Colour idioms lesson will help your students learn and use some idiomatic expressions related to colours. This activity involves matching colour idioms with their meaning and using them in context while discussing various questions. It is suitable for levels intermediate and above. It combines vocabulary exercises with plenty of student talking time and is appropriate for all groups sizes.
The Task
First, students need to identify colours and objects in pictures. At this point, some colour idioms might already ring a bell.
In part 2, students need to fill in the gaps with words / colours they identified before. Encourage the students to guess the meaning of the idioms from the context.
Part 3 consists of conversation questions where students should use the colour idioms they have learned.
In order to add some entertainment to the class and offer some revision at the end of the class you might ask your students to:
a) play pictionary using the idioms
b) mime some of the idioms for the rest of the group to guess (it is incredible how some adult students really enjoy this game!)
c) Write down some questions using the idioms for their classmates to draw from the pile and answer
Example: Have you ever told a white lie? / Can you give an example of ridiculous red tape? / Have you ever thought that the grass is greener on the other side? etc.
d) Play Talk for 1 minute using idioms you have covered in class (students draw an idiom from a pile and need to talk about / a topic concerning it for one minute)
Optionally, you might ask your students to write a short composition at home discussing one of the statements/questions you talked about in class.
Personal Experience
Idiomatic expressions are never easy to learn since they vary a lot between languages. This lesson was quite fun, mostly because of the pictures. The conversation phase requires a lot of monitoring to see whether the colour idioms are truly being used.
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