Kom­mu­ni­ka­ti­ons­auf­ga­be 1

Task 1:

• Get to­ge­ther in a group of three. Each of you has a pic­tu­re sho­w­ing a school. Study your pic­tu­re for about 3 mi­nu­tes wi­thout sho­w­ing it to the other mem­bers of your group. Pre­pa­re a de­scrip­ti­on and in­ter­pre­ta­ti­on of the pic­tu­re to pre­sent to your part­ners. You may take brief notes, but don’t write com­ple­te sen­ten­ces. De­scri­be your pic­tu­re to your part­ners wi­thout sho­w­ing it to them.
• Then show your part­ners your pic­tu­re and ask them to com­pa­re it with the pic­tu­re you crea­ted in their minds. In what ways was the de­scrip­ti­on good? How could it be im­pro­ved?
  Here are some words and phra­ses to help you: ¹

De­scrip­ti­on:

In­ter­pre­ta­ti­on:
The pic­tu­re / the ar­tist wants to show us that …
The mes­sa­ge of the pic­tu­re is that…
This pic­tu­re is in­te­res­ting / funny / dis­tur­bing / power­ful be­cau­se …
The pic­tu­re crea­tes a fee­ling of sad­ness / hap­pi­ness / un­ea­se by sho­w­ing …

Task 2:

With your part­ners, dis­cuss which school you would most like to go to. Ju­s­ti­fy your choice.  

In­tro­duc­tion

• Where is the pic­tu­re from (news­pa­per, ma­ga­zi­ne, web­site…)?
• Who took it and when?
• What type of pic­tu­re is it (pho­to­graph, pain­ting, car­toon…)?
• The sub­ject: What does the pic­tu­re (rough­ly) show (This pic­tu­re shows…)?

De­scrip­ti­on

De­scri­be the pic­tu­re sys­te­ma­ti­cal­ly, don’t jump around!
Use the de­scrip­ti­ve vo­ca­bu­la­ry (see above)!
Use the pre­sent pro­gres­si­ve (she is wea­ring trou­sers /she is smi­ling) ex­cept for: she wants / she needs / she looks / she seems ...
Use ple­nty of ad­jec­tives (like co­lours)!

Start with the less im­portant ele­ments and move on to the more im­portant ele­ments:
⇒ start with the back­ground and move on to the fo­re­ground
⇒ de­scri­be peop­le by star­ting with their feet and move up­wards to their face
⇒ after the phy­si­cal de­scrip­ti­on of a per­son, move on to the state of mind (this girl looks sad/happy…) and/or cha­rac­ter (she seems to be a very strict per­son…)

In­ter­pre­ta­ti­on: mes­sa­ge and ef­fect

• What is the mes­sa­ge of the pic­tu­re? What is the ar­tist try­ing to say?
• Is the pic­tu­re suc­cess­ful in get­ting the mes­sa­ge across to the tar­get group?    
• What ef­fect does the pic­tu­re have on you?