The Duolingo English Test asks you to describe a picture twice, in two different skills. Most people search for "describe the picture" expecting a list of vocabulary. Vocabulary is not the problem. The problem is that a photo of a market stall or a snowy mountain gives you three obvious sentences and then silence — and silence, in a timed speaking task, is what costs the marks.
This guide gives you one method that fills the time for both tasks, and shows what each task is actually scored on.
The two tasks are not the same
They share a picture and nothing else.
| Task | Skill | What you produce | Time |
|---|---|---|---|
| Write About the Photo | Writing | One or more written sentences | ~1 minute |
| Speak About the Photo | Speaking | Spoken description, recorded | ~20s to prepare, ~90s to speak |
Write About the Photo rewards a complete, correct sentence — accuracy over length. Speak About the Photo rewards sustained, organised speech — you are penalised far more for stopping at 30 seconds than for a small grammar slip. Same picture, opposite failure modes.
The method: who, where, doing, detail
Move through the image in the same four steps every time. Each step is at least one sentence, and the last step is infinite — you can always add another guess or detail.
- Who or what — name the main subject. "This photo shows an outdoor market stall."
- Where — place it. "It looks like a street market in a warm country, probably in the morning."
- Doing what — the action. "A vendor is weighing fruit for a customer while other shoppers look at the crates."
- Detail or guess — anything you infer. "The produce looks fresh, so the stall probably restocks every day. The customer seems to be a regular, because the vendor is smiling."
Four steps, and the fourth never runs out. This is the whole trick to Speak About the Photo: when you feel the pause coming, you are simply on step four, and step four has no end — colour, weather, time of day, what happened just before, what will happen next, how the people feel.
Sentence frames that carry the grammar marks
The graders reward range. If every sentence starts "There is / There are", you have shown one structure. Rotate these instead:
- Present continuous for the action: "A woman is carrying…"
- Prepositions of place for layout: "In the background, behind the stall, you can see…"
- Modal verbs for guesses: "It might be early morning, because the light is soft."
- Relative clauses for detail: "The man who is weighing the fruit looks experienced."
- Comparatives for contrast: "The crates on the left are fuller than the ones on the right."
Using four or five different structures in 90 seconds does more for your score than any single "advanced" word.
What loses marks
- Describing what is not there. On Write About the Photo especially, the grader checks your sentence against the image. Inventing an aurora over a plain starry sky is a task-fulfilment error, not a bonus.
- Listing objects. "A table, some fruit, a man, a bag, the sky." A list is not a description and shows no grammar.
- Stopping early on the spoken task. Thirty seconds of perfect English scores below ninety seconds of good-enough English. Keep going.
- One long run-on. Joining everything with "and… and… and" flattens your coherence score. Full stops are free.
A worked example, both tasks
The image: a snow-covered mountain range at night under a sky full of stars, with a dark treeline in the foreground.
Write About the Photo (one strong sentence beats three weak ones): "This photograph shows a snow-covered mountain range at night, with a dark line of trees in the foreground and a sky full of bright stars above the peaks." — one sentence, three prepositional details, accurate to the image.
Speak About the Photo (fill the time with the four steps): "This is a night-time photo of a mountain range. The mountains are covered in snow, and in front of them there is a dark line of trees. Above the peaks, the sky is full of stars, so it must be a very clear night far from any city. It looks extremely cold and quiet. I think this could be a national park, and the photographer probably had to wait a long time for a night this clear."
Notice the second answer never states anything untrue — it just keeps reaching for the next reasonable detail.
How to practise it
Open any photo — your camera roll works — set a 90-second timer, and speak through the four steps out loud without stopping. The skill you are building is not vocabulary; it is never running dry. Do it ten times and the pause disappears.
Then run the real task under real conditions. Our practice tests serve the actual Write About the Photo and Speak About the Photo formats with a live timer, record your answer, and grade it against the same rubric dimensions the DET uses — so you find out whether your description holds up before it counts.
Quick reference: How to describe a picture in the Duolingo English Test at a glance
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| Which tasks ask you to describe a picture? | Two: Write About the Photo (writing) and Speak About the Photo (speaking). |
| How long do you get? | Write About the Photo is about a minute; Speak About the Photo gives ~20s to prepare and ~90s to speak. |
| What is scored? | Range and accuracy — varied grammar, precise vocabulary, organised delivery, and describing what is actually in the image. |
| The biggest mistake? | Running out of things to say and stopping early on the spoken task. |
| The method? | Move through the image in order: who or what, where, doing what, then a detail or guess. |
| Should I invent details? | Guess reasonably (it shows modal grammar), but never describe things that are not in the picture. |
Questions people ask
Does my accent lower my score on Speak About the Photo?
No. The automated grader rewards how clearly and intelligibly you speak, not how native your accent sounds. Pronounce words clearly and keep a steady pace; a strong regional accent does not cost you marks.
Do pauses and hesitation hurt my speaking score?
Short thinking pauses barely register, but frequent long hesitations read as low fluency and eat into your limited time. Aim for a steady, unhurried flow — smooth delivery of simpler sentences scores better than stop-start attempts at complex ones.
Does spelling count in Write About the Photo?
Yes — it is graded writing, so a misspelled word pulls down the same accuracy dimension your grammar does. Type at a pace that lets you spell correctly rather than racing to add more, because the grader reads exactly what you wrote.