Picture Talk — Eighteen Photos, Three Levels, One Sentence at a Time

Three sets, six images each

Picture Talk gives students a photograph and just enough language to begin talking about it. There are three sets. Push the Limit shows people at the edge of what they can do: a climber on an overhang, a surfer inside a wave and a runner on a wet street at night. Wild Animals in Action puts a sprinting cheetah, a charging bear and a breaching whale on the screen. Fire and Flavor moves into kitchens and street markets where cooks work over open flames.

The series is designed for all levels and is included with a Cool English subscription. Subscribers can open the activities in class and share them directly with students for continued practice or homework.

One image, three levels

Choose a picture, then choose Beginner, Intermediate or Advanced. Each level adds another layer to the same description.

At the Beginner level, students identify the person, the action and the place. The climbing photograph reveals man, climb and mountain, and students assemble the pieces:

“A man is climbing a mountain.”

At the Intermediate level, the activity adds adjectives for the person and the setting, so the man on the mountain becomes a strong man climbing a steep cliff.

At the Advanced level, students also receive an adverb describing how the action is happening:

“A climber is tightly gripping a steep rock face.”

The photograph never changes. Only the number of words the sentence has to carry changes.

Guess first, then reveal

The keyword cards start hidden behind question marks, so students study the image and suggest their own words before seeing any clues. The teacher can reveal the cards one at a time or display them all at once.

Any revealed word can be clicked to show its meaning, introducing unfamiliar vocabulary without stopping the activity. Show Sample then puts a model sentence on the screen. It works best after students have committed to a version of their own rather than before.

Start in class, continue at home

Picture Talk works well as a teacher-led classroom activity, but the practice does not need to end when the lesson does. A teacher can introduce one or two photographs in class, then send students the share link so they can complete the remaining images independently.

The same link can also be assigned as homework from the beginning. Students can work through the levels at their own pace, reveal the vocabulary when needed and compare their sentences with the samples.

The printable worksheet

The downloadable handout includes a two-page student worksheet covering all six images at all three levels. The first page provides the color-coded keyword chips and a grammar frame for each level. The second page uses the same vocabulary without the frames, so students must supply the grammar themselves.

Teachers can also display the answer key before printing or saving the worksheet as a PDF.

Teaching tip: do not change the picture

The instinct after a successful description may be to move immediately to the next photograph. Research into speaking-task repetition suggests there can be real value in asking students to perform the same task again. With the basic content already planned, learners can devote more attention to fluency, accuracy and the way they express their ideas.

Picture Talk makes that easy. Keep one image on the screen and work through all three levels, changing partners between rounds so each new description still has a genuine listener.

Picture Talk — all three sets