Shadowing Practice: CELPIP Speaking Task 3 - TIPS! - Learn English Speaking with Video

Ooh, take a look at this picture.

How would you describe it?

Do you have any idea?

Well, actually, this is a picture from my book called Selpip Speaking Practice, okay?

It's task three on the exam, okay?

Task three is called Describe a Scene.

Describe a Scene.

It's a very important question in the speaking part of the exam.

Do you know how you should answer this question?

Well, if you want to pick up a copy of my book, I explain how you should answer this question and all the other tasks on the speaking part.

There are eight tasks on the speaking part and my book has over a hundred practice questions where I give you vocabulary,

example, answers, tips, questions.

Okay, it's got all of that.

I think it will be very helpful for you.

So if you want a PDF copy of my book, just go to my website, metv.cool.

Okay, so like I said, task three is describe a scene.

You have 30 seconds to prepare and 60 seconds to speak.

Now that's not a lot of time to prepare.

Most of the questions are only 30 seconds to prepare.

So you have to think fast. Should you take notes?

A lot of people love taking some notes on what they're going to say.

Now, I think taking notes is a great idea, but not for this question.

For this question, you should be looking at the picture and thinking about the picture, not trying to take notes.

Okay, so for this question, I would say do not take notes.

The picture itself is your notes.

Okay, so don't worry about writing anything down.

Okay, so take a look at the picture.

Now how would you start talking about this scene?

How would you start?

Well, the introduction is a very important part of your answer.

And you know what?

I find a lot of students, they take too long in the introduction.

They try to make their introduction too fancy.

Just keep it simple.

One simple sentence is enough for your introduction.

And it should describe the overall scene.

What is the picture about?

What's the overall scene?

You could say, this is a picture of a typical forest scene.

Or you could say, this is a picture of a lake in the forest.

Great.

This is a picture of the Canadian wilderness.

Wilderness means wild.

Canada has so much wilderness.

Have you ever been in Canadian wilderness?

I mean, most of Canada's population lives right along the US border.

I think over 90% of Canada's population lives like right basically just a few hundred kilometers from the border.

What about all the rest of Canada?

That's the Canadian wilderness.

You should check it out.

It's very beautiful.

This is a picture of some animals in the forest.

Again, great.

It's very simple, nothing fancy.

You're just describing the overall sea.

Now, all of these examples would be a great way to start your answer for this picture.

Now the second thing you need to think about is big things in the picture that are not in the overall scene.

Okay, maybe the picture is sort of split into two halves.

Maybe there's a river running through the picture or maybe there's,

you know, a big mountain or there's something very big in the picture that you didn't describe in your introduction,

then you should acknowledge that.

Okay, for example here, let's say I say, um, this is a picture of the Canadian wilderness.

In the middle of the picture, there's a lake.

Or I could say, in the middle of the picture, there's a river running.

There's a river running through the middle of the picture.

Okay, because this is actually a very,

it's an important part of the picture because it sort of splits the picture into two parts, right?

There's that part and there's this part and it's right in the middle.

Very often the things in the middle of the picture are the most important most of the time.

Okay, so then you need to decide.

The third thing you need to think about is does the picture have a foreground and a background?

some pictures do have a foreground and a background, but other pictures only have a background.

They don't have a foreground.

In my book, I explain this a little bit more.

I show you some examples and explain why a picture might only have a background and not really a foreground.

Okay, but in this picture, I would say there is definitely a foreground and a background.

So I would say everything on that side of the river is the background,

and everything on this side of the river would be considered the foreground of the picture.

Okay, step four.

How are you going to describe location?

Okay, describing location is very important for this question.

You have to describe this picture for someone who can't see it.

So that person has to get a good mental image of the picture based on your description.

So you need to describe the location.

How are you going to do it?

Well, you have two options.

You could say bottom right corner, top right, top left, bottom left,

center, top bottom, left right, or you could use the word upper,

upper half, lower half, right half, upper right corner, lower right corner.

Okay, there's a lot of options.

Or you could describe the things in the picture in relation to other things.

For example, that animal over there is a beaver.

Would we say there is a beaver on the left side of the picture?

Or would we say there is a beaver standing beside the tree?

Or under the tree?

