IELTS Speaking Practice with a Band Estimate
Full IELTS Speaking practice — Part 1, the Part 2 cue card with its one minute of prep, and Part 3 discussion — spoken end to end and scored against the four band criteria.
