What Are One Word Images?

An OWI is a collaborative student-driven activity where a class creates, through a unique questioning process, an imaginary character which is then drawn upon to serve as a base for future listening and literacy work in the language classroom.

Example of an Early One Word Image

The idea of having students make suggestions to create an image first took shape in 2007 and can be seen in the video below. The overall format for this one-word image about a fish has of course evolved over the years, but this shows you the clay from which what we have now was formed:

https://bit.ly/3R9AwPm

One difference you can see in this video is that, in early one-word images, students were asked to sit on a stool and “be” the object. Now, we work in an empty space in front of the students and “create” or “sculpt” the image together in our imaginations while a student artist draws it.

If we fast-forward from the 2007 “early” video above, we can see how it has changed to more resemble what we do now with one word images. The following video was made in 2016 while I was teaching at the American Embassy School in New Delhi, India:

https://substack.com/home/post/p-175503658

Clearly, the activity’s purpose is to foster community and language acquisition by engaging students in a collaborative and creative process. By working together to imagine something new, students naturally negotiate meaning in the target language.

This approach aligns with research on how languages are acquired, as students put their full focus on the object being developed and on the understandable messages they hear, and not on the structure of the language.

The following things happen when you and your students build a one word image together:

• The language unconsciously slips into the students’ deeper minds without the students noticing it.
• The affective filter is low.
• The conscious focus on the language is very low, almost non-existent.
• The unconscious focus on meaning is very high.

This kind of activity brings to your students high quality comprehensible input that is accomplished simply by their focusing unconsciously on the message and not consciously on the vehicle being used to deliver it.

• One Word Images
• Word Chunk Team Game
• What is the Word Chunk Team Game?