What the three parts are doing
Part 1 lasts four to five minutes and covers familiar topics: where you live, what you study, food, weather, hobbies. The questions are easy on purpose. Their job is to settle you and to give the examiner a fluency sample, so one-word answers waste the easiest marks on the paper.
Part 2 is the long turn. You get a cue card, one minute to prepare with paper and pencil, and then you speak alone for one to two minutes. The examiner will not help you and will stop you at two minutes. This part exists to see whether you can sustain speech without support.
Part 3 is a four to five minute discussion of broader questions connected to the Part 2 topic. It is the hardest part and the one that separates band 6 from band 7, because it asks you to generalise, compare, speculate and justify rather than describe.
The four criteria in plain terms
Fluency and Coherence is whether you keep going and whether your answer holds together. Hesitation while you search for an idea is normal and barely penalised. Hesitation while you search for the language is what costs you.
Lexical Resource is whether you have the words for the topic, including the ability to paraphrase when you do not. Saying I cannot remember the word, it is the thing you keep documents in is better than stopping, because it demonstrates exactly the strategy the criterion rewards.
Grammatical Range and Accuracy asks for variety, not perfection. A candidate producing conditionals, relative clauses and a range of tenses with a few slips scores above a candidate producing flawless simple sentences.
Pronunciation is about being understood, not about sounding British or American. A Nepali accent is not a penalty. Individual sounds that change meaning, flat sentence stress and unclear word endings are.
Why memorised answers are a trap
Examiners are trained to identify rehearsed speech and it is easy to spot. The delivery changes: the rhythm smooths out, the fillers disappear, the vocabulary jumps a level and then drops back the moment an unexpected question arrives.
The penalty lands on Fluency and Coherence, which is a quarter of your Speaking band. Worse, a memorised answer usually stops fitting the question after the first sentence, because the examiner asked something slightly different from the version you learned.
Preparing ideas is not the same as memorising answers. Thinking through what you would say about your hometown, your studies and a skill you learned is useful. Writing out a paragraph and learning it is not.
Practise it now
This is the speaking paper from Academic Practice Test 1. Everything is free and nothing needs an account.
Part 1 4 to 5 minutes
Introduction and familiar topics
The examiner will check your identity, then ask questions about yourself on two or three everyday topics. Answer in two or three sentences. One-word answers give the examiner nothing to assess, and long speeches get interrupted.
- 1Let's talk about where you live. Do you live in a house or an apartment?
- 2What do you like most about the area you live in?
- 3Is there anything you would like to change about it?
- 4Now let's move on to talk about study. Are you working or are you a student?
- 5Why did you choose that subject?
- 6What is the most difficult part of what you are studying?
- 7Let's talk about food. Do you prefer eating at home or eating out?
- 8Has the food you eat changed since you were a child?
- 9Do you think people in your country eat more healthily than they used to?
- 10Let's talk about weather. What kind of weather do you like best?
- 11Does the weather ever affect what you do at the weekend?
- 12Is the weather where you live different from when you were younger?
Record yourself and listen back
Almost nobody enjoys this and almost everybody improves from it. You will hear the repetition, the fillers and the sentences that trail off, and those are exactly what the examiner hears.
What lifts your band on this part
- Answer, then extend. Do you live in a house or an apartment? becomes: An apartment, on the fourth floor. I actually prefer it to a house because there is far less to maintain, though I do miss having any outdoor space. That is a complete Part 1 answer.
- The tense in the question tells you the tense in the answer. Has the food you eat changed asks for the present perfect and an implied comparison, so answer with has become or these days compared with when I was younger.
- Do not save your best vocabulary for Part 3. The examiner is scoring from the first minute, and Part 1 is where fluency is easiest to demonstrate because the topics are familiar.
- It is fine to say you have no strong view. I have never really thought about it, but I suppose is a natural, high-scoring opening. Inventing an opinion you cannot support usually produces worse language than admitting uncertainty.
A worked answer
Examiner: What do you like most about the area you live in?
Candidate: Probably how quiet it is, which is not something I would have said five years ago. It is right at the edge of the city, so it takes me a while to get anywhere, but in the evening you can actually hear birds rather than traffic. And there is a decent tea shop about two minutes away, which sounds trivial, but I go there most mornings, so it matters more than it should.
Read this for the shape of the answer, not the words. Reciting a memorised response is penalised under Fluency and Coherence, and examiners identify it easily because the delivery changes.
Five things that move your speaking band
- 1
Answer, then extend, in Part 1
Two or three sentences. Give the answer, then a reason, a contrast or a small detail. An apartment, on the fourth floor, and I prefer it to a house because there is less to maintain is a complete Part 1 answer.
- 2
Write nouns, not sentences, in your Part 2 minute
Four or five words under each bullet. Anyone who writes sentences ends up reading them aloud, and reading aloud is audibly different from speaking.
- 3
Give the last cue card bullet half your time
The bullet beginning with explain is where the language range lives. The first three bullets can be handled in forty seconds between them.
- 4
Hedge in Part 3
It depends largely on, I would imagine, that is probably truer of some cases than others. Qualification is what an academic discussion sounds like, and flat assertions leave you nowhere to develop.
- 5
Record yourself for two minutes a day
It is uncomfortable and it works faster than anything else. You will hear the repeated words, the trailing sentences and the fillers, and those are precisely what the examiner hears.
Mistakes that cost the most marks
- Giving one-word answers in Part 1 because the questions seem too simple to develop.
- Reciting a memorised Part 2 answer, which is penalised under Fluency and Coherence.
- Stopping at ninety seconds in the long turn instead of speaking until you are stopped.
- Answering Part 3 questions with personal anecdotes when the question asked about society in general.
- Trying to sound British or American instead of speaking clearly in your own accent.
- Filling silence with erm rather than a natural phrase such as that is a difficult one, let me think.
Common questions about IELTS Speaking
- Is the IELTS Speaking test on the same day as the written test?
- Not usually. It is commonly scheduled within a few days either side, and both providers in Nepal tell you the slot when you book. Occasionally it falls on the same day.
- Does my accent affect my IELTS Speaking score?
- Not in itself. Pronunciation is marked on how easily you are understood. A Nepali accent is not a penalty. Unclear word endings, flat sentence stress and sounds that change meaning are what cost marks.
- What happens if I have nothing to say about the cue card topic?
- Invent something. Nobody is checking whether it is true and there is no reward for accuracy about your own life. Talking fluently about an imagined answer scores far above hesitating over a real one.
- Can I ask the examiner to repeat a question?
- In Parts 1 and 3, yes, and doing so naturally is fine. In Part 2 the examiner will not discuss the cue card with you once the long turn has started.
- How long should I speak in Part 2?
- Until the examiner stops you at two minutes. Running out at ninety seconds is much more common than being cut off, and it is the more damaging of the two.
Reviewed 2026-07-28. Test format and scoring information is checked against ielts.org and the two providers operating in Nepal.