This is true, but I've noticed that in practice, Chinese or Japanese trying to identify characters to each other (rather than look up an unfamiliar character in a dictionary) tend to draw rather than list the components.
I think it depends mostly on how hard the explanation is or how available paper is.
I had a friend of mine show me how to explain how to write her name in Japanese. There are even special names for the different radical forms (e.g. ninben vs. ningen).
