Example questions for all three parts

• Part 1: "Do you work or are you a student?" / "What do you usually do at the weekend?"
• Part 2 cue card: "Describe a skill you would like to learn. You should say what it is, why you want to learn it, how you would learn it, and explain how it would be useful to you."
• Part 3: "Do you think it's more important to learn practical skills or academic knowledge?"

Tips that actually move your band score

• In Part 1, give a full answer rather than one word — add a reason or a brief example, but don't over-extend into Part 2 territory.
• In Part 2, use the full minute of preparation time to jot down one idea for each bullet point on the cue card, then speak for the full 1–2 minutes — running out of things to say costs more than small grammar mistakes.
• In Part 3, it's fine to think out loud and explore an idea — examiners want to hear you develop an opinion, not just state one.
• Natural hesitation is fine; the score drops for long pauses or restarting sentences repeatedly, not for thinking before you speak.

Practice speaking, not just reading about it

Reading about the format only gets you so far — the band score comes from speaking practice itself. FluentFox's AI conversation partner gives you a free way to practice speaking English every day, and our dedicated IELTS course adds exam-specific speaking practice, model answers and full mock tests.