English Lessons from The Oscars
Did you watch the Oscars this year? The red carpet is always filled with gorgeous people, donned with extravagant ball gowns and slim-fitted tuxedos. When English is your second language, it can be difficult to know how to describe those beautiful dresses and dapper suits in detail. That’s exactly why you should do it!
Trying to describe something in great detail will stretch your vocabulary and help you move beyond words like “green”, “beautiful”, or “dress”. When you really push yourself, you’ll be using descriptive phrases like “emerald green”, “elegant”, or “frock”.
Photo Credit: Getty Images
“The actress wore an flowing Valentino gown with delicate floral embroidery and French words. She topped off the ethereal look with soft waves, a dainty headband and Chanel jewels.”
Notice how the writer never used basic words to describe the elegance of Keira Knightly’s dress. Instead, she chose words like “flowing”, “delicate”, and “dainty” to really paint a mental picture of what the dress looked like.
The ESL Oscar lesson:
Look at the list below to choose one of the celebrities from the 2015 Oscar red carpet. Then write a 1-paragraph description of what they look like. Don’t use the following words in your description: beautiful, pretty, good, nice, or very. Try to be as specific as possible with the way you describe colors, textures, fabrics, and more.
Teachers, if you are doing this ESL lesson as part of a class, you can have each student in your class select a different celebrity, without looking at the outfits that the other students are writing about. Either hand out pictures of what that celebrity wore, or allow students to use their phones or tablets to look up the Oscar dress of the celebrity they chose.
After everyone has written their descriptions, have each student take turns reading their description of the outfit, without showing the picture of the dress. After they are done reading their description, ask the other students what descriptions they heard. What do they imagine that dress or suit will look like? When the guessing is complete, show the picture of the celebrity to the class.
List of Celebrities from the 2015 Oscars:
Comment below with your original description of one of these outfits. I would love to hear the specific vocabulary you choose to describe the 2015 Oscar looks.
