What do art, stolen coats and modals have in common?

I started teaching applied arts students four years ago and as it turned out it was fairly difficult to find a book which met their needs.
I still haven't found one...

No, there is one that I have....

Hebling Languages published a book entitled English Through Art - 100 Activities to develop language skills.

 English Through Art


Each activity is assigned a level, time, materials and language focus, and it can be an interesting source of ideas.



The lesson described below proves that art, stolen coats and modals can indeed have something in common with one another.

The core idea for the lesson comes from Inside Out upper intermediate, from the chapter on Frida Kahlo.

As an appetizer you can use a vocabulary exercise, for example, matching names of materials with the names of arts and crafts. (there is one of this type in Masterclass – New First Certificate U3 p.42)

+ discussion on the following topics (Inside out Upper-intermediate, U10, P. 90):

1. What’s your favourite style of art?

2. What styles of art you don’t like?

3. When was the last time you went to an art gallery?

4. What have you got on your walls at home?

5. If you could afford it, what kind of art would you have in your home?

6. Which is your favourite famous work of art?

Inside Out includes a list of useful vocabulary  eg. classical, renaissance, pre-Raphaelite, impressionist, abstract, still-life, self-portrait, landscape, watercolour.....)

The soup would be the stories behind three of Frida Kahlo’s paintings. 

Once students have presented their ideas we can move on to the listening exercise which allows to compare and contrast students’ stories with those described in the recording.

 

Inside Out offers another listening exercise this time a sort of guessing game where we have to decide which of the 5 paintings is being described by the speaker.

This leads us to the main dish i.e. modal verbs of deduction (they include "must, can't, may, might" both for past and present situations. Depending on the level of the group, we can add additional modals and related expressions :"will, won"t, be bound to, be likely/unlikely to and should")

There is quite an original exercise in Inside Out in which we have to use the correct modal verb and imagine a context for each of the sentences:

(eg. “What? On my salary you …….. be joking!”, "Cheer up! It ....... be as bad as all that!", "Sorry.what was that? I ............... been day-dreaming!" )

As a dessert I'd recommend a video about Mike Ballard. Ballard is a British artist who over a decade stole more than 200 coats from different public places. He then decided to organise an exhibition entitled: “Whose Coat is That Jacket You’re Wearing” The exhibition consisted of the coats and the contents of their pockets. Its aim was to give them back to their owners. 

Here is Ballard's website 

http://mikeballard.co.uk/whose-coat-is-that-jacket/

The video is linked to the last activity  - a group work in which each group is given a list of the objects found in one of the pockets of the stolen coats (and these objects can be quite surprising at times). Their task is to guess, first, who is going to come to pick them up (three to five sentences about the sex of the person, their job, interests, etc using modals of deduction in the present), and secondly, they are supposed to figure out what this person may/must/could/will have done in the past (again 3 or 4 sentences).

And this is how a new meal has been created.

Help yourself to it, seasoned to your own taste.