Picture talk

This summer, during a TPRS workshop I presented, I decided to try something different for me with a picture talk.  Usually I try to find a goofy picture (think Awkward Family Photos) and we talk about that.  This time, I chose a piece of art that I felt represented the structures my "students" (actually teachers) were working on: was, had, wanted.  So I found this painting by Edgar Degas.


Here is the dialogue, in English, of how I used this painting.

Me (pointing to woman): Was there a man or a woman? Woman, right! There was a woman. Who was this woman? Sarah? Yes! The woman was Sarah. Was Sarah beautiful? Yes, she was beautiful. Was Sarah happy? No, Sarah was not happy. Sarah was sad. (Continue until students get bored talking about Sarah).

Next, we moved on to the man and followed a similar script of questions. It turns out, according to my students, that the man was the boyfriend of Sarah. Then, I asked Why Sarah is sad.  Because I had superstar language teachers as students, they were able to answer this question and decided that she was sad because she wanted a different boyfriend. Then we were able to talk about why Sarah didn't want the man as her boyfriend (he smokes and she hates that).

Last week, in a collaboration, another teacher in my school said that she wants to try to use picture talk more this year and I volunteered to do this picture talk for them.  During the picture talk with them, I had another epiphany (for me...superstar teachers are probably rolling their eyes at this point at how lame I am)! Our story followed a similar script, but in our story, the woman and the man were just fighting.  So, I said, "Yes, a week ago they were in their house..." and BOOM! a story evolved that could use actors and different locations outside of the café.  I will definitely do more of this in the future during picture talk.  I can't believe it took me so long to "get" parallel stories or Blaine's magic of talking about what happened outside of a story.

Anyway, we happened to have a former art history major in this collaboration group and she had insight into the painting.  It's called The Absinthe Drinker.  So we thought that it would be a great follow-up reading to type up the actual stories behind paintings as a follow-up activity.

Et voilà! Something new to try if you, like me, haven't quite "gotten" the full potential of picture talk.