Write about the photo asks you to describe an image in at least one sentence, with about a minute on the clock. The Duolingo English Test is not looking for a creative caption: it wants accurate, complete sentences with visible grammar, so a reliable sentence pattern is worth more than an original idea.
Start with a person and a present continuous verb: ‘A woman is carrying a box across a car park.’ That single move gives you a subject, a tense and a place in one sentence, which is more grammar on display than ‘There is a woman.’
‘In the background, two cyclists are waiting at a crossing.’ Foreground, background, on the left and behind her are the four phrases that cover almost any image.
Use ‘it looks as if’, ‘she seems to be’ or ‘probably’. Hedging is accurate English and it protects you from a wrong guess about what the photo shows.
Do not spend the final seconds hunting for a better word. Finish the sentence you are in, add a full stop, and check the verb agrees with its subject.
Person + present continuous + place. Then: In the background / On the left + second clause. Then a hedged sentence about the situation. Three sentences, always the same skeleton, always different words.
Look for a person doing something. If there is no person, look for the object that explains the scene. Listing five unrelated details reads worse than describing one thing properly.
‘Stall’, ‘pavement’, ‘queue’ and ‘scaffolding’ are precise and safe. A rare word you cannot spell is a risk with no reward, because accuracy is visible and vocabulary range is only partly visible in three sentences.
Stay in the present. Mixing ‘is walking’ with ‘walked’ in three sentences is a clear error that costs more than any extra detail gains.
Open any photo, set sixty seconds and type. Do five a day for a week and the template becomes automatic, which is the whole point: on test day you want to be choosing words, not structure.
Not thisA man **stand** next to a red car.
ThisA man is standing next to a red car.
The photo shows an action in progress, so the present continuous is the natural tense — and the missing auxiliary is a basic error the marking will notice.
Not thisThere is many people in the street.
ThisThere are many people in the street.
‘There is’ before a plural noun is the most frequent slip in timed description, because candidates start the sentence before they know how it ends.
Not thisThe man is a doctor.
ThisThe man seems to be a doctor, or he may work in a hospital.
Stating what you cannot see risks being wrong. A hedge is both safer and better English.
Not thisWriting one three-word phrase because time ran out.
ThisWriting one complete sentence you can finish comfortably.
A fragment gives the marking almost nothing to work with. One finished sentence beats two unfinished ones.
Not thisIn the photo I can see many **things** and **stuff**.
ThisIn the photo I can see market stalls, crates of fruit and a set of scales.
Vague nouns waste the one chance you have to show vocabulary. Name three specific objects instead.
Not thisA woman is walking her dog. Yesterday it **rained**.
ThisA woman is walking her dog. The ground looks wet, so it has probably been raining.
Mixing tenses in a three-sentence answer is very visible. Stay in the present and hedge the past with ‘has probably been’.
Not this**Peoples** are waiting at the bus stop.
ThisPeople are waiting at the bus stop.
‘People’ is already plural. ‘Peoples’ exists but means nations or ethnic groups, which is never what a photo task needs.
Not thisSpending twenty seconds looking for the perfect opening word.
ThisStarting with your template and improving the second sentence instead.
A minute is short. Time spent deciding how to begin is time not spent producing the language you are being marked on.
40 original questions. The first 10 are open to everyone. Answers are checked in your browser and never sent to us, so you can share this page with a class as it is.
1Complete the sentence with one word.
3Complete the sentence with one word.
5Complete the sentence with one word.
7Complete the word.
8Imagine a photo of a busy market stall with a vendor weighing fruit. Write two sentences you could produce in one minute.
One good answer
In the foreground, a vendor is weighing oranges on a set of scales. Behind him the market looks crowded, and it seems to be early in the morning because the stalls are still being set up.
10Complete the sentence with one word.
12Complete the sentence with one word.
14Complete the word.
16Write the three-sentence skeleton you will reuse for any photo, using an empty street as the example.
One good answer
A man is walking along an empty street. On the left, a row of shops is still closed. It looks as if the photo was taken early in the morning, because there is almost no traffic.
17Complete the sentence with one word in the -ing form.
21Complete the sentence with one word.
23Complete the word.
25Complete the sentence with one word.
27Complete the sentence with one word.
28Imagine a photo of builders putting up scaffolding outside an old house. Write three sentences in one minute.
One good answer
Two builders are putting up scaffolding outside an old brick house. On the left, a van is parked with its back doors open, and tools are lying on the pavement. It looks as if the work has just started, because most of the frame is still on the ground.
30Complete the word.
32Complete the word.
34Complete the sentence with one word.
36You have written ‘There is many people in the street’ with fifteen seconds left. Write the corrected sentence and one more sentence to finish.
One good answer
There are many people in the street. Most of them are carrying bags, so it looks as if the shops have just opened.
37Complete the sentence with one word.
Note
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Aim for two or three complete sentences. One finished sentence meets the requirement; three finished sentences show more range, but only if they are accurate, so never start a fourth you cannot finish.
A wrong guess is not a grammar error, but it can make your description incoherent. Hedge with ‘seems to be’ or ‘looks as if’ and the problem disappears.
Use precise vocabulary, not rare vocabulary. ‘Stall’, ‘queue’ and ‘pavement’ are precise and safe; a word you are not sure how to spell is a risk you do not need to take.
Describe the main object and the setting, then hedge about the situation: ‘An empty classroom is set out with rows of desks. It looks as if the lesson has not started yet.’ The grammar you show is the same.
It can be. If you type slowly, cut to two sentences and keep them accurate rather than leaving a third unfinished. Practising with a timer tells you which of the two you are.
More than one, and they come quickly. That is why a fixed three-sentence skeleton matters: you reuse the structure and change only the content.