Hi iIm Teacher Luke an expert Duolingo English Test teacher,
and today we're going to talk about one of the most difficult question types on
this test. And it is the one where you have to
describe a picture through writing. Many students find this one really
difficult, so in this video I'm going to give you some really simple tips to help
you answer this question type really well.
There's also a question type where you have to describe a picture through
speaking. This one's slightly different and I made a video on this.
You can click here or you can find the link in the description below.
But anyway back to describing a picture through writing.
So what are some of the key points of this question type?
Well let's take a look.
So on the write about an image task on the Duolingo English Test
you will get a picture that looks something like this
this or this. None of these pictures are particularly complicated, and your
job is simply to describe the picture. A good way to approach this task is to
think that you are describing the picture to someone who can't see it,
so you have to be quite descriptive with your language
to help that person visualize the picture. And there are some key points
you need to know about this task. Firstly you only have one minute to
complete this task that's really short ,so you can't
write very long descriptive answers. Instead you have to focus on the main
points and write them out as quickly as you possibly can.
Okay before i continue if you think this video is helpful
please give it a thumbs up and subscribe to my channel it really helps me a lot :) .
Okay back to it. The next point is that you must write at least
one sentence. If you don't write one sentence you'll get a very low score.
And also you must write in full sentences.
So those were some of the key points you only have one minute to do this
that's very short, you must write at least
one sentence but if you can you can write more,
and you have to remember to write in full and complete sentences.
You can't just identify objects in the picture,
you have to describe it using full sentences.
So this task is obviously very challenging
but I have five useful tips for you to help you get the best score you can get!
So let's jump into it!
Tip one is to learn introductory statement.
An introductory statement is basically a set phrase you can use to begin your
answer. Learning some of these phrases for this
task is really important because you only have one minute to
answer the question so if you can learn some of these
phrases it will help you answer this question within the time limit,
just one minute that's really short. So what are some of these phrases well?
Let's take a look. So like i said i really recommend that
you learn and memorize these statements and also practice typing them out
quickly! I'm going to say this one more time, you
only have one minute to complete this task.
So being able to write out these statements really quickly will help you
so much. Here are some really useful ones. You can
say "this is a picture of" "this picture shows" "this image depicts"
"in this photograph there is or there are." So in the Duolingo English Test you
might get this question type three four five or even seven times
and in this test you don't want to repeat the same
introductory statement over and over again the Duolingo English Test the
IELTS the TOFEL all of these tests want to see that you
can use English in a variety of ways so even though you will get this
question type multiple times you should try to use different
introductory statements in each one. So don't just learn one of these
statements try to learn them all and practice using all of them. So let's
take a look at an example. So let's say this is our image that we
have to describe through writing how can we begin well here are two
simple examples. This is a picture of a woman shopping in
a supermarket. or This image shows a woman shopping for
fruit in a supermarket. So as you can see from these examples
the introductory statements helps you to complete
one full sentence describing the picture in general.
It's a very effective way so like i mentioned
try to learn memorize and practice typing
all of those different introductory statements so that you can do it very
quickly. So i hope tip one was very useful for
you now let's move on to tip two which is
to be descriptive.
What does to be descriptive mean well it means that you actually have to describe
what you see in the image. You shouldn't just
label the things you see but you should talk about them in some more detail.
For example, what do they look like what is the person doing
and where are the things located in the picture. If you can do this well
it will help you get a much better score. So let's take a look at some ways to do
this effectively. So how can you be descriptive well one
simple way is to write about the actions of the
person or the main subject in the image. For
this you can use action verbs and adverbs as well. The
second one is to describe the objects or to describe the people so to do this you
should use different adjectives. So if there's a man in the picture it's
not just a man but it is a tall man a short man a
handsome man a happy man. Using adjectives to describe
the objects will make your writing much more descriptive.
And the third way is to write about the locations of the things in the image
to do this you can use prepositional phrases such as
next to, to the left of-- there are lots of different prepositional phrases you can
use. Here's an image which can help you.
Learning some different ways to write about the location of the things in the
picture will help you to write longer sentences
and much more descriptive sentences as well.
It's important to remember that this task is all about
describing an image so you have to be able to describe
something really effectively to get the best score in this task.
It's not easy but let's take a look at an example.
This is a picture of a young woman shopping for fruit in a supermarket.
She is looking down at the large pile of ripe pineapples to her left
and thinking hard about whether to buy one or not.