Or to the right of the tree?

Okay, so those are some things you need to think about.

How are we going to describe the location?

Now you don't just have to pick one

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or the other you can use both of them I think

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it's a good idea to use a combination of both of them

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If there are two things

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that are very close to each other in the same part

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of the picture Then you could say in the you know in the bottom right corner there are,

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you know, two animals.

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One animal is behind the other animal.

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So then we're using the words like behind or beside, in front of, next to, okay?

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So I would say you should learn how to use both of those things.

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Okay, now the fifth thing you need to think about is vocabulary.

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This is probably the most important thing.

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If you don't know the names of the things in the picture, it doesn't matter how good your introduction is, it doesn't matter, you know,

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how you describe the location.

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If you say in the bottom right corner there are two animals.

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I don't know what the animals are called, but there are two animals.

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That's not good.

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You need to know the names of the animals.

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Okay, so let's take a look at this picture and talk a bit about the vocabulary you should use.

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So what's this?

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This looks like a grizzly bear.

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Okay, a grizzly bear.

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Here in Canada we have lots of grizzly bears.

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They're a very big bear and a dangerous kind of bear.

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Grizzly bears kill people.

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You know, it's almost every year I think I hear stories of people, hikers in the mountains getting killed by grizzly bears.

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Okay, so grizzly.

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Now, it looks like the grizzly bear is eating berries from the bush.

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Okay, this thing would be called a bush, and there are red berries on the bush.

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Okay, now what's this animal?

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This animal is called a skunk.

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A skunk.

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Skunks have black...

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Well, they're black, and they have white stripes on their back and tail.

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and they are a very famous animal.

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Why are they famous?

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Because they spray very bad smelling things.

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Very bad smelling odour.

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They spray it.

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I would just call this a plant.

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Here, that's a bush.

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That would be a plant.

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And over there on the left side of the picture, the big tree.

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I don't know what kind of tree that is, but I would just say a big Oak tree.

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Okay, now under the oak tree there is a beaver.

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Do you know what a beaver is?

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A beaver is one of Canada's national symbols, so you should know what that animal is.

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Do you know what it's famous for?

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It has some very big front teeth that it uses to chew trees.

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Okay, it cuts down trees and it uses trees to build a beaver dam.

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Do you know what a beaver dam is?

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That is the name of the beaver's house.

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Beavers actually live in the water.

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They build a house on top of the water.

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That's called a beaver dam.

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Okay, so that might be important to remember for task four, the next one, which is making predictions.

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So you could predict that the beaver will cut down the tree and build a dam.

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Okay, so here we have like a river or a lake with a duck swimming on it.

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And over here we could call this animal a deer or an elk.

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Maybe that would be good too.

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Okay, the deer has big antlers.

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Actually, it sort of looks more like an elk because elk have bigger antlers than deer.

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But you could just say deer, that's fine too.

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Now, further in the background, we have two wolves.

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Two wolves.

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Now, what are the wolves doing?

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Their heads are pointed up.

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Oh, oh, oh.

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What is that?

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that's called howling.

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Howling.

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The wolves are howling.

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Okay.

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Here are some pine trees, just pine trees.

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Most trees in the Canadian forests are just, you could just call them pine trees.

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Okay.

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Now this edge where the water meets the land,

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that can be called a bank or a If this is a river, then we would call that the river bank.

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That's the edge of the river.

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If it's a lake, we would call that the lake shore.

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The shore.

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Okay, what about this brown piece underneath the tree?

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How would you describe that?

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I would call this a patch of dirt under the tree where there is no grass growing.

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Okay, just a patch of dirt where there is no grass.

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Okay, here, over here there's grass, over there there's no grass, it's just a patch of dirt under the tree.

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Okay, so I think that is most of the vocabulary that we will use for this picture.

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And here I have a list in my book, okay, describing this picture.

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So grizzly, bush, berries, skunk, beaver, oak tree, base, you could say at the base of the tree.

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You could say there's a beaver standing at the base of the tree

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or you could say at the base of the tree there is a brown patch of dirt.

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Okay, lake or river, duck pine trees, wolves, howling, sunrise or sunset.

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We don't know which one it is.

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Deer, bank or shore like I mentioned.

