When you try to describe a person, your brain doesn't search for every word at once — it searches one box at a time. First you notice age. Then face shape. Then hair, height, and so on. The NIE textbook quietly arranges its appearance vocabulary into exactly six of these boxes, and once you carry them in your head you will never freeze mid-sentence again.
| Age | young · middle-aged · old · in his/her early / mid / late 30s, 40s |
|---|---|
| Face | thin · long · round · oval · square · clean-shaven |
| Complexion | fair · light-skinned · tan · pale · dark-skinned |
| Build | small · medium · average · well-built · thin / slim build |
| Height | tall · average height · short · 5'5" · about 165 cm tall |
| Other features | thin / full lips · pointed / straight nose · straight / wavy / curly hair · broad shoulders · moustache · beard · bald head |
Think of it like a small toolbox. You don't tip every tool onto the floor to fix one window — you reach into the right drawer. Six drawers, two minutes of memorising, a year of easy marks.
Look at Test 3 of nearly every past paper: you are given a picture and asked to fill in blanks describing a person or a scene (2019 — Chatura's room; 2018 — a market place; 2022 — a paddy harvest). Students who lose marks are searching a chaotic mental pile; students who score full marks reach calmly into the six drawers above.
A real conversation about someone usually does two things: it praises them warmly, and then it admits one small weakness. That praise-plus-weakness move is exactly the pattern examiners reward in Test 8 ("Write a paragraph about your best friend"): three positives, one small weakness, one quick example. Learn the two columns below not as separate lists but as a friendly palette — reach into the green side for three words, then the red side for just one.
| Positive (✓) | helpful · kind · loyal · obedient · honest · truthful · friendly · cheerful · hard-working · punctual · ambitious · confident · sociable · sensible · co-operative · generous · understanding · optimistic · outgoing |
|---|---|
| Negative (✗) | noisy · lazy · stingy · careless · untidy · wasteful · hot-tempered · selfish · shy · aggressive · oversensitive · disobedient · dishonest |
Picture this: your mother asks, "What did Sajini say?" You cannot answer with quotation marks in the air — you have to report what your friend said in your own sentence. English has one quiet rule for this: when you retell something, the verb takes one small step backwards in time. Why a step backwards? Because by the time you're retelling it, the speaking has already happened — present becomes past, past becomes past perfect.
The same step-back applies to the whole modal family: will → would, can → could, may → might, must → had to. Time-and-place words travel with them too — today becomes that day, tomorrow becomes the next day, here becomes there.
For yes/no questions, slip in if or whether. For wh- questions, keep the question word but use ordinary sentence order, not question-word order.
The recipe: a clear topic sentence (who they are), two appearance details, two qualities (a positive and an admitted weakness), one concrete example that shows the quality, and a personal closing line.
Notice the quiet recipe inside: THREE appearance words (tall, fair, curly), FOUR quality words (cheerful, friendly, hard-working, helpful), ONE concrete example (helps slow learners), ONE admitted weakness (a little stubborn). That five-part pattern is the difference between a school report and a friend describing a friend.
A notice is a tiny piece of public writing — anyone walking past the board should understand it in ten seconds. It needs a HEADLINE in capitals, a passive verb (was found — formal, not "I found"), an exact place, date and time, a brief description of the contents, and a signature with class.
The unit ends with a small magic trick: a poet fits a whole person — what he likes, fears, dreams of — into eight short lines, no more than "He is good at cricket. He is nice." If you are asked to write a creative poem about yourself, use this same eight-slot guide.
| L1 | first name |
| L2 | four adjectives |
| L3 | family + parents' names |
| L4 | three things you like |
| L5 | how you feel |
| L6 | what you fear |
| L7 | what you'd love to see |
| L8 | last name |