Describing appearance and personality  

Title: ‘Dating Agency’

Anna Fatneva
Lingua English Language School,
Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan

Level: Pre-intermediate to Advanced
Age group: Teens, Adults
Time: 50-60 minutes
Skills: all
Grammar focus: infinitives and gerunds after want, need, love, enjoy, don’t mind etc.
Vocabulary: Appearance, personality adjectives.
Resources required: Pictures of people including some funny or odd ones, blank pieces of paper for writing advertisements.

Pre-activity

1. Begin by asking students several questions about dating agencies (What are they? Why do people use them? How do they work? Are there any in your country? What kind of people usually go to dating agencies? Etc.).
2. Brainstorm what information they can find in a dating advertisement (age, what a person likes/enjoys doing, what kind of person he/she would like to meet, his/her dreams and ambitions etc.). You could put this information on the board.

Activity

1. Put students into pairs/small groups. Let each pair/small group choose a picture randomly. Have students write dating advertisements for people in their pictures without showing the pictures to others.
2. Collect the texts only (!) and put them around the room. Students stay in the same pairs/small groups, they go around the room, read the advertisements and try to find the best match for their person.

Post-activity

1. As a whole class, students tell about their choice and explain why they think this is the best match for their person. Very often there can be coincidences- “love at first sight”.  
2. Finally, ask students to show the pictures of their people and ask if anyone has changed his/her mind.

Follow-up activities:

1. Ask students to look through each others’ advertisements and correct grammar mistakes.
2. Ask students to choose the most successful advertisement and discuss what made it so successful.
3. Set up a role play between the people who found their matches.

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