Okay so, it's a picture of a office. Big office. There is many desk and computer, and people, they are working. And one woman in the middle — she don't sit on the chair. She is sitting on a ball. Big ball, orange, for exercise I think. Her chair is beside, but it's empty. And she have laptop on her leg and she is typing and smiling. And all the people they stop and they look. One woman she is laughing. And one man he turn... he turn his chair. Yeah.
Speaking Task 8: Describing an Unusual Situation
Speaking Task 8: Describing an Unusual Situation is part of the Speaking section of the CELPIP General test. You get 30 seconds to prepare and 60 seconds to speak. It is scored on Content / Coherence, Vocabulary, Listenability, Task Fulfillment.
- Preparation
- 30 seconds
- Speaking time
- 60 seconds
- Prompts here
- 23 published
The three-move unusual scene
- 1
Set the ordinary scene first
Our CLB 11 answer spends its opening on how completely normal the office is — desks, monitors, a coffee machine — and only then breaks it.
- 2
Name exactly what breaks it
One clear sentence on the thing that does not belong. This is the information your listener cannot see.
- 3
Offer a guess, marked as a guess
"It seems", "maybe", "my best guess is" — the task rewards speculation, but only speculation that knows it is speculation.
Describe the normal before the strange, or nothing is strange.
Without a baseline the listener has nothing to be surprised by.
Learn the speculative language and descriptive vocabulary you need to describe an unusual or unexpected image and guess what is going on in CELPIP Speaking Task 8.
You describe a strange picture to someone who cannot see it and speculate about it. Combine precise descriptive vocabulary with speculation phrases (it looks as if, perhaps, it could be) to cover both what you see and what you think.
What raters reward here
- Describe what you see first.
- Then speculate about the reason.
- Use "It seems..." / "Maybe...".
- Describe, then guess — stay organised.
Three mistakes that cost points heremost common first
- 1Starting with the odd thing, which leaves the rest of the description with nowhere to go.
- 2Stating a guess as a fact.
- 3Describing for the full time and never speculating at all.
How Speaking is scored
- Content / Coherence
- Whether your ideas are relevant, developed and logically ordered.
- Vocabulary
- The range and accuracy of your word choice under time pressure.
- Listenability
- How easy you are to follow as speech: grammar, flow, pacing, pauses and fillers.
- Task Fulfillment
- Whether you answered the actual question and covered what was asked.
Model answersthe same prompt, four levels
These are the answers our scorer was calibrated against. Reading a CLB 5 beside a CLB 11 for the same prompt is the fastest way to see what a level actually means. CLB 9 is marked as the target because it is the level that earns maximum language points for Express Entry.
Okay, so this picture is an office. It's one of those big open offices with rows of desks and computers, and there are some plants and a water cooler. In the middle of the room there's a woman in a yellow cardigan and jeans. She isn't sitting on a chair. She's sitting on a big orange exercise ball, like the ones people use at the gym. Her laptop is on her knees and she's typing and smiling. Her office chair is empty beside her. And all her colleagues have turned to look at her. A man in a white shirt is looking over, and a blonde woman is laughing behind her hand.
So I'm looking at this picture of a big open-plan office — rows of desks, computers, some plants, a water cooler in the corner. Pretty normal office. But in the middle of the room there's a woman in yellow cardigan and jeans and she's sitting on a big orange exercise ball instead of a chair. Her own office chair is just standing next to her, empty. She's got the laptop on her knees and she's typing and smiling. And everybody else has turned to look at her. There's a guy at the front desk in white shirt looking over, a woman with blonde hair is laughing, another man has turned round in his chair and he's still holding his pen. Nobody seems annoyed about it, they just think it's funny.
Okay, picture this: it's one of those bright open-plan offices, rows of desks, monitors, potted plants, water cooler, coffee machine with the mugs beside it. Completely ordinary. Except that right in the middle of the floor there's a woman in a yellow cardigan and jeans perched on a huge orange exercise ball instead of a chair, laptop balanced on her knees, typing away with this enormous grin on her face. Her actual office chair is sitting empty right next to her, which somehow makes it funnier. And every single person around her has stopped what they were doing. The man at the front desk is glancing sideways, a blonde woman has her hand over her mouth trying not to laugh, one guy has swivelled right round with his pen still in his hand, and even the senior-looking man in the suit and red tie is watching with this amused little smile. She hasn't noticed any of them.
Now do it yourself and find out where you land
A model answer shows you the target. It cannot tell you whether your own response hits it — that is a CLB level for each criterion, with the sentences that earned it.
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- What is the hardest part of Speaking Task 8?
- Describing something unfamiliar without the right words. Speculation phrases let you stay fluent even when you are unsure what the image shows.
- How is Task 8 different from Task 3?
- Task 3 describes an ordinary scene factually; Task 8 shows an unusual image, so you both describe it and speculate about what might be happening.
The other 22 Unusual Situation prompts1 free
- ·An Unusual Car Parked Outside a Store
- ·An Unusual Farm Outside the City
- ·A Strange Drawing at the Art Gallery
- ·An Unusual Playground in the Neighbourhood Park
- ·A Business Meeting Among Inflatable Animals
- ·An Unusual House in the Neighbourhood
- ·An Unusual Television in an Electronics Store
- ·A Newly Opened Amusement Park
- ·Describing an Unusual Situation
- ·An Unusual Museum Exhibition
- ·An Unusual Hotel Room
- ·An Unusual Restaurant
- ·An Unusual Library
- ·An Unusual Grocery Store
- ·An Unusual Fitness Centre
- ·The Umbrella on a Sunny Day
- ·An Unusual Hotel Lobby
- ·A Piano in the Park
- ·Penguins on a City Street
- ·A Goat in the Supermarket
- ·A Cat Giving a Weather Report
- ·An Elephant at the Bus Stop