SPEAKING: Describe image

Focus on the main information in the image 

When you look at the image ask yourself ‘‘What is the main idea being shown by the image?’’ and ‘‘What are the details relating to the main ideas?’’. Use your erasable noteboard booklet to note down key ideas and phrases that relate to the main information and the explanatory details. These can be put into sentences when you start to speak:

About The Item Type

Describe Image is a long-answer speaking task that tests speaking skills.

You must describe an image - a graph, chart, map, diagram etc. - in 40 seconds.

What Is Tested?

Of the Enabling Skills, the following are tested:

• PRONUNCIATION

• ORAL FLUENCY

• CONTENT

However, so long as your pronunciation is good, the main focus of this item type is Oral Fluency. In other words, you need to keep speaking!

Avoid pauses, hesitations, repetitions and false starts.

VOCABULARY

You will need to use different vocabulary depending on the type of image. If you’ve done IELTS Academic Writing Task 1 before, you are in luck! You should already have much of the vocabulary need to talk about graphs, charts, processes, diagrams and so on. If you haven’t done IELTS (or can’t remember it), here’s a really good resource for vocabulary!

What Do I Talk About?

FIRST: INTRODUCTION

Start by saying what type of image it is and what it is about. This can most often be found in the title of the image. Be careful! Don’t just read the heading as it is as this is often grammatically incorrect and you may have to add things like articles (the, a/an) or prepositions (of, about, over, etc.)

  

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