Today, we’re tackling speaking task three of the CELPIP exam, which is all about describing an image.

If you’ve ever felt overwhelmed by the details in a picture, I've got some solid strategies to help you focus and shine in your response. I’ll be guiding you through the essential steps, like how to brainstorm effectively in those crucial 30 seconds before you start speaking.

We’ll talk about picking just a few sections of the image to describe in detail rather than trying to cover everything, which can lead to a rushed and unfocused answer.

Plus, I’ll share tips on using specific language to improve your descriptions and make your response stand out.

--> Want to join my upcoming 30 day CELPIP speaking skills bootcamp? Then grab your free copy of The Top 5 CELPIP Speaking Task Mistakes And How To Avoid Them - The only way to find out more about the bootcamp is by downloading and listening to this free course!

Takeaways:

• In speaking task three, you'll have 30 seconds to brainstorm what you'll talk about before you start recording your answer. Use your time wisely - I'll show you how!
• Select specific areas of the image to discuss rather than trying to cover everything for better clarity and depth in your descriptions.
• Use detailed descriptions, including colors and emotions, to strengthen your image description.
• In speaking task four, predict what you think will logically happen next! Make sure you're using verbs like going to, will, may, might for example to talk about your predictions.

Join the 30-day CELPIP speaking skills boot camp for personalized feedback and to sharpen your speaking abilities. To get your invitation to join, you first need to download and listen to The Top 5 CELPIP Speaking Task Mistakes And How To Avoid Them

Today's Speaking Task Assignment:

Grab your cellphone and go for a walk! Look for a busy scene happening around you and use your phone to take a picture of it.

When you get back home, open your picture and use it to practice speaking task 3 and 4. Good luck! (And if you join the 30 day CELPIP Speaking skills workshop that starts September 7th, you'll be able to share your response with me for feedback!

Hello and welcome to the Celpip Success Podcast, the most introvert friendly podcast on the planet, dedicated to helping you confidently prepare for and conquer the CELPIP exam.

If you're tired of feeling nervous, stressed and stuck and getting ready for your exam, then, my friend, this is the podcast for you.

Who am I?

My name is Aaron and I've been an English teacher for over 17 years and I'm a certified Celpip trainer and I can't wait to help you get ready for your CELPIP exam.

So speaking task three on the CELPIP exam is all about describing an image.

And just like on the previous ones on the previous exercises that we've been doing together, this one also has some important time limits for you to keep in mind.

This one has 30 seconds for you to brainstorm or think about what part of the picture you're going to talk about.

And in here in the brainstorming section, I think it's really important for you to look at the picture and pay attention to places in the picture where you feel the most drawn to.

Like, if there are vocabulary words in a certain area, the picture that you know, that you feel comfortable and confident talking about, that's where you're going going to want to begin.

And what I suggest you do in those 30 seconds is kind of pinpoint a couple of, like, important words that kind of jump out at you about what's going on in that picture.

But specifically begin with identifying what you're looking at.

Like, set the scene.

And we're going to talk about that in just a second.

But when you are brainstorming, the very first thing that you should be doing, aside from, you know, looking for words or looking for places in the picture that has vocabulary words where you feel comfortable talking or you feel comfortable talking about, you also need to try to think really quickly, what am I looking at?

So what you're trying to do here is come up with a very quick overall description of what this is a picture of, because you're going to say that very near the beginning of your answer.

So that's going to happen all inside of those first 30 seconds.

You're going to figure out what you're looking at, and then you're going to look for some keywords or some key vocabulary locations inside the picture, if you will, where you will feel the most comfortable beginning.

And you might want to jot that down on your note paper if you have time.

When those 30 seconds are done for speaking task three, you have 60 seconds to record your answer and during those 60 seconds, there's a couple of really important things for you to keep in mind in order to do well on this section of the exam.

And today going to talk about just a couple of them.

The first one, don't fall for the trap of trying to talk about everything going on in the picture.

Most of the pictures that you'll come across on the CELPIP exam are what I like to call busy, which means there's a lot going on.

There's a lot of things where you could or a lot of places where you could start talking and you'd have a lot of things to talk about.

I've seen pictures from previous exams and they all have, or many of them have that characteristic, just filled with lots of different things going on.

But don't fall for the trap of feeling like you need to talk about everything.

And there's a really important reason why.

If you try to cover everything that you see going on in the picture, you might be able to talk about it all, but you won't be able to go into a lot of details.

And that actually is what this or a large part of what this speaking task is all about.

Your ability to go into detail about several different places inside of the picture.

So that's really important.

Don't talk about everything, but maybe pick three sections in the picture and go into more detail about what you see.

Make sure, like I said at the very beginning, when you are brainstorming, when you begin your response, you want to begin by actually setting the scene.

You want to say, I'm looking at a picture of a grocery store, or I'm looking at a picture of a farm, or I'm looking at a picture of a downtown library.

So that's how you would probably want to begin your response.

Setting the scene, letting the test raters know that you know what this is a picture of.

And then you begin describing going into detail about three different areas inside of the picture.

When you're describing, make sure that you're using details like color, like clothing.

Like if you could be specific about the kinds of clothing, like don't just say a shirt.

When you could say a dress shirt.

Don't just say a dress shirt.

When you could say a white dress shirt.

You know what I mean?

Be specific about the details that you're using.

And also, whenever you can, pay attention to the facial expressions of the people in the picture and see if you can include feelings associated with the person that you're talking about.

And of course, before your time is up, be sure to finish your your presentation or your description of what you're talking about with a conclusion statement.

Don't let this happen to you where you run out of time and you haven't finished your description yet.

