How to Describe your Teacher in English

What to say about your teacher?

You see this person every day, but how to talk about them? What do you know about your teacher that you can talk about for more than one minute?

Talking about your teacher is a common question in the IELTS speaking test. It could come up in part one, two or three, so you need to be prepared when talking about your teacher.

Want to know what to say? And how to say it all?

Dive right into my guide here and I will show you how to do it.
Ready? Let’s begin.

The Basics

You need to start with some basic general ideas about your teacher. Think about the following questions:

What is his or her name?

Is your teacher a man or a woman?

What subject do they teach?

Do the students like this teacher?

This can serve as a great introduction of who your teacher is and what subject he or she teaches.

Let’s look at some examples…

My teacher is called Mr Jones. But we sometimes call him Peter in class. He teaches us physics. The students like him because he does lots of experiments in class, which makes it more interesting.

Miss Hanes is my English teacher. She is great and all my class love her very much. When she talks about novels or plays, we have to read in class she always sounds very passionate about the stories and the writers.

It is very simple. You start off with an easy introduction, like one of the examples above.

Why don’t you try?

Take a look at the questions and write out a few sentences as an

introduction for your teacher.

General Descriptions of your Teacher

You should describe your teacher’s physical appearance.

But this is not really so important for your talk. You only need to describe how tall your teacher is and then some general descriptions about the teacher’s face, hair, and other physical attributes.

I will show you some examples below:

Mr Clarke is our English teacher. He is quite tall and slim, and he has blonde hair. He wears the same jacket to class every day. But he doesn’t wear very formal clothes like the other teachers. He wears jeans and sports shoes.

Miss Evans is our chemistry teacher. She is a bit overweight and has dark brown hair which she ties up in class. She wears glasses for reading, which she wears on a chain around her neck. Because she is our chemistry teacher, she always wears a white lab coat.

Mr Davis is our maths teacher. He is kind of serious and he always wears a dark suit in class. He has a beard, which makes him look even more serious.

Mr James is our political affairs and history teacher. He is overweight and a little short. He often wears a white shirt and a tie with striped on it. He is losing his hair, and most of it is going grey now. He frowns a lot when we look at some world events in class.

That is all you have to say when describing your teacher’s physical appearance.

The emphasis should really be on the subject your teacher teaches and how he teaches you all in class.

If you want to practice how to talk about someone’s physical appearance, please check out my article here — How to Describe Someone’s Physical Appearance in English.

What Subject Does the Teacher Teach?

The main topic of this talk should be about the subject your teacher teaches in class and whether or not he or she is a good teacher.

You need to show examples of how the teacher teaches — their style and their personality in the classroom. You can do this by sharing some anecdotes in your talk.

Let’s say, for example, that you are talking about your English Literature teacher.

How does this teacher teach novels, plays and poetry in the class?

What style does he teach in?

What kind of personality does the teacher have? And is this useful in the class — or not?

Is the teacher interested in what he or she is teaching? Do they have a passion for the subject? Or are they boring?

These are some questions you can think about to help you talk about this part.

Let me show you some examples:

Miss James teaches us English Literature. We all love her class because even though some of the poems and plays are kind of boring, she really knows how to make it interesting for us.

For example, one semester we were studying Romeo and Juliet. We read most of the play, but because it’s Shakespeare, it’s really hard to understand. So she let us watch the movie with Leonardo DiCaprio. It really helped us to get into the play.

Mr Jackson is our chemistry teacher. Who always seems a bit crazy, like a mad professor or something like that. When we do experiments in class, he always acts surprised like he has never seen it before. It makes the class much more fun for us rather than going over boring equations.

Miss Evans teaches social science. She makes the class very interesting by bringing in real-world examples for us to look at. She also has a great sense of humour and makes us laugh all the time. Her classes are never dull.

What about your teacher? What subject do they teach and how do they teach this subject in class?

Is this teacher interesting or boring? And what do they other students think of them?

Stories about your Teacher

Of course, the best way to describe your teacher is to tell a short story or anecdote about them. This can really help you in the IELTS test.

I have said this many times before in other articles, but it really is a superb way to introduce any person. If you want to take a look at my articles on how to use storytelling, you can find them here.

How to Tell a Story

Using Stories to Describe People & Things in the IELTS Test

If you can remember a little story about your teacher, just tell that in the test. This will help you describe many things about your teacher.

Here are some examples:

One time we had to read Lord of The Flies in class with our English teacher, Mr Angus. Before we read the passage from the book, Mr Angus put us all in the mood for the story. He made us close our eyes and try to imagine what it would be like stuck on a desert island and trying to survive. He created a scene and told us to think about it for a few seconds. Then when we read from the book, we all felt as if we were really on the desert island. With no water or food and no adults around to help us. He is really good at making us get into the story. He doesn’t just make us read the book and expect us to fully understand it. He is like a guide, leading us through it.

Mr Reid is our physics teacher. He arranged a field trip to the science museum in London and all our class went there for the day. It was a really great day out. One, we didn’t have to stay in class — but the main reason was that it was so much fun.

Mr Reid let us go round the whole museum by ourselves and just explore all the exhibits inside. At the end of the day, we were all exhausted and fell asleep on the bus back to school.

But then the next time we had class with Mr Reid, he asked us what we had found in the science museum. He made us think of all the things we had discovered and how it related to what we had done in class.

We had to think long and hard to remember all the different exhibits in the museum.

Can you think of any interesting stories about your teacher?

If you can, take some time to write it down and then try to recite it out loud.

Stories are very useful in the IELTS test.

Conclusion

When talking about your teacher in the IELTS test, you should place more importance on what subject the teacher teaches and how he teaches you in class.

You can do this by taking a look at the examples I wrote above.

Another very useful thing to do is to think of stories about your teacher. The examiner loves to hear stories in the IELTS test.

If you can do this, you are more likely to get a higher score.

Good luck and let me know in the comments below!