (i.e. things we can actually see and touch) or action verbs such as "crash", it is not so great with other words e.g.invincible is very hard to explain just using a picture.

However, what we can do is use the internet to help students revise items they've already covered in their course books etc. The slide show above uses items from a difficult text I covered with one of my students while doing unit 6 of the Headway Upper - Intermediate course book.

The basic idea is that we go through the items in the usual manner, but when it comes to revising them we use Slide.com to make a slide show with images that illustrate the new word's meaning. As long as the image is meaningful to the student it doesn't matter if its meaning is obscure to you and me. Also, this is not simply a copy and paste exercise as I found out myself when I Googled the different lexical items in the passage in order to find good, representative images. You need to think and search about what you want to show.

The slide show then acts as a visual mnemonic when students need to revise for their unit/term tests.

Using Flick to create a photo dictionary

Tsimiski St, originally uploaded by teacher dude in Greece.

Last year talked about how students could use their digital cameras to create a photo dictionary. The idea was that they could take pictures of everyday scenes such as a street, classroom, party etc. and label them using programs such as Word .

However, a nice, new shiny application by Flickr has made this even simpler. As many of you know, you can label different parts of your photos when you post them to Flickr. So, this is a great opportunity or students to learn and practice naming everyday objects.
When you click on your picture, look for the Add Note option which is above the image, on the left-hand side. Then just place the square where you want and add a description.

(For some reason the notes don't appear when the picture is posted to my blog, however, click here to see the original.)

The potential for this technique doesn't just end with learning languages, it could be used in all kinds of learning situations where you need to know the different parts of an object. Imagine using it in biology lessons to name bones, in architecture to show different features etc. It is a great way to revise your knowledge using real life examples.

I don't think many people have realised it yet but Flickr and the like are, in fact not just photo sharing services, but the world's largest dictionaries. An interesting application of the law of unintended consequences.