In this section, you practise part 2 of the speaking paper, describing two photographs. You listen to a student talking about photographs, you study some techniques for doing this and get some exam advice for this part of the speaking paper.

Look at these two photographs. Which ideas could you express about each photo? Decide if these ideas would go with photo A or photo B, or both. Remember, there is no correct answer here.

	A
	B

Now listen to this student talking about the two photographs. Decide which box the ideas go into, according to what he says.

Listen to the extract again and decide whether the following statements about how the student dealt with the questions are true or false.

After clicking 'Check' read the 'comment' for each question.

• When doing this sort of exercise, you should not describe the whole photo in detail. Talk quite generally about it. If you get into detail, you won't have time to answer the main part of the question, which, in this case, is "Which do you prefer?"
• When answering a question like this, you do not have time to organise your ideas too much. You have to think while you are speaking. Give a brief description of each photo first, and then talk about the advantages and disadvantages of each, as you think of them.
• If you make a mistake, don't pretend that the other person hasn't noticed! If she is a native speaker, she has. But you can show that you know what is correct and if you correct yourself as you are speaking, that mistake will disappear quite quickly from your English!
• It is quite reasonable to hesitate - everyone does it. But remember, you only have about a minute, so don't spend too much time hesitating!
• You are not expected to have a complete knowledge of English vocabulary and there will almost certainly be things in the photograph that you don't know the word for in English. When you are in an English-speaking country, you will have this problem quite often. Explain what the thing is used for, or what it is like - find another word or phrase for it.
• The speaker in the example doesn't actually say which type of meal he prefers - perhaps he hasn't had time! But he has spoken fluently and clearly for more than a minute in English.

Practise this task. If you record yourself, you put yourself under psychological pressure similar to being in the exam, so it is a good way to practise. Here are the examiner's instructions:

"Now I'd like you to talk on your own for about a minute. I'm going to give you two different photographs and I'd like you to talk about them. Here are your two photographs. They show people having meals away from home.

I'd like you to compare and contrast these photographs and say whether you prefer eating out in restaurants or eating picnics out-of-doors. Remember you only have about a minute for this so don't worry if I interrupt you."