PTE Core Describe Image

What the task asks

An image appears on screen with a short instruction above it. A countdown gives you twenty-five seconds to look at it. When the countdown ends a tone sounds, the microphone opens, and you have forty seconds to describe the image in your own words. There is no text to read and no audio to listen to; the whole prompt is the picture. Three seconds of silence closes the microphone, and you cannot re-record.

In PTE Core the images lean practical rather than academic. Expect bar charts of household spending, a line graph of monthly temperatures, a pie chart of how people travel to work, a photograph of a street market, a floor plan, a simple process diagram, or a map with a route marked on it. Some carry a lot of numbers and some carry none at all, so the skill being tested is not reading data; it is producing forty seconds of organised, continuous English about something you have never seen before.

How it is scored

Describe Image is scored on three traits and all three feed your Speaking score only. Nothing here touches Reading, Listening or Writing, which makes it a pure speaking sample.

The content scale rewards coverage and connection rather than detail. Naming three numbers from a chart is less valuable than saying what the chart is about, what the biggest and smallest categories are, how they compare, and what that might mean. The top band explicitly asks for relationships and implications, so the sentence that starts this suggests that is not decoration; it is where the last content point lives.

How our practice scorer grades it

When you record a Describe Image here, your speech is transcribed and matched against the key elements listed for that image, with a short look-ahead so the match survives a slip. The words and ideas you covered are highlighted so you can see at a glance which parts of the picture you left out. Fluency is measured from the audio itself: mid-phrase pauses, erratic pitch changes, and your words per minute counted only while you are actually speaking, so a silent five seconds before you begin is not averaged into your pace. Half-finished recordings and attempts where the microphone failed are marked partial or void and never count toward your averages. The result appears on the 10 to 90 scale with the CLB level beside it.

It is a practice estimate, not a Pearson score. The engine ranks attempts the way the real scorer would, so improvements here carry over, but nothing can see your real test.

A worked example

A description that reaches the top content band in under forty seconds could run like this. The bar chart shows how residents of a town get to work, divided into five methods. Driving is by far the most common, at almost half of all trips. Public transit comes next with about a quarter, followed by walking at fourteen percent and cycling at nine. Only five percent use some other method. Overall, cars account for more trips than every other option combined, which suggests the town depends heavily on road travel and may have limited transit or cycling infrastructure.

Count what that does: it names the topic, identifies the largest and smallest values, groups the middle, compares the leader with everything else, and closes with an implication. Around seventy-five words, which at a comfortable pace fits inside thirty-five seconds with room to spare. Notice that it does not read out all five numbers in order. Two exact figures and two approximations are plenty.

Five habits that raise the score

1. Spend the first ten seconds finding the biggest and the smallest. On any chart, map or photo those two extremes give you two guaranteed sentences. Use the rest of the prep time to decide on one comparison.
2. Open with the topic in one sentence. This chart shows, This picture is of, The map illustrates. A clear first sentence tells the scorer you understood what you are looking at.
3. Follow a fixed order every time. Topic, main feature, second feature, comparison, implication. A frame like our Describe Image template removes the decision-making so the forty seconds go on speaking.
4. Approximate the numbers. Almost half, roughly a quarter, just under ten percent. Approximations are faster, sound natural, and cannot be misread under pressure.
5. Finish with a conclusion and a falling tone. Overall or This suggests followed by one sentence tells the scorer you are done, lands the top content band and prevents the microphone cutting you off mid-thought.

The mistakes that cost the most

• Listing every number. Reading out eight figures leaves no time for comparison or conclusion, and content stays in the middle bands however accurate the figures are.
• Silence while thinking. A three-second pause ends the recording. If you run out of things to say, go to the conclusion early rather than stopping.
• A memorised speech that ignores the image. Generic lines about this informative image fill the time but describe nothing, and content is scored on what you actually said about the picture.
• Restarting a sentence. Every false start is a fluency hit. If a sentence goes wrong, finish it badly and move on to the next one.
• Running to the buzzer. Stopping at thirty-five seconds with a complete conclusion beats being cut off at forty in the middle of a word.

Quick answers

How many Describe Image questions are in PTE Core?

Three or four, all in Part 1, after Repeat Sentence and before Respond to a Situation.

Do I need to use the exact numbers from the chart?

No. Content is scored on coverage and relationships, not on numerical precision. Two accurate figures plus clear comparisons score higher than eight figures with no comparison.

What if the image has no numbers at all?

Photographs and diagrams are described the same way: what it is, the main thing you notice, a second detail, how the two relate, and what it suggests. The frame in our template works for a street scene as well as for a bar chart.

Which score does Describe Image affect?

Speaking only. See the exam guide for how the other speaking tasks also feed Reading and Listening.