Pictures help us get started. They give prompts, context and help fill in the gaps of things we don’t know how to say. When we look at a picture together everybody knows what we are talking about.

Try using a picture from the world around you. Look through your phone or take a picture of the thing you want to talk about. Do you want to know how to ride the train? Take a picture of your local station or the ticket machines. Describe what you see in the picture. Explain what you do when you are part of the picture.

Look at emojis from your text messages or icons on signs all around you. When I search emojis on my iPhone I get 54 different emojis to choose from. Some are smiling, some laughing out loud, one is clearly ‘happy birthday’- it’s a cake! Personally, I like to use the emoji with a soft smile and its eyes closed. Which one do you like?

Go to The Noun Project type in any word and see what kinds of icons come up to represent that word. Think about how they represent that word, what are the essential parts of it. What nuances are there? I tried this with the word ‘America’. Lots of icons came up, I picked 5 to work with. What do you think about the choices I made?

Do this with art. Paintings and sculptures. My example uses the Mona Lisa which in some ways is very simple, the painting looks like a picture. What happens with work by somebody like Jackson Pollock? They are crying out with a passion beyond words. What a wonderful opportunity for us to dive in with English.

Try going to an outdoor sculpture museum of modern art. Most of the statues don’t look like anything and can be hard to understand. Taking pictures of them with your phone will help you frame them, find a point of view, and make them beautiful to you. These activity sheets can help you get started finding ways to describe the world around you in English.