Describing Pictures in ICAO Aviation English Tests

In this article you are going to learn techniques to describe pictures in ICAO English tests.  As you know, describing a picture is a common part of many ICAO English tests.

What language skills are required?

Quite often the pictures will be of unusual or unexpected events such as damage to an aircraft, a crash/collision or a malfunctioning piece of the aircraft’s equipment.  You will need to develop your vocabulary so that you can easily explain these situations without being lost for words.  As a pilot or controller you will need vocabulary to describe

1. each part of an aircraft,
2. weather and time of day,
3. the physical layout of an airfield and
4. various types of damage that can occur.

You will also need a good command of verb tenses so that you can describe:

• what is happening now
• what has happened before
• what is likely to happen in the future

You should also learn the language skills needed to explain whythese events have occurred.  This will involve (among others) modal verbs of possibility/probability, conjunctions and infinitives of purpose.

You should also use prepositions to describe the physical location, or path of movement of the various objects in the picture.

Phrases for describing pictures

Start by giving a brief description of each picture.

• The picture/photo shows …
• This is a picture of …
• In this picture I can see …
• This is an incident that happened …

There are different phrases you can refer to parts of each pictures. For example:

• on the left / on the right (hand side)
• in the background / in the foreground
• behind  x / in front of x

Depending on the picture you will need to use appropriate tenses.  For example:

• an aircraft is trying to land (present continuous because it is something happening at the moment the photo was taken)
• the aircraft in this picture has collided with a ground vehicle (present perfect because it is something that happened in the recent past with a result in the present)
• a ground vehicle is about to make a wrong turn that will surely cause a problem for aircraft that are landing.

The assessor might also ask you to give your opinion about the picture.

• In my opinion …
• I think that …
• It looks like …
• x seems to be …

Exercise

1. Take a look at the following picture for 30 seconds.
2. Describe it in as much detail as possible for 90 seconds
3. Explain how you think the situation occurred for 30 seconds.