Does art have a place in language learning? I think so. Children are naturally creative. They respond to visual images and have a very active imagination. Is not the creation of images the art that I am passionate about? Art can help a teacher with many aspects of teaching English.
You don’t have to be an artist. If you have an artistic talent, you probably already know the value that art can have in the language classroom. If not, here are some ideas for you.
Use art when you are teaching the names of colors:
Primary: White, Black, Red, Blue, Yellow
Secondary: Green, Pink, Orange, Brown, Purple, Gray
What about sky blue, teal, magenta, lilac, scarlet, blue, chartreuse, burgundy, crimson, apple green, lemon or canary yellow, burnt orange, dusty rose, forest green, battleship grey, chocolate brown, mahogany, tan, ivory, off-white, etc
A color wheel can help you demonstrate them. Pick up some car brochures from local dealerships and see how they describe the colors of their vehicles. These can augment a lesson on using more descriptive adjectives. In one lesson, I first show my class a black and white illustration of a typical office situation with various people involved in various routines. Students describe what people are doing. I then show students a colored version and ask them to elaborate on their description. Color makes a big difference.
You can use art to teach shapes, simple tools artists use (including tools students use every day like pencils, pens, erasers, rulers, etc.
A book with different styles of paintings is a great reference tool for building vocabulary. Each painting can be a topic of discussion. Even reading the various descriptions in the book can be a worthwhile language activity.
He had a two CD set of ‘Great Museums of the World’. You can use your computer mouse to navigate through each museum on the screen, enter different rooms, and zoom in on a specific painting, even a section of the painting, which would generate a pop-up description of what the artist had done. . Aside from its artistic merit, what a great teaching tool! Unfortunately, he stayed in an old school. I have to look for it again.
Drawing programs like Paint, Corel Draw, ZBrush, Smart Draw, ArtRage, and Twisted Brush can be helpful if you have artistically inclined students. Choose a program and open the tutorial section. Students can greatly improve their vocabulary as they learn to use the program. There is a whole world of digital art and digital artists using these programs to create images for cartoons, animated movies, and book covers. The creatures you see in the movies were often created on a computer. There are special digital art magazines (quite expensive!) and regular art magazines (not so expensive). Any of these should get our creative and artistic ESL juices flowing. Check out the magazine section of a major bookstore in your area. I’ve used one of these in an English conversation class to talk about the pictures in the magazine.
If, like me, you are teaching in a different culture, students can be invited to bring a piece of art and ‘show and tell’. This is a wonderful opportunity to speak. Think of possible related writing and research assignments you might also apply for. Local artists? Local museums or art galleries? Exhibitions? Art schools? Paint clubs? Any of these may have someone who would be willing to come in to talk to their class about what they do, maybe even give a short demonstration.
Finally, students can use their artistic talents to illustrate their writing efforts: essays, short stories, descriptions of homes, friends, family, vacations, and other typical ESL topics. I have had students make Japanese scroll stories where they have six or more panels on which to write and illustrate a short story. Then they glue the panels together to form a roll, tying the finished product with a ribbon. In the next class, the students untie their scrolls and read their stories to the class.
Art can add another dimension to teaching English and is another way that you can take advantage of local resources to support your efforts. Through the Internet, you have the entire artistic world at your disposal.
If you use art in your class, I would be interested to hear from you.