The cats in Japan

 For the next few months I will be in Japan teaching an IELTS course. This is my third visit to Japan, and so to celebrate the beginning of another semester here this blog post is about how I used art in the English language classroom in Japan last year for a lesson of rhyming, culture and autonomous learning.

Many teachers think that having students do artistic projects in the language classroom can be a waste of time. However, I believe that the context, the approach and the task are very important factors to consider when planning to use art in the language classroom. Here's an example of how I used art to encourage autonomous learning, aspects of pronunciation and intercultural awareness.


Last year I was working with a group of students who were training to be elementary school teachers. Part of their curriculum was not only to learn English but how they could teach English to very young learners. The curriculum looked at teaching methods such as games and activities. It also looked at how books can be used with young learners.

For this particular task we were working with the book "My Cat Likes to Hide in Boxes" by Lynley Dodd. This book has a lot of rhyming in it. This was a little difficult for the group of low level learners I had, so to help them with the concept of rhyming I set them the task to make a poster based on "The cat from Ireland ...."

The students had to find information about Ireland and Irish culture - promoting autonomous learning and cultural awareness. They then had to make an attempt to complete the poster title - allowing students to play around with rhyming.

The result was great: the students were encouraged to work autonomously on the project with the teacher available to support them. It was a great introduction to my country and culture, Ireland, because they knew very little about it. Therefore it turned into a great cultural awareness project also. Finally, the students got to play around with rhyming. It took them some time but they had a better understanding of how sounds can be similar and how words in English rhyme. It was also challenging for them because they realised that words with similar spellings don't always sound the same.

 .... of course we had a lovely colourful wall of cat posters to brighten our day!

So, how can art help you develop your English language skills?

All cultural things gives us a great insight into how a culture works. The more we understand about a culture and how it works, the more we can understand how and why people talk in that culture the way they do. Art can be a visual window into understanding culture and therefore, understanding communication in that culture. Remember art is not always paintings and sculptor. Modern art incorporates so much more media now like film and contemporary performance, and can be found not only in galleries but online and in magazines.

"The more we understand about a culture and how it works, the more we can understand how and why people talk in that culture the way they do."

Comment below and tell us: Which is your favourite poster? Does your English language teacher use art in the English language classroom? Have you ever done a project like this, and what was it like? Who is your favourite artist and why?