Blind description
Your teacher describes an object on a site plan without naming it. You name it. Then swap. Three each, fast.
Before you start, predict:
1. What makes describing a site over the phone harder than describing it in person?
Why the phone call is harder
What changes when they cannot see
On a phone call there is no shared reference. You cannot point, and neither can he. Everything that a drawing normally does — showing relative position, showing scale, showing what is next to what — has to be carried by language alone.
Three things follow. First, you have to anchor before you describe: name a fixed thing you both know, and locate everything relative to it. The house, the driveway, the street. Second, you have to give dimensions more often than feels natural, because he cannot judge size by eye. Third, you have to check that he is with you, roughly every three sentences, because a silent listener on a phone might be lost or might just be listening.
The good news: this is a small set of moves and it is very learnable. The bad news: if you skip the anchor, nothing that follows lands, no matter how good your vocabulary is.
Check what you just read.
1. What happens if you skip the anchor step?
2. How often should you check the listener is still with you?
Anchor, dimension, check
The three moves
| Move | Language | When |
|---|---|---|
| Anchor | “Stand with your back to the garage.” / “Facing the house from the street…” | Once, at the start — and again if you move to a new area |
| Dimension | “It is about eighteen inches tall.” / “Roughly twelve feet from the fence.” | With every object whose size matters |
| Check | “Are you with me?” / “Have you got that?” / “Does that make sense?” | Every three sentences or so |
Repair — when it goes wrong
You will need these more than any vocabulary in this unit.
The one that saves you. “Let me put that another way.” It buys you a full sentence of thinking time, signals nothing is wrong, and is completely natural in professional English. Use it instead of stopping.
Match each repair phrase to the situation it fixes.
Choose the move
You are on the phone. Choose the best next thing to say.
1. You have just said “the wall on the left”. He says nothing for four seconds. What do you say?
2. You realise halfway through that you have been describing the wrong side of the property. Best repair?
3. He asks how tall the boulder wall is. Your drawing says the tallest is eighteen inches, but you are not sure which one he means. Best answer?
4. Which opening actually anchors him?
The call
Back to back, no drawing for the listener. This is the unit task, one lesson early, under pressure.
Task card
Your teacher is the contractor. He is on site. He has no drawing.
Talk him through the existing conditions of the Wooster Avenue rear yard so that he could sketch it from your description alone.
- Anchor first. Do not describe anything until he knows where he is standing.
- Give a dimension with every object that has one.
- Check every three sentences.
- He will interrupt. He will mishear. Repair and keep going.
Before the call starts, put these four moves in the order you will reach for them.
Sit back to back, or turn your cameras off. Being able to see each other quietly ruins the exercise — you will both start gesturing.
The sketch
Compare the sketch your teacher drew with the actual plan.
- What is in the right place?
- What is in the wrong place — and which sentence of yours caused that?
- What is missing entirely?
Wrong-place errors are usually anchoring failures. Missing objects are usually vocabulary gaps.
Apply the rule from the card above.
1. An object in your teacher's sketch is in completely the wrong place. What does that usually mean?
2. An object is missing from the sketch entirely. What does that usually mean?
Before the unit task
Homework. Choose the project you will use for Lesson 8. Have the existing-conditions sheet in front of you. Write the anchor sentence — the one that tells the listener where to stand — and nothing else. Just that one sentence, as good as you can make it.
One check before you go.
1. How much should you write for homework?