Aaron Nelson: 00:00:00

I love playing board games. How about you?

Many years ago now, my family and I got together with my brother and his family and we played one of the most unusual and hilarious board games I have ever played. I think it was called cranium. That was the only time I played it.

But one of the things that I will never forget about the game was how much it made use of of your imagination to do very unusual things.

Many of the activities involved you, the player being shown a card, and on that card there was a word or a phrase you had to interpret so that your team could figure out what it was. And of course, you were racing against the clock. Back to the interpreting part. This is where the fun came in.

The really challenging kinds of questions you could face involved you needing to act out the word or phrase you were looking at on the card. Then there was another kind of question that had you sculpt the word or phrase using playdough. The catch.

You weren't allowed to speak or write any words of any kind. You had to understand what you were looking at, and then you had to try to find a way to express what you saw through a different medium.

Acting or sculpting while your time was ticking away. There were so many hilarious moments. I remember one of my words so clearly because of how hard I laughed as I was trying to act it out.

The word was plumber. You know what a plumber is? It's a person who works on and fixes water pipes in your house or your bathroom. It seems like an easy word, doesn't it?

In fact, it's a pretty common word. But when you can only act it out and aren't allowed to speak to explain it, plumber becomes a very, very difficult word.

Like I said, I remember laughing so hard that I found it hard to stand as my team was struggling to understand what I was trying to show them. And sadly, they didn't figure it out before our time ran out. But it was a lot of fun.

Now, thankfully, responding to CELPIP speaking task eight won't require you to act anything out or create something out of playdough, but you will need to be able to describe an unusual image or an object to someone as if they weren't there to see it with you. Now, this is going to require you to use the same skills I was just talking about a moment ago while we played that board game.

You're going to need to use creativity, flexibility, and the ability to describe what you see so someone knows what you're talking about. If they're not there. Do you need to prepare for selpip speaking task eight, where you're describing an unusual situation?

Then listen in to today's episode because I'm going to share five practical strategies that will help you answer this speaking task with ease. Well, hello there and welcome to the Speak English Fearlessly podcast.

This is the podcast for motivated english learners who want to speak English fearlessly and learn practical tips and strategies to conquer the CELPIP exam.

I also love to feature encouraging interviews with regular people, people just like you, who are working towards becoming fluent in English so we can learn from their experiences together. Who am I?

My name is Aaron Nelson and I've been an english teacher for over 17 years and I now help students prepare for the CELPIP exam through online classes.

I think one of the most challenging parts of this celpip task is figuring out what to talk about, especially if the object is a weird or unexpected one. And I've seen some of the past exam questions, they can be very unusual.

Getting stuck with what to say can lead to time wasting and worse, not being able to fully describe what you're looking at.

But today my aim is to offer you a practical five step process that will help you work through any image you might encounter on this speaking task with ease. Alright then, let's begin with point number one.

The question you're going to face on the test will have you describing something to someone else who is not there, like maybe over an imaginary phone call. Your goal is to describe the thing you're looking at so that they know what it is and what it looks like without having been there.

Alright, for our example today, let's imagine that this is your question. You are helping your best friend John look for a cake for his wife's birthday. He went to another bakery to check an option out.

While you went to a specialty bakery near where you live and found this. Call John and tell him about the special cake you found.

Now, if you're interested in seeing what this cake is all about, I'm going to be including the picture that I'm describing inside of my five step checklist document that is going to be freely available for you to download. You'll be able to use this document, this cheat sheet, this checklist to help you as you are preparing for this speaking task. Okay?

And in order to get it, you just have to go to cellpipsuccess.com resources and you'll be able to download the cheat sheet and you'll be able to see the picture that I'm talking about as I go through today's episode. So this is what you need to do to begin answering this question. First of all, provide an initial overview of what you're looking at.

Begin by telling your listener what you're looking at and provide a helpful detail about it. You can use the phrase I'm looking at to start your description in my example today. Here's what I would say. Hi John, how's it going?

Hey, I'm looking at an amazing chocolate cake. It looks exactly like a woman's hat with a wide chocolate brim that I think would be perfect for your wife's party.

I know she loves her hats, so I bet she'd love this. Alright, so that's the initial overview.

I'm telling John what I'm looking at and I'm giving him an idea of what he can expect as I begin describing this hat for him. Step number two is to divide the image. Maybe you'll remember a few podcast episodes I did about speaking tasks three and four.

This strategy that I'm about to talk about also was used there as well, and I will link to those episodes in my show notes today if you would like to give them a listen.

So in order to answer this question well, it is wise for you to use your imagination to divide the image or the object into easier to manage parts to help you to stay on track as you talk about it. Just make sure that you describe everything. To accomplish this, here's what you need to do and don't worry, it's super simple. One.

Mentally divide the object into quadrants or spaces.

You're not going to be drawing on the computer screen, but I want you to imagine like imaginary lines dividing the picture into four quadrants or four spaces. This is going to help you to follow a logical order and not get overwhelmed by too many details going on at once.

Your job is going to be to work your way through each part as you talk about it in the recording phase of the question. In my case, I'm not going to divide it into four equal quadrants, but I will describe it from the bottom to the top.

In other words, I'm going to break it into sections, but stacked on top of each other because I think that's going to be easier for me than just going around in a circle. However way you decide to do it, it doesn't matter. Whatever works for you.

The suggestion is just to divide it up into equal parts so that you know where to focus as you're doing your description. Alright, let's move on. To step number three, how to describe each quadrant.

Like I said just a moment ago, focus on one quadrant at a time so you don't get lost or overwhelmed. And you should make it your goal to spend around ten to 12 seconds on each of those sections.

As you are describing that section offer one or two specific details about each feature that you mention and use a variety of descriptors.

Some of them can include the size of the thing that you're looking at, the shape, the color, the number or amount of them that you see, the material, the texture, flavor and similes or I comparisons that use like or as as you're describing what you're looking at. Here's my attempt based on what I'm looking at.

At the bottom of the light brown chocolate hat, there is an elegant wide brim that goes around the base. The brim is flat around the front, but it folds up near the back of the hat, slightly above the brim.

At the bottom and near the middle of the hat, there is a lovely oval shape that looks like a fancy decorative button. It has beautiful rounded edges that make it look like it pops out from the rest of the design. Now I need to tell you about the amazing texture.

I've never seen anything like it. The milk chocolate is draped over the cake and has soft, flowing, raised lines that wrap around the hat so that it looks like it's covered in fabric.

I think your wife will love this part the most. The hat itself is several inches tall, almost like a top hat, but made for a woman.

It looks like you could pick it up and wear it to a fancy event if you could resist eating it. Do you think your wife will like it? Alright, step number four, maintain variety. Be careful not to repeat descriptive phrases or ideas.

You need to use different descriptors for each quadrant or for each space that you're working on. Don't just focus on one aspect like the color, throughout the whole thing. Use variety.

And finally, in step number five, make sure that you give yourself enough time to offer a short conclusion to what you're talking about. You could end with a conversational phrase like, so, that's my idea. What do you think? Or do you think I should get it?

Or do you think that they will like it? And in my case, here's what I would say. So what do you think, John? Would you like to come and see it? I'm sure your wife will love this.

Remember, description is key to this task. Make sure that you're offering a general overview, then quickly discuss one section at a time. Providing descriptive details for each part.

Okay, let's pull this all together. Hey, John. How are you doing? You'll never guess what I'm looking at. I found this amazing looking chocolate cake that looks like a woman's hat.

I think it would be perfect for your wife's party. At the bottom of the hat, there is this elegant wide brim that goes around the base of the hat.

And the brim is flat around the front, but it folds up nicely near the back, slightly above the brim. And at the bottom, near the middle of the hat, there is this lovely oval shape that looks like a fancy decorative button.

It has beautiful rounded edges that make it look like it's going to pop off the rest of the design. Now, I need to tell you about the amazing texture. I've never seen anything like it.

The milk chocolate is draped over the cake and has soft, flowing, raised lines that wrap around the hat so that it looks like it's covered in fabric. I think your wife will love this part of the hat the most. So what do you think? Come and see it.

Alright, I want to share with you a couple of things that I learned from doing this exercise with you.

The first one is, I'm not sure if you noticed it or not, but I went a little bit longer than the 60 seconds that I was supposed to and it wasn't very much. It was 0.10. So I think that's like a 10th of a second. I went a 10th of a second over my time limit, which is not very much.

But on the selp up exam, if you're familiar with it, once that timer reaches zero, like, once your 60 seconds are over, the exam is not going to wait for you to finish speaking.

It's actually going to cut you off right in the middle of what you're saying and move on to the next question, which is not a good thing to have happen.

Now, for me, what I think I need to do to make mine a little bit tighter and make sure that I'm finishing on time is to edit out my response a little bit more.

There's probably a couple of words here and there, maybe a sentence that I could completely remove and then be able to offer a more complete explanation inside of my time limit. And that's what you should be doing as you are practicing on your own. All I was using was my computer to write out my response.

And I was using my cell phone and the timer app that I have on my phone. And I'm pretty sure that you have a timer app as well.

All you need to do is once you get your response written out and you can totally write it out word for word, like what you want to say. Pull out your cell phone, set your timer for 60 seconds, hit start and then start explaining what you're looking at.

Keep your eye on your timer and once that thing hits zero, you have to stop. No matter how much missing. You just need to finish when that 60 seconds is over. Because that's what's going to happen to you on the exam, right?

You're not going to have any extra time. So your goal is to try to finish explaining what you're looking at inside of those 60 seconds. And you can also, if this happens to you, live.

When you're in the middle of the exam, you don't have to say everything that you brainstorm. Keep that in mind as well. You need to be flexible with the information that you created.

Don't feel like you need to include everything, just make sure that you're offering the best description that you can inside the amount of time that you have to do it in.

Alright, I hope that this has helped you as you are preparing for Selpib speaking task eight and I've got a checklist of the five steps I covered today waiting for you to download so that you can practice it on your own. It's totally free. Just go to cellpipsuccess.com resources to grab your copy today.

That's celpipsuccess.com resources and you'll be able to download your very own five step process that you can follow as you are preparing for this cellpips speaking task. Thank you so much for listening and I hope to see you again next Tuesday. Bye.