Humanising Language Teaching
Year 4; Issue 6; November 02

by Caty Duykaerts, English teacher, I.E.P.S.C.F. – Uccle, Belgium
E-mail: m5julia@yahoo.com

ADULT

Are you a museum-goer? Do you like wandering in exhibition halls? Are you sometimes fascinated by works of art and willing to share it with others? Have you ever asked yourself how to combine the seriousness of the activity –visiting a museum- with group dynamics? Inspired by two visits (one at the National Portrait Gallery in London and the other one at the Cardiff National Museum), I developed a full day activity that I tried out with several groups. Even the most reluctant students – those who are definitely not museum goers - participated actively and produced interesting feedback…

Level : upper-intermediate and advanced
Language Focus : physical and psychological descriptions, “if-structures”
Time : 2/3 hours in your local Museum, plus a follow-up
Materials : questionnaire / some texts / postcards (optional)
Preparation : visit arrangements

THE VISIT :

I'm lucky to have had the collaboration of a freelance Art guide who expertly showed us well-chosen exhibits to illustrate the evolution of the portrait throughout the centuries. Students were also given the following introductory text:

Portraits are the gossip columns, newsflashes and family albums of the past – of the age before photography, radio, television, modern printing techniques, computers and all the other technologies which record and transmit images or ideas today.
If you were Queen Elizabeth I, how would you ensure that all your subjects who would never see you knew to whom they owed their allegiance, unless by seeing the royal portrait in a great house, on a coin or on an official document? (…) How would lovers remember each other when being separated? The answer is that an artist was found and commissioned to produce, by hand, the required image.
Later, the development of reliable, relatively cheap photography (c1850) meant that such needs could be fulfilled without a hand-made portrait. Thus artists became in portraits that became more abstract, more experimental and less photographic.
Let's define the word 'PORTRAIT' as a work for which there was a consciously posed sitting by a person or a group, and in which the sitter's identity is the main object of study. (…)
How to study a portrait? The method is based on a simple assumption that both sitter and artist were generally trying to reveal something about them when they arrived at the chosen form of the portrait. Whoever the sitter in the portrait was, the decision to sit suggests that he or she was content to see something about him recorded. That something might have been: becoming queen, or being knighted, pride in a beautiful face, or the desire for a picture for a lover to keep…
So, we may say that the portrait “speaks to us” and all we have to do is to learn how to decode its messages.
Here are some clues:

• the costume (often a reference to the status of the wearer)
• the facial expression (to reveal about the sitter's personal qualities)
• the bodily pose or gesture
• the background, accessories, inscriptions, animals or cupids (to give extra information – for example, an appropriate setting for a writer could be a room with table, ink, pen, books)
• the colours and their symbolic meanings
• the size, the framing and the medium (which can give a useful indication of the wealth of the commissioner and the purpose of the portrait)

Interestingly, it becomes clear that a portrait analysis is highly suggestive: two people looking at the same portrait do not see the same thing and do not, therefore receive the same message.
The variety of the response comes from individual personal history and personal definitions of, say, strength, humour, pride or beauty. Furthermore, the artists were and are not equally skilled at capturing the essence of the sitter and reproducing reliable human likeliness. Other artists, for commercial reasons, have painted flattering portraits to please the sitter…

After the guided walk tour, the students were given two different tasks in the Museum:

1. an individual questionnaire to complete :
   
   question 1 : What's the most surprising/interesting fact you've learned today ?
   question 2 : Why did and still do famous and less famous people commission their portraits ? Comment on it.
   question 3 : How much have you liked this visit ? Justify your answer.
   question 4 : If you could have your portrait painted, how would you like it to be ? What qualities would you wish to express about yourself? Give a detailed description of this painting including pose / facial expression / gestures / background / other people if any / animals / accessories / colours / size / atmosphere…
2. a group task
   Work in groups of 2,3 or 4. Choose a portrait that really interests you for some reason and analyse it. Your report could be:
   • a written analysis (add the picture of the painting/sculpture if possible)
   • a dialogue between the sitter(s), the artist and/or you, the journalist (performed or recorded)
   • a monologue inspired by the painting (written or performed)
   • a parody, a narration, an investigation, a song, …. Inspired by the portrait
   • …

Leave enough time to have the two tasks fully completed. When ready, ask the groups to report on their chosen works of art. This implies physically moving around from one place to the other. If time is limited, some of the reports can be recorded (videotaped or cassette recorded) and given when you're back in class. The individual questionnaires are collected. Questions 1/2/3 give a feedback and question 4 is used for pleasant follow-up in the next session.

Back in class: who's who based on the previous task (either I read the descriptions or display them, and the students guess their authors)

Variation : shortened version if a visit to the Museum is not possible (Postcard activity, group or pair task, individual task “If I had …” and who's who)