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Okay, so those are some vocabulary words.

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Now let's take a look at my answer.

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Are you ready?

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Here we go.

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This is a picture of a typical forest scene.

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There is a lake in the middle of the picture with a duck swimming on it.

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In the bottom of the picture, there's a grizzly bear eating berries from a bush.

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Behind the grizzly, there's a skunk.

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On the left side of the picture, there's a big oak tree with a beaver under it.

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Around the base of the oak tree, there's a big patch of dirt with no grass.

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On the opposite bank, there's a deer close to the water and two wolves howling in the background.

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There are also a few pine trees and a beautiful orange sunset.

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Okay, perfect.

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Now you might be looking at this answer and you might think that's very short.

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It only took me, I don't know, maybe 30 seconds to read this.

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But you know what?

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give all this information in your answer, that will be great.

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I mean, most people wouldn't even give maybe half this much information and they would use a whole minute.

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I mean, when you're talking in real life, you use, um, uh, in the bottom right of the picture,

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there is a grizzly bear, and you take more time, right, in real life.

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So I think if you give all this information, it would take you more than a minute.

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Okay, now you'll notice maybe that I used the word lake up there and then down here I used the word bank.

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Remember bank is for a river, shore is for a lake.

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But those kinds of minor things, they really don't matter.

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You won't lose any marks if you make a small mistake like that.

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At least I don't think you'll lose any mark.

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So don't worry about small mistakes at all.

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Now another thing you might notice is that I don't really have a conclusion.

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So my conclusion is just there are also a few pine trees and a beautiful orange sunset.

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I think that would be fine.

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I think that would be a great conclusion.

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But if you want to use a more traditional conclusion you could say something like this.

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Alright, that's how I would describe this picture.

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Now, when we're going to signal that we're going to end something or conclude something,

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we often use the words anyway or alright.

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If you look at my book, you'll see how often I use that because native English speakers, we do that.

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going to stop talking, we use the word anyway

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or alright to sort of signal to the listener that we're going to be done.

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Okay, so alright, that's how I would describe this picture.

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Or you could say, alright, I hope I've given you a good description of the picture.

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Alright, I hope you can visualize the scene based on my description.

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Alright, I hope I've given you a good mental image of the scene from my description.

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Okay, just something like that That would be great as a conclusion.

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So you can definitely use one of those.

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So let's do a little bit of homework.

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I want you to take a look at this picture

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and let me know how you would describe it down there in the comments.

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Remember the five points that I taught you.

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What is your introduction going to be?

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What's the overall scene?

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The next point is, are there big things in the scene?

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What are maybe some big things that you didn't use in your overall introduction?

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So talk about the big things.

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The third thing is you have to decide if the picture has a foreground and a background.

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Now the fourth thing is how you're going to describe the location of the different things in the picture.

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Are you going to use in the bottom right corner, top left, are you going to use that kind of language,

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which is great, or would you use the location of things in relation to other things in the scene?

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Underneath, beside, left, right, top, bottom.

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So you can use both of those together with each other.

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That would probably be a really good thing to develop.

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It's a good skill to develop.

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And then the fifth thing, vocabulary.

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Do you know what is this called?

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Do you know that?

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What are these called?

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What are these called?

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What's this called?

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What's that called?

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I mean, do you know this vocabulary?

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You need to know this kind of vocabulary if you want to do well on the speaking part.

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Hey, if you want to learn more vocabulary, there's two options that I would suggest.

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One is with my book.

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There are so many, hundreds and hundreds of new words that you'll learn in my book.

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Also, I have a vocabulary playlist here at Matt English TV.

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I'll put the link down there in the description.

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Just see where it says vocabulary playlist.

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You can see so many different videos I've made on all kinds of vocabulary.

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Parts of animals, you know, different weird parts of different animals, parts of cars, parts of fruit,

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all that kind of different vocabulary, okay?

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So anyway, let me know your answer to this picture down there in the comments, and I'll see you over in the next episode of Mad English TV.

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Take care.

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you

What is the Shadowing Technique?

Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.

Shadowing Practice: CELPIP Speaking Task 3 - TIPS! - Learn English Speaking with Video

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What is the Shadowing Technique?