A chart, map or diagram appears; you get 25 seconds to study it and 40 seconds to describe it. It's the task where nervous students drown in numbers — and the one where a simple four-sentence structure reliably beats frantic detail.
Content carries the biggest range — and a human reads it.
Did you identify what the image shows, its key values and the main trend? AI scores it first, then a human expert reviews it.
Smooth and continuous. A calm four sentences beats a breathless data dump.
Each word clearly produced — including the numbers.
Bar chart, line graph, pie, table, map or process — the recipe is the same.
One line on what the image shows. "This bar chart shows electricity use across five countries between 2010 and 2020." You can always say this sentence — it kills the silent-start problem.
The highest and the lowest. "China had the highest consumption at around 40 per cent, while Brazil had the lowest at just 5." Two data points, chosen for you by the chart itself.
The overall pattern. "Overall, usage rose steadily in every country except Germany, where it fell after 2015." This is the sentence that shows you understood the image, not just read it.
One closing line. "In conclusion, demand grew fastest in developing economies." It rounds off your answer and fills the last seconds naturally.
For a map, the extremes are the most and least affected regions. For a process diagram, the "trend" is the sequence from first stage to last. Same four sentences, different nouns.
Ten data points in 40 seconds means rushing, and rushing costs fluency and pronunciation while adding almost nothing to content.
✓ Fix: overview, two extremes, one trend, one conclusion. Four to five sentences, delivered calmly.Spending your first 10 speaking seconds still decoding the chart reads as hesitation and eats a quarter of your time.
✓ Fix: the overview sentence needs only the title and axis labels — decide it during the 25s prep and open your mouth the moment the mic does."The given bar chart illustrates interesting information about…" spends seconds and earns nothing — and on this task, a human reviews the content, so padding reads as padding.
✓ Fix: keep the structure, drop the stuffing. Every sentence should say something true about this image.Extremes take one breath, and then panicked answers stop — leaving half the time and most of the trend unspoken.
✓ Fix: the trend and conclusion sentences exist precisely to use the back half of your 40 seconds. Practise finishing at ~35s, not 15.Students who only ever practised bar charts freeze when a map or flow diagram appears.
✓ Fix: practise across every type the exam uses — bars, lines, pies, tables, maps, processes — until the recipe is automatic regardless of the picture.The skill is turning any image into four sentences, under the clock.
On The PTE Master, Describe Image runs on the real exam flow — 25 seconds of prep, then 40 seconds recording — across the full spread of image types: bar and line charts, pies, tables, maps and process diagrams, drawn like the report-style figures the exam uses.
Real 25s/40s timing across bar charts, line graphs, pies, maps and processes — until the four sentences are automatic.
Start practising