The EFL SMARTblog: Speculating

Thursday, 29 September 2011

Describing photos (comparing, contrasting and speculating)

You are going to practise language for;

Describing photos
Comparing and contrasting photos (discussing similarities and differences)
Speculating on what might be happening
Reacting to photos (giving opinions)

Discuss
Look at the presentation. Follow the instructions and talk about some of the photos

Comparing and Contrasting photos from David Mainwood

Write
The language used here for comparing and contrasting / speculating is also useful for writing discussion / argument essays. Plan:

Introduction - describe the situation / topic to be discussed
Compare / contrast ideas (for and against / advantages and disadvantages)
Speculate on solutions to problems raised by the question
Conclusion - give an opinion

Which pairs or groups of photos in the presentation could be used to demonstrate ideas for argument writing topics about education, technology, food, family, work, leisure, health, advertising etc?

More Practice on May / Might / Could / Must / Can't

See here for more photo practice on modal verbs for probability and certainty http://efllecturer.blogspot.com/2011/04/modal-verbs-for-possibility-and.html and here for modal verbs of deduction http://efllecturer.blogspot.com/2011/04/modals-of-deduction-past-and-present.html

Tuesday, 19 April 2011

You are going to
practise modal verbs of deduction

You may have liked the previous exercise on modals. You could even have learned something from it. So here's another. Sherlock Holmes was famous for his deductions and must have been the greatest fictional detective of his day. He certainly solved a lot of cases so he can't have been bad at it. Let's see if he's any good at explaining how to make present and past deductions...