So from this description you can see that i use different adjectives
they are the words in red, young, large and ripe I also described the actions of
the person. She is looking down and thinking hard.
In addition I described the location of the pineapples in this picture,
which are to the left of the woman. So from this example I hope you can see
that using adjectives, action verbs, and describing the location
of things is a great way to make your writing
descriptive. And this will surely help boost your
score. Okay so tip number three is to make a
prediction or to make a guess. This one is really
useful for you to add an extra sentence to your answer and to
show how good your English is. So let's take a look at how to do this
correctly.
So the easiest way to make a prediction is to use one of these structures.
You can say it seems like it looks like, i guess that,
i think ,or you can use some modal verbs like
might may must or could. These are all useful ways of guessing or
making a prediction. So let's take a look at some examples so
we could say, It seems that she's going to buy one of
the pineapples. I guess she won't buy a pineapple
this time. or I think she is having a hard time
choosing the best pineapple to buy. Remember your prediction or your guess
doesn't need to be correct. You get no extra points for making a
correct prediction or a correct guess also it doesn't even
need to be interesting. Again you get no extra points for being
interesting in this task. But making a guess or a prediction is a
good way to add an extra sentence or some extra ideas to
your description and my next tip tip number four is
really important so take a look here tip number four
is all about your spelling and your punctuation
at the end of the day this is a writing task
and spelling and punctuation are important parts of writing
so you need to pay close attention to these
for spelling it's difficult for me to go over but just make sure that you
practice spelling before you take the test
if there are any words you're not sure about look them up in the dictionary
but for punctuation there are some simple rules i want to cover
so first and foremost always start a sentence with a capital letter
and always end a sentence with a full stop
a question mark or an exclamation mark so i know you know this these are the
most basic rules but just want to remind you because i have seen some sample
answers where students forget to do this
correctly you will lose points for not doing this
correctly so don't forget okay so now let's move on to something
more difficult which is the comma so many students make mistakes
with commas so i'm just going to give you some simple rules here
to help you to avoid those mistakes so the first rule
is to use a comma to separate a series of nouns adjectives or verbs
series means three or more if you just have two you don't need to use a comma
for example the woman is buying pineapples
apples and bananas so in this i used two commas
to separate the nouns this is an easy rule
so you should be okay with this one so far my punctuation rules have been
quite simple but my next rule for using a comma is
quite difficult so pay attention to this the second rule
for using a comma that i want to show you today
is to do with this acronym fan voice fanboys basically represents these words
for and nor but or yet and so in technical grammar terms
these are called coordinating conjunctions basically
these words are used to connect words phrases or clauses
sometimes you need to put a comma before a fanboy
and other times you don't so remember you need to put a comma
before the fanboys when they are connecting two
independent clauses so what is an independent clause
well an independent clause is a clause in a sentence
which does not rely on any other information it can be used as a full
sentence you can notice independent clauses
because they usually have their own subject so let's take a look at some
quick and easy examples below are two sentences which sentence
do you think needs a comma
right it's number two number two needs a comma because
she didn't wear anything else is an independent clause
this can be a full sentence by itself and it has a subject
she so if you want to connect the first clause
she wore a blue dress with the second clause
she didn't wear anything else with a fanboy
in this case but then you need to put a comma
before butt so she wore a blue dress comma but she didn't wear anything else
in contrast number one doesn't need a comma
because nothing else is not an independent clause
it is a dependable clause nothing else is not a full sentence
so for number one you don't need to use a comma
i will make a much more detailed video on how to use punctuation correctly
but for now memorize and learn these two rules
especially the ones about using a comma okay let's move on to my last tip which
is tip number five tip number five is to remember to leave
time to check for errors even though this is a simple tip it is
so essential make sure you leave yourself enough time
to read your answer one more time and check for any small
mistakes making a typo or a small spelling
mistake is so easy so make sure you read it one more time
to check for errors so those were five simple tips you can
use to get a better score on this task now it's your turn i'm going to show you
two images and give you some time to make your own
answers and at the end i will show you my own
sample answers you can write your answers in the
description below and make sure to time yourself
give yourself only one minute to write your own description
if you write it in the comments below i will give you some feedback
so let's get started
and that's it from me today if you have any questions
let me know in the comments below and join my facebook group the link is below
in my facebook group you can ask any questions about the duolingo english
test it's a great place to get information
okay that's it thank you for watching and see you next time
bye