Round Robin Writing Using a Picture File 

By Robyn Brinks 

Whenever I announce to my advanced class that we’re going to work on writing, the first thing I hear is a collective sigh. Writing, somewhere along the ESL line, has developed a stigma. While most students realize the importance of writing and even recognize the fact that they need to attend writing sessions, they tend to hate it nonetheless. 

Upon her retirement, a fellow teacher handed down to me many of her ESL materials. Among the boxes was a ‘picture file.’ It contained pictures of virtually everything—nature scenes, portraits, groups of people, activities, etc. “Perhaps, not such a novel idea,” I thought, but the response from my students was phenomenal. 

I took the pictures to class to work on summaries. I gave a formal explanation as to incorporating the 5 Ws and the H into writing in order to answer the questions “who, what, when, where, why and how.” Each student was then given a giant picture. I usually make sure there is a person in the picture for best results. Their first sentence should be “Who is in the picture?” Rather than answering the next question, they must exchange their picture with someone else. It is a good idea to time this so students are all answering the same question at the same time. The second person reads the first sentence, studies the picture, and answers “where” the original person is. Complete sentences are required! 

Again, the exchanges continue through the questions, making sure that no student has the same picture twice:

“Who is this person?”

“Where is this person?”

“What is this person doing?”

“When is this person doing this?”

“Why are they doing it?”

“How did it end?” 

Answers can get difficult if a student gets a picture and the question was answered in a previous sentence. I often remind them that there are many questions that begin with “Why.” Encourage them to think broadly. 

I sometimes do a final exchange at the end and have the last student add some details—perhaps an actual name if one hasn’t been used.  

I collect the stories and pictures, and we read them together. Students love to see what happened to their character and how the stories ended. We usually laugh at the conclusions. I’ve heard everything from, “That isn’t what I was thinking when I said the woman was unhappy,” to “Someone else thinks the same way I do.” 

Each student gets a new picture and writes a complete summary on his/her own. You might still get a collective sigh, but it’s not nearly as noticeable. I collect this version and evaluate it for a score. 

This picture file/round robin can be used for almost any kind of writing. Of course, a formal lecture is used first to explain the organization of the type of paragraph being used. For example, I’ve used the same technique to teach writing paragraphs of analysis. Begin in the same fashion; each student gets a picture from the file. The first sentence-maker writes his/her opinion of the place or person in the picture. Throughout the exchange, each student adds reasons why this is true, thus analyzing the situation and explaining it to the reader. I used a picture of a man eating a big piece of cake. The first student wrote, “Art Jones doesn’t eat well.” The next student added, “He does not eat well because he has family problems, and he tries to forget them by eating desserts.” The paragraph progressed through the students with a detailed analysis of his family problems and the reasons he drowns his sorrows in sugar. 

Another productive way to use the file is to teach writing paragraphs of descriptions. After detailing the characteristics of a descriptive paragraph and reviewing the importance of adjectives, each student is again given a picture. The goal, I explain, is to describe this person or place so vividly that I don’t need to see the picture to know what it looks like. They pass the pictures around and add more and more details to the story. Rather than collecting the stories and reading them to the class myself, I have a student hold up the picture and we discuss if we envisioned things correctly. What could we have added to the writing? What could we have deleted? Of course, the students are then given a new picture, and they do their own writing. I have them tape their paper over the picture so I can’t see it when I evaluate. I offer my opinion during the correction process as to how closely I pictured their topic. 

For persuasive writing, I use pictures of objects. We discuss the keys to writing a fine persuasive paragraph, but we take a slightly different approach in the round robin. I have the student exchange within groups of four. They have four objects, and they are required to share the writing to “sell” the objects. After fine-tuning their “advertisements,” each student presents them to the other groups. The groups “vote” on which objects they would “buy” based on the persuasiveness of the writing. Afterwards, the students are given their own picture and asked to write a persuasive paragraph. This is sometimes harder from the picture file; it requires the student to think more broadly. 

There are many other possibilities. Try comparison/contrast paragraphs using pictures with two people or two places. Process paragraphs can be written by having students write a topic sentence and other students adding “what happened next.” A knowledge of chronological order is needed, and I often present a lecture on common transition words such as subordinating conjunctions (after, when, etc.) and adverbial conjunctions (first, second, then, after, next, etc.) 

In summary, the students respond well to the activities. Having them write together promotes cohesiveness and alleviates some of the “fear” that comes with writing assignments. Also, by seeing/hearing so many examples of the paragraphs before trying to write on their own, students’ writing samples get better. There are still grammatical mistakes, but the characteristics of the paragraph types are all there and much improved. 

Robyn Brinks teaches ESL for the Parkway School District in St. Louis, MO. In addition to her teaching duties, she finds time to give numerous teacher training workshops. She has also presented at local, regional, and international TESOL conferences.  
 
 

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