(This posting includes a handout which you are welcome to use with your students.)*

This posting is an updated version of a post from April 10, 2018:  • Writing Class Person Description Activity: Fun, Lively and Productive

I knew that this activity worked well with my ESL students. However, I hadn’t realized what they were experiencing internally until I did it myself.

Several of my colleagues and I decided to try out some activities by putting ourselves in the roles of students. And this was one of them.

In brief, we were randomly and secretly assigned one of the colleagues in the room. On a paper with only a number, we described the colleague physically and/or their personality and/or habit etc. Next we put all our papers on a stack, mixed them up and then each of us taped one on the wall. After that, we walked around reading the description and writing on a paper the name of the colleague being described. Finally, we shared our decisions with each other.

My insights into what students experience during this activity

At first, I felt a bit of pressure during the first step of writing the description. I wanted to write something clear but not too obvious. I imagine that many of my students have probably felt that way too, but that’s actually a good thing. They can experience the thrill of writing for an audience (beyond their teacher). They are looking at what they are writing through the eyes of their readers.

As we moved into the next steps of taping the papers and starting to move about to read them, I couldn’t help but smile and notice others smiling too, anticipating what we were about to read. I now understood what was behind my students’ smiles at that point in the activity.

From different parts of the room, I could hear someone laughing as they read a description. I felt an eagerness to find out what on the paper was so humorous. This reminded me of when my students would hear someone laughing, suddenly several of them would turn around and rush to read and talk about the funny description.

During the final step of “solving the mysteries”, my colleagues and I probably extended it more than my students tended to by enjoyably remarking on specific descriptions. However, I am confident that my students experienced that same delight I did hearing the responses to what I had written, even if it had been merely to identify correctly whom I had described.

Below are more details about presenting this activity to your ESL students at lower and higher levels along with a form you can use to make the process user-friendly.

Writing Class Person Description Activity: Fun, Lively and Productive

This posting is discussed on my YouTube video ESL Writing Class Activity: Fun, Lively and Productive

This is a paragraph that a student secretly wrote to describe one of her classmates.  All the students are circulating around the periphery of the room, reading description hanging on the wall with no names on and trying to determine who is being described in the paragraphs.  Each student seems very focused on reading the descriptions, searching for the classmate who is the object of the description but also looking out of the corner of their eyes to see what kind of reaction others are having to the description that they secretly wrote.  There is energy in the room, a lot of interacting and a lot of laughing.

Describe your classmate activity

In brief, the steps for this activity are
1) The students are secretly assigned by the teacher to a classmate to describe.
2) They write a description.  It can be a list (for lower levels) or a paragraph (for higher ones).
3) They give their papers to the teacher, who briefly looks them over to make sure that there is nothing inappropriate on them.
4) At random, the teacher returns the papers (perhaps the next day) to the students, and each one tapes the one that they were given on the walls of the classroom.  These have no names on them, only a number.
5) They move about the room, read the descriptions and write on a separate piece of  paper the name of the classmate who is described.
6) When most students have finished #5, the teacher asks them to stop.  Then as a whole class, they tell the teacher who they think was described on each paper, and the teacher confirms the correct answer.

Variation depending on the level of the students

For lower-level students, they can describe the physical appearance, e.g., clothes, hair, size etc.

For students who are a bit higher, they can describe the personality, habits, backgrounds, unique characteristic or experience, or even recommend a future job for them.   For this one, I tell them that they shouldn’t include information that isn’t well known to the other students.  For example, they shouldn’t write something like, last night she dreamed that she couldn’t find our classroom.

The only tricky part of this activity can be assigning the secret numbers.  This form has been found to be helpful for that:

Describe your neighbor Form

Here is one of my favorite last lines in a  description that a student wrote about a classmate: “This student would be a good toy salesman.” 

David Kehe
Faculty Emeritus