Here is the whole official description of Task 3:
Look at an illustration and describe what is happening.
Nine words, and the important one is happening. Present tense. What is in front of you, right now.
Compare it with the task that follows, which uses the very same picture:
Look at the same illustration from Task 3 and describe what you think will happen next.
Task 3 is the picture's present. Task 4 is its future. Nothing in Task 3 asks you to say a single word about something you cannot see, and a guess spends your seconds on the next task instead of this one.
You get 30 seconds to prepare and 60 seconds to speak, and the prompt tells you something worth taking literally: the person you are speaking to cannot see the picture.
CELPIP's own advice for Task 3 comes down to five short points. Task 4 gets three. In our words:
- Open with one general statement about the whole scene.
- Pick a few details and describe them well. You do not have to cover everything.
- Help your listener build the picture in their head.
- Use descriptive words, not just the names of things.
- Say what the people look like, what they are doing and how they seem to feel.
Read point 2 again. You do not have to describe everything. That is permission, and almost nobody uses it.
Those five become four moves. There is no acronym here and nothing invented. Each move is one of the strategies in plainer words.
🎥 One picture, thirty seconds of notes made on camera, then the answer (9:07)
The notes page starts blank. You watch the four lines get written in real time, and then the answer is spoken off those four lines and nothing else. It is the same picture used in the Task 4 video, so the two answers sit side by side.
Jump to: 0:39 the official sentence about not describing everything · 1:01 why Task 3 needs five strategies and Task 4 needs three · 2:11 choosing three groups before you speak · 2:49 one line for the whole place · 4:20 the grey cloud, and why it is not a prediction · 5:00 what they feel right now · 5:51 the full sixty seconds · 6:52 what happens when the clock cuts you off
Open with one general statement about the whole scene.
Your listener cannot see this picture. If you open on a woman's boots, they have no idea where they are or what kind of place this is, and every detail after that lands in the dark.
So give them the room first, in one sentence.
A community swimming pool on a hot Saturday afternoon, and it is packed. A small farmers market in a park, early morning, and the stalls are still setting up. A family apple farm in the autumn, and everybody is working.
One line. Then stop. This is not the place for detail and it is not a summary of the whole answer. It is the wide view, so that everything after it has somewhere to sit.
Pick a few details and describe them well. You do not have to cover everything.
This is the move that decides your score, and it is a decision you make in your thirty seconds, not while you are talking.
Pick three groups of people or things and describe only those. Everything else in the picture stays out, on purpose.
Most people do the opposite. They try to cover the whole scene, and they end up naming fourteen things in sixty seconds without saying anything about any of them. That answer uses the full minute and it is still a list.
How to choose your three:
- Pick the ones you have the words for. A group you can only call some people doing something is a group you should leave out.
- Pick ones in different parts of the picture, so your answer moves through the space.
- Pick ones with people in them, because strategy 5 is about people, and a group with nobody in it gives you nothing to say about feelings.
Three is enough. Three groups described properly will always beat a full inventory, because development is what Content/Coherence rewards.
Help your listener build the picture. · Use descriptive words. · Say what the people look like and what they are doing…
Three of the five strategies push at the same thing, which tells you how much of the score sits here.
Every group gets two things: what they look like, and what they are doing.
| Weak | What it should be |
|---|
| a woman on a ladder | a woman in a red plaid shirt and brown boots, high up a wooden ladder, reaching into the branches |
| a man carrying something | a man in denim overalls and yellow gloves, carrying a heavy wooden crate of apples |
| some kids | a boy in an orange shirt holding a carrot through the wire, and a girl next to him laughing |
A test that works every time: if you can swap your noun for the word thing, it is too weak. Thing fits a wooden crate of apples badly, which is how you know the noun is doing its job.
This is where answers at different levels separate. A weaker answer lists. A stronger answer develops: it organises a few details well and describes people and objects accurately.
And even a strong answer can go further with more precise words. So precision is the ceiling here, not the floor.
Words worth having ready. For clothing: plaid, striped, faded, bright, matching. For position: high up, kneeling, leaning, halfway along, at the far end. For how something is done: carefully, quickly, awkwardly, with both hands.
…and how they seem to feel.
The last part of the last point, and it is the one nearly everybody drops. Most answers stop after actions.
Feelings now, not feelings later. The girl at the rabbit hutch is laughing, in the picture, right at this moment. Whether the boy will be proud when the rabbit takes the carrot is the next task.
You are not reading minds. You are reading bodies, and a feeling shows up in the picture the same way a jacket does.
His shoulders are tight and his arms are locked straight, so you can see the weight of it. She looks completely relaxed up there. The little one is gripping the rail with both hands and not letting go.
Two of your three groups should carry a feeling. It costs about four words each and it is the difference between describing objects and describing people.
The picture will hand you something that is almost a prediction, and it is the most common way a good Task 3 answer leaks into Task 4.
| This is Task 3 | This is Task 4 |
|---|
| There are dark clouds coming in from the right | It is going to rain |
| Sheets of paper are blowing off the table | She is going to lose them |
| The boy is holding a carrot through the wire | The rabbit will come and take it |
| The line at the counter reaches the door | They are going to be waiting a long time |
Everything in the left column is in the picture. Everything in the right column is a guess, and Task 3 credits none of it.
The storm cloud is allowed. The rain is not. Name the object, then move on.
One line per move. Nouns and fragments, never sentences.
PLACE: community pool, hot Saturday, packed
1 lifeguard - red shorts, high chair, whistle, bored
2 family shallow end - dad + toddler in armbands, gripping rail, nervous
3 two teenagers diving board - one laughing, one waiting
That is the whole plan. From the moment the clock starts, you look at your notes, not at the picture. The picture is where the words came from. The notes are what you speak from, and they are what stops you drifting into the parts you decided to leave out.
The picture. A busy outdoor community swimming pool on a hot afternoon. A lifeguard on a raised chair. A family in the shallow end. Two teenagers at the diving board. Also in the frame and deliberately left out: a snack kiosk, a row of loungers, a man swimming lengths, and a stack of blue floats.
The answer, 165 words, and the clock takes the end of it.
Let me put you in this picture: an outdoor community pool on a really hot Saturday afternoon, and the place is packed.
Straight ahead of you there is a lifeguard in red shorts, sitting high up on a white chair with a whistle around his neck and a pair of sunglasses pushed up on his head. He has one elbow on the arm of the chair and he looks slightly bored, like nothing has happened all day.
Down in the shallow end on the left you have a man in blue swimming shorts crouching in the water with a small girl in orange armbands. She is holding onto the rail with both hands and she has not let go of it once. You can see she is nervous.
And over on the right, two teenagers are up on the diving board. The one at the front is in a green swimsuit, laughing, looking back at her friend behind her who is standing with her arms
Look at what it does not do. It never mentions the kiosk, the loungers, the man swimming lengths or the floats, and that omission is move 2 working. It has no closing line. It has no guess about what happens next. And it stops mid-sentence, because the sixty seconds ran out.
This is the point that changes how you spend your last ten seconds.
An answer can be cut off mid-sentence and still be complete. What Task Fulfillment looks for is whether you did the task, not whether you landed neatly on the buzzer. An answer that fills the full time with undeveloped ideas still loses marks on Content/Coherence.
So running out of road mid-sentence is not a penalty in itself. Running out of ideas is.
Nobody is giving you marks for a tidy ending. Stop saving five seconds for a summary line. Spend those five seconds on one more real detail and let the clock take the end of your sentence.
The thing to avoid is the opposite: finishing at forty seconds and sitting in silence, because length is a named factor.
Placing things in the scene
straight ahead of you · over on the right · down in the corner · behind them · halfway along · at the far end · just next to · underneath
Start each new group with one of these. It is what lets somebody who cannot see the picture follow you through it.
Present continuous, because it is happening now
is holding · are lining up · is reaching for · are kneeling · is setting out · are waiting
Showing a feeling without naming it
she has not let go of the rail once · his shoulders are tight · he looks slightly bored · she is laughing at something behind her
Words to keep out of a Task 3 answer
will · going to · probably · I think they are about to · overall · in short · to sum up
The first four belong to Task 4. The last three belong to nothing.
Guessing. They are late for a flight. Nothing in Task 3 asks for it and nothing credits it.
Ending with a summary. No strategy asks for one, and the rated Level 9 answer does not have one.
Describing everything. Fourteen things named and none described is the Level 8 answer performed.
Generic nouns. Things, stuff, people, some guy. Use the role and the object.
Jumping around the picture. Move through the space in one direction so your listener can follow.
Actions with no feelings. The last word of the last strategy is feelings, and most answers never get to it.
Looking at the picture while you speak. You will see something you did not plan for, and you will start describing it. Speak from your four lines.
- [ ] I have one line for the whole place
- [ ] I have chosen exactly three groups, and I have the words for all three
- [ ] Every group has appearance and action
- [ ] At least two carry a feeling that is visible right now
- [ ] There is no future tense anywhere in my plan
- [ ] I am not planning a closing line
1. One line for the room (3 min). Open five pictures and write only the opening sentence for each. Nothing else. It is the sentence most people skip and the one the listener needs most.
2. Choose three and defend it (5 min). On one picture, pick your three groups and then write down which four things you are leaving out. Saying what you dropped is what makes the choice real.
3. Kill the future (5 min). Record a sixty-second answer, then listen back with one job: count every will, going to and probably. Each one is a sentence that belonged to the next task.
4. Stop the sentence (5 min). Do a full answer and deliberately plan to still be mid-sentence at sixty seconds. It will feel wrong. It is what the higher rated answer does.
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