PTE

Section 2 describe image

Having heard from friends and students that Pearson Test of English is easier than IELTS and TOEFL, I decided to add this test into my teaching repertoire. So I started looking for useful resources to help my students prepare for PTE, and I especially got intrigued by Section 2 of this exam that asks a candidate to describe a graph, table or an image. It turns out it is not an easy task to do, especially when you have only 25 seconds to think about it and 40 seconds to speak. In the comfort of my own home, I spent days strategising the effective ways of describing a graph. Some resources that I found online were full of grammatical mistakes, some examples in PTE textbooks were way too advanced for some of EFL learners, so I was digging deeper. Here, I included top 3 resources that I found particularly useful: 

1. Charts, graphs and diagrams developed by the Chinese University of Hong Kong. For those who are in the process of preparing for PTE, I strongly recommend to refer to this resource and complete all activities listed there. 

2. Prepositions for IELTS Writing developed by Woodward English. Although it is mainly about IELTS, the grammatical points mentioned in the video can be directly applied to the PTE speaking section, ‘Describe image’. It is not surprising that prepositions can be very tricky while describing a graph. Please, watch this 20-minutes video, make a lot of notes, and make your own sentences using the combinations of verbs and nouns with prepositions. 

3. Finally, this article ‘How to Title Bar Graphs’ and other related articles that can be found on the bottom of the page are useful in getting your head around the world of graphs. It is a good read; it really helps to get used to the jargon of graphs and charts.

However, if you still struggle to get into the right mood to practise this specific part of PTE, please, feel free to get in touch with me, and I will guide you step-by-step.