Describe What's in Front of You (Bring a Photo)
Okay, new module. We've been doing a lot of "how do you buy yourself time," which is important, but at some point you gotta actually say something. So this module is about talking in the present tense, real time, real stuff, no faking it.
Today's assignment was: bring a photo. Something on your phone is fine. I don't care if it's fancy.
Here's why photos work so well for this. When you're describing something that's literally in front of you, you can't drift off into your head and start building a paragraph in English first. You're looking at a thing. There's a couch in it, or a dog, or your kid's terrible school picture. You just have to say what you see. It forces you into present tense and it forces you to notice what vocabulary you're missing in real time, which is way more useful than a worksheet telling you in advance.
What we're actually doing with these photos
Pair up. Show your partner the photo. Describe it out loud in Spanish for a full minute, no stopping, even if you're stopping.
Some starter phrases to lean on:
- Hay... (there is / there are) — this one carries so much weight. "Hay un perro." "Hay muchas plantas." You can build practically a whole description just off "hay."
- Está / están for location and condition. "El perro está durmiendo." "Las flores están secas."
- Es / son for what something is, permanently-ish. "Es mi hija." "Son mis nietos."
- Se ve / se nota — "it looks like," "you can tell." Super handy for photos because you're often guessing. "Se ve cansado." "Se nota que hace frío."
You don't need all four. Pick two and just go.
The part where you'll get stuck, and that's fine
You're gonna hit a word you don't know. Maybe you don't know how to say "shed" or "gravel" or whatever random object is in the background of your photo. That's the whole point of the exercise, honestly. In the moment, describe around it. "Es como una casa pequeña donde guardamos cosas." That's a shed. Clunky, but it works, and it's real communication instead of a memorized sentence.
This is where I'll remind you: translating in your head is the enemy. If you stall out trying to find the exact English-to-Spanish word for "shed," you've lost the thread and the conversation dies. Just describe the thing using words you already have. Fluent people do this constantly. I do this constantly. Nobody has every noun memorized.
A story about this, actually
My son Ethan went through a phase — he was maybe ten, eleven — where he decided he'd only answer me in Spanish. Just to mess with me, honestly, he thought it was funny watching me scramble. I'd ask him something totally normal in English, "hey, did you feed the dog," and he'd answer back in Spanish like he didn't understand me.
Thing is, it worked on both of us. I had to get faster because he wasn't going to slow down or translate for me, he was having too much fun. And he got better because he was actually producing sentences instead of just hearing them at church or around the house. We'd be standing in the kitchen and I'd be pointing at stuff — the fridge, his backpack, whatever was in front of us — going "¿qué es esto, dónde está esto" just to keep up with him.
That's basically this exercise. Point at real stuff, describe real stuff, in the moment, no time to overthink it. I kind of miss that phase of his, honestly. He grew out of it eventually 😭
At home this week
Do the photo thing again, but alone, out loud, in your kitchen or your car or wherever. Pick something actually in front of you — the mess on your counter, the view out your window, your dashboard. Describe it for sixty seconds without stopping. Time yourself if you want, doesn't matter, the point is not stopping.
If you get stuck on a word, don't reach for your phone right away. Try to describe around it first like we did with "shed." Then look it up after, so you remember it because you actually needed it, not because a list told you to.
One honest caution: this gets harder outside, especially if you're describing something up a canyon or somewhere with a lot going on. Don't be looking down at your phone trying to think of vocab while you're walking a trail. Pull over, stop, then talk.
Before next time: grab one more photo, a different kind this time — people instead of objects, or the opposite of whatever you did today — and be ready to describe it cold, no prep. 💛