Idea # 5

© Stephanie de Rouge

I can't help, but see opportunities for creating learning activities everywhere I go. Recently I got inspired by Stephanie de Rouge's photography - particularly, her digital story "In your fridge", where people are portrayed next to their groceries. Her grand idea was to literally understand if we are what we eat. It's a philosophical question if you think about it, and I'm happened to be a big supporter of the Philosophy-based Language Teaching (PBLT) that deals with such questions to enhance speaking. PBLT approach (Shahini & Riazi, 2011) introduces philosophical questions to the students to "encourage [them] to think critically and creatively about the world around them" (p. 171) Philosophical question in this sense does not necessarily mean speaking on existential topics or about history of philosophy, but refers to discussing concepts "that are central to our lives" (p. 171) on a deeper level. The example of such topics and questions could be found on askphilosopgers.org. In the Shahini and Riazi's study two groups of intermediate level students participated in one semester of ESL speaking class (17 sessions). The group that had philosophical discussions was scored significantly higher on the speaking post-test, than the traditionally taught group. Moreover, the experimental group was so engaged in classroom discussion that even after the semester was over, all students kept emailing the teacher additional thoughts and ideas on the matter being discussed.

 

I liked the concept and decided to create a speaking activity using Stephanie de Rouge's series "In your fridge". Normally, the topic of food is so predictably boring in language textbooks. At best, during the lesson students get to shop groceries online or read some authentic menus, but often we just stuff them with the textbook reading and traditional cuisine. I wanted to talk about food in a bit different way, possibly with a deeper, philosophical-like idea on mind. So, I printed six photographs from the digital story. Then, I cut each photo in the middle to separate a fridge from its owner and mixed the pieces. The students were invited to work in small groups matching the pieces back to their original whole. Each portrait also had basic personal information on it: for example, Marie, lawyer, Paris - I took it from this Russian website. Of course, the students could only speak a target language during the discussion. 

At the first glance, it is very difficult to understand which fridge belong to whom and provide a cohesive argument. However, I was extremely surprised observing and listening to my students: They figured four photographs out of six! At the end we talked about our own fridges, what we have there and how it reflects our personality. It was very simple - "I don't have any meet, because I'm vegetarian", "I don't cook at home, because I'm a busy person", "I like to try new foods and I have many different items in my fridge. I'm an experimentalist"- but we learned a lot about each other. 

Happy eating and happy teaching!

Gholamhossein Shahini, A. Mehdi Riazi. (2011). A PBLT approach to teaching ESL speaking, writing, and speaking skills. ELT Journal, 65 (2), p. 170-179.