The Language Teacher
02 - 2003

Describing Personalities

Hugh Graham-Marr

Tamagawa University

<hugh@abax.co.jp>

QUICK GUIDE

Key Words:Adjectives describing personality or behavior
Learner English Level: High elementary and above
Learner Maturity Level: High school and above
Preparation Time: Little or none
Activity Time: A full 60-90 minute period
Materials: Blackboard or whiteboard, dictionaries

Pre-activity

Write ten level-appropriate adjectives used to describe peoples' personalities or behavior on the board (e.g. petty, tight-fisted, warm-hearted, reliable, wishy-washy, humorless, organized, moody, patient, hard-working). Ask students to select words they would like to hear describing themselves, and which they would not like to hear.

Procedure

Step 1: Using their dictionaries, students find five other adjectives they would like to hear used to describe themselves and five more adjectives they would not like to hear used. As work proceeds, the teacher might add further categories and ask students to find five adjectives for each. Some examples of categories are given below:

someone you admire (e.g. tolerant, considerate)
someone you don't like very much (e.g. self-important, narrow-minded)
a very good friend
someone you find a little weird

Step 2: Depending on the size of the class, each student comes to the board and adds one or two words to the original list of ten. Ask students to ensure that words are not written up more than once. When the students have finished, the teacher should check the list, correcting any misspellings, substituting higher frequency words for lower frequency words, and explaining any words that the students don't know. The teacher may also add more adjectives, although there should be no more than 40 or 50 words in total. Students should then look at the list and select any words that could be used to describe themselves.

Step 3: The teacher should then describe the personality or behavior of a member of his or her family, perhaps expanding on the words by giving examples of the behavior (e.g. This person is really lazy. I mean, he never does any housework. He just sits around all day watching TV. He's unreliable. I can never trust him to do anything.). Students must try to guess the relationship of the person to the teacher.

Step 4: Put students in groups of three or four. Each student thinks of a family member and in turn, describes that person using words from the board or their own list. Other students should try to guess the relationship.