Intermediate ESL Vocabulary – Personality Adjectives

There are so many great ways to teach your students how to use personality adjectives. In this lesson, I get my students talking as much as possible. I try to elicit lots of vocabulary, but also teach them some great new words along with appropriate examples.

I begin by showing them just the picture below and asking them to describe the woman. When they do that, I note down any personality adjectives they use. Then I show them the text beneath, and have them extract the personality adjective (patient). Usually they can come up with 10 adjectives to describe her – for example, kind, caring, nice, hard-working, and so on.

I like to point out that together they have collected 10 adjectives instead of just saying something dull and boring like, “She’s a kind lady.” Then I get them to describe a roommate. Once they realize they can use so many adjectives, you can usually get some colourful descriptions.

Once again, as they’re describing I will monitor and write up any good vocabulary they use.

Next I teach them some more advanced words from my PPT. I tell them first that their efforts were good but that it’s time to up-grade their vocabulary: