Whether students believe in the Zodiac or not, working with Zodiac sign descriptions provides a great opportunity to widen their vocabulary knowledge about personality and characteristic adjectives. Use these Zodiac signs to get students talking about themselves and their friends. You'll all have a good laugh, and students will improve their active vocabulary beyond the standard happy, funny, sad, and lucky.
Aim: Improve personality adjectives vocabulary
Activity: Reflections on yourself and a friend
Level: Upper Intermediate to Advanced
Outline:
- Break the ice with a little joke about one of your funny screw-ups. Use lots of descriptive adjectives to show how this situation reflects your personality. If you are shy - which I can't imagine - you can talk about a celebrity.
- Ask students to provide further descriptions of your personality. Make sure to write these up on the blackboard. You can also ask students to provide an example of each trait they name.
- Make sure the students have access to a good dictionary.
- Cut the Zodiac sheet up into strips and pass them out based on their birth dates.
- Ask students to find their own Zodiac sign and read through the description making sure they understand every descriptive adjective or phrase provided on the sheet.
- Once students understand the adjectives, they are asked (on the worksheet) to choose three traits they agree with and two they disagree with. Students should provide a reason and/or an example for each of these chosen traits.
- Have students share their descriptive adjectives with each other in a group discussion, citing the reasons why they agree or disagree with their chosen traits.
- Ask students to pair up, this time distribute strips based on the birthday of the student's partner.
- Repeat exercise.
Continue to the next page for the printable class handout sheets.