It's really important to time your conclusion inside of the last 10 seconds.

So for those of you who have been following along and been doing a little bit of practicing with the prompts that I've been sharing with you that we will be doing inside of the 30 day bootcamp for Celpip speaking skills that is starting this September 7th.

So it's coming pretty quick.

Maybe you'll be interested in this speaking task prompt.

We're going to be pulling out our cell phones and we're going to be going for a walk.

Now isn't that an interesting way to get a great scene to talk about?

I think it's one of my favorite things to with my students is get them to go out for a walk and look for a busy thing going on in the neighborhood where they live.

Maybe they live in a city, in which case it will probably be pretty easy.

But just go for a walk, take your phone and when you see a busy looking scene happening around you quickly take a picture and then when you're done on your walk or when you're done doing what you're doing, go home and then use that picture as the image you need to describe.

So if you're a part of the 3D day boot camp, you're going to be able to not only practice recording your response, but you'll be able to share that response with me.

I'll listen to it, and then I will record a voice message back to you pointing out what you did great at in your description, as well as pointing out things that you could do better to strengthen your response.

Like helping you make sure that you're not describing everything and helping you make sure that you're going into more detail on a couple of key places inside of the scene and you're using deep details like colors and clothing and feelings.

All of those things I'll be giving feedback on.

And many of those things like I was talking about in the previous episode where I got my fingers stuck together with with Krazy Glue.

Do you remember that?

Well, many of those things can be kind of hidden mistakes, things that it's hard for you to notice unless someone points it out to you.

And that's one of the great things about this speaking skills boot camp.

You're going to be able to discover what you're doing great at and where you need to practice a little bit more.

So I hope that you will join us.

Okay, so that's just one of the images that we're going to be working on, one that you create as you go for a walk.

And I've got a couple of other ones that we'll be practicing with, but we'll be working on an image that you take yourself.

Okay.

And that leads us on to speaking task four, which is all about making predictions.

And I think that this one is actually quite fun, mainly because you're using the exact same picture as you had in speaking task three.

So you're not going to be faced with a brand new picture that you have to try to figure out first.

You've already seen it, you've already talked about it.

And what you need to do in this task in task four is to make logical predictions about what you think is going to happen next in your picture.

And for this case, where we're working off of a picture that you actually took, that's another reason why it's important for you to choose a scene that has a lot going on inside of the picture.

Aside from the fact that it's probably going to be a busy picture that you face on the CELPIP exam, if you don't choose a scene that has a lot going on in it, you're going to have a bit of a hard time trying to make predictions about what is going to happen next.

So be careful about your choice of scenery when you're taking your picture.

Okay?

Make sure there's enough going on in there.

There's people or things doing things in the picture that will give you, you know, things that you can make predictions about for this speaking task.

So keep that in mind when you're choosing the picture that you take.

Okay?

So the goal of this speaking task is for you to use the language of the future.

You to use future tense verbs like going to and will and may and might and probably.

Those are all really important words that will help you to make predictions about what you think is going to happen next.

And just like in the previous speaking task, you're going to have 30 seconds first of all to think about what you're going to say.

And just like what we did in that previous exercise, it's important for you to locate different spots in the picture where you feel the most comfortable starting.

Starting off at, use that 32nd time to make those decisions.

Where am I going to begin?

And then when those 30 seconds are over, you'll have 60 seconds to make Your recording.

And just like in that previous activity, the trap was trying to describe everything.

It's a very similar trap for this speaking task.

Don't fall for it.

You don't have to make predictions about everything going on in the picture.

Just choose, let's say three, but go into detail.

And one of the best things that you can do on here is to think about ways that what, what, what one person does impacts somebody else or something else inside of the picture.

Like sometimes, like for example, if you're in a busy park scene, like if you're looking at a scene of a busy park, maybe you see people walking together down a pathway and beside them, maybe there's a.

There are two.

Some kids playing soccer or throwing a ball back and forth.

What do you think could happen either between the kids throwing the ball or kicking a soccer ball and somebody walking along the path next to them?

What do you think?

Maybe the kids will overthrow the ball and the ball and the person trying to catch the ball will miss and the ball will kind of bounce in front of the people walking on the park and they are going to pick up the ball and they will throw it back to the children.

See what I mean?

I created a little mini story linking together what is happening in one section of the picture with something logically happening in another part of the picture.

And that's a great way for you to build and create an in depth description of what's going on.

So use your imagination.

Try to be logical about what you see going on in the picture and how one thing could lead to another or one action could lead to another and include feelings.

How do you think they're going to feel?

How do you think the kid in that picture, you know, the one who threw the ball and, and the kid, he was throwing the ball to his friend, he misses the ball and the ball almost hits the couple who are walking along the path.

I think he's going to feel nervous.

I think he's going to feel maybe embarrassed.

And that's just important or useful information that you could include in your response.

So those are just some of the things that are important for this speaking task that I'll be helping you to and make sure that you're including if you join the 30 day speaking task bootcamp that we're going to be starting this September 7th.

So if you want to get your invitation to join the boot camp, you know exactly what I'm going to say next.

If you've been listening to these mini episodes.

That's right.

In order to get your invitation, you first need to download the totally free Top five Celpip Speaking Task Mistakes and How to Avoid Them mini course.

There are five quick episodes that are easy to listen to, that are very practical and that will help you as you're getting ready for your exam.

And if you want to grab a copy of that, there's a link for it in my show notes and I'm going to make double and triple sure that those links work.

All right, that's it for today.

Thank you so much for listening and I hope that you'll come back again tomorrow.

Have a great day.

Bye Bye.