General English Level 4 V 3
UNIT 05 Art, culture and history TOPIC 02 At the gallery
LANGUAGE FOCUS 05 Describing objects
In this activity we look at how to describe different art objects.
The catalogue that Jin Hee and Lucas have been reading describes a painting.
In the foreground we see two women, sitting and talking at the beach. They are holding umbrellas and the woman on the right is reading.
Between them we see a chair. It looks like they are waiting for someone to join them. In the background there are people strolling along the beach, a pavilion and a boy who might be flying a kite.

We use the present continuous tense to describe what people are doing in a picture or photo.

We often use the sentence pattern There is/are + noun + present continuous tense verb.
e.g. …there are people strolling….

If we are not sure what is happening in the photo or picture we can use: it looks like, it might be, she could be, it's probably…

There is a woman standing in the centre of the photo. She looks like she 's having a cup of coffee. She looks worried. It's five to eight so she is probably late for work.

There is a woman swimming in a pool. She looks fit. She might belong to a swimming club.

Examples

1 Read the examples.
2 Listen to the examples.
3 Practise saying each example. Use the Pause button.
It's a cylindrical vase. It's probably very old.
The sculpture has horizontal lines going across it.
The box is made of wood and it has a triangular pattern on it.
The cloth is a beautiful deep blue colour with curved lines.
The earrings are made of silver. They could be from Thailand.
In the painting we can see a man coming out of a house and a girl running towards him.

Now go to 06 LANGUAGE FOCUS Describing an object - task.