Speaking
Describe a piece of equipment you use belongs to a small but awkward group of cue cards: the ones that ask you to explain a process rather than tell a story. That changes the grammar you need, from narrative past forms to sequencing, imperatives and conditionals. The model answer below chooses something deliberately ordinary, because the object is not what is being assessed.
Describe a piece of equipment you use
You should say:
and explain how to use it.
Before you read any further, do the task properly. One minute of notes, two minutes of speaking, recorded. A model answer is far more useful once you have produced your own and can hear the difference.
Read this aloud once you have recorded your own attempt, ideally recording the model as well. Listen back to both and compare your pace and your intonation rather than your vocabulary. The gap is usually smaller than candidates expect on words and larger than they expect on delivery.
I have been asked to talk about a piece of equipment, so I am going to choose something almost everybody will be familiar with, which is a laptop. I use mine mostly for email, but also for writing, particularly when I have a report or something long to put together, because I can organise my thoughts far more clearly on a screen than I ever could with a pen and paper. I take it with me most days, although I do not use it for long stretches, because the battery will not last more than a few hours unless I can find somewhere to plug it in. Like most people I do the smaller things on my phone now, so the laptop is not always on.
As for how you use it, the first step is obvious enough — you have to turn it on, and depending on the machine that can take longer than you would like. What you do next depends entirely on why you are using it, so I will describe connecting to the internet, since that is what most people want first.
Once it has started up, you click the wireless icon, which is usually at the bottom or the top of the screen, and a list of available networks appears. If you have connected to that network before, you can skip this entirely, because the machine remembers and connects on its own. If it is the first time, you select the network and it will almost certainly ask you for a password. Once you have entered that, it can take up to a minute, and then a small notice appears telling you that you are online. After that you type the address you want into the bar at the top, or if you are not looking for anything in particular you type a word or two and let the search engine deal with it.
None of that is difficult, and yet a surprising number of people find it so. I think that is less about the technology than about confidence — people are afraid of breaking something, so they do not experiment, and not experimenting is precisely what stops them learning.
As for how you use it tells the examiner the answer is moving from description to instruction. Explicit transitions are cheap to learn and are assessed directly under coherence.
The first step… What you do next… Once it has started up… After that… A process answer needs sequencing language, and using more than just then is what lifts it.
If you have connected before… If it is the first time… Any process has branches, and describing them supplies first conditionals without any effort at all.
The last paragraph steps back and offers an explanation for why people struggle. This is the evaluation the examiner wants, and it also prepares the ground for a Part 3 discussion about technology and age.
Take the structures, not the content. An answer copied wholesale is audible within a sentence, and examiners hear memorised material constantly. These patterns can be attached to anything.
Describe a machine you use at home.
and explain how it works.
Describe something you own that is useful.
and say how you would replace it.
Describe a piece of technology you find difficult.
and say what would make it easier.
Describe something you have taught someone to do.
and say how well it went.
Quick question, 10 seconds
Where do you want to study or move to?
When are you planning to go?
How far along are you?
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Thanks. That helps.
Back to your practice.