Appearance

Every textbook has a lesson for describing people. But I wanted a lesson plan designed for more advanced students that got into words like chin, forehead and eyebrows and also some expressions like, “He has a face like a truck”. So here are some worksheets and a lesson plan to teach more advanced expressions for describing what people look like.

Objectives

• To introduce students to advanced ways of describing appearances
• To teach students which expressions are offensive and which are not
• To give students practice using adjectives and expressions to describe people

Materials

• Facial Features [PDF]
• Adjectives to describe people [PDF]
• Pictures from magazines or from the Internet of famous people or interesting looking people

Warm Up

Advanced students will of course already know many words for how to describe what people look like, so it’s good to begin this exercise by activating existing vocabulary and test what the students already know.

I start by showing them pictures of famous people and asking them to describe what they look like. You may have to elicit vocab by asking targeted questions like, “What color are his eyes?” “What kind of hairstyle does she have?” Once they’ve gone through a three or four people, you’ll have an idea of what vocab they are comfortable with and you can try to elicit more words by pointing to features or asking them direct questions. Often students won’t be comfortable answering questions like:

What shape are his eyes?
What kind of complexion does he or she have?
What shape is his face?
Does he have wrinkles?
What style of hair does he or she have?

One fun variation on this lesson if you have students who often come late to class, is to apply some public humiliation by having the other students describe what the late comers look like. This is most fun if you don’t do it overtly. When Johnny strolls in late, look at him carefully and say, “How about Johnny? Is his face square?”. As the students stare at him, Johnny will feel humiliated and you can gently suggest that this is his punishment for being late. And Johnny gets something back when Susie comes in even later.

Vocabulary

Just before describing people becomes boring and/or you feel you have reached the limits of the students’ vocabulary, give the students the Facial Features worksheet (or draw a picture of a face on the board) and go over the parts of the face and the body.

Then go over the description words and phrases in the Adjectives Worksheet. I have done my best to include some American colloquialisms and also to indicate which words or phrases are negative or insulting. The key to teaching all this vocabulary is to focus on giving students new words instead of repeating what they already know and linking it to pictures or concrete people so they have examples. Also make sure as you go over the worksheet, you have them practice it. For example, “Name someone who is skinny as a beanpole.”

Guess Who?

Now that students have stronger vocabulary, you can have them play a guessing game. Have them write a description of a person well-known to the class. You might have them describe fellow students or if you don’t want to embarrass anyone, have them describe a famous person. Then in turns they should read their description without saying who it is and the rest of the class guesses who they are describing.

Another variation of the guessing game is 20 questions. The class has to guess who the famous person is by asking yes/no questions such as, “Is it a man or a woman?”, “Is her hair blonde?”, and “Is she tall?” But they can only ask 20 questions before they have to guess.

You can follow this up with a lesson like first impressions where students have to try to guess someone’s character based on their picture.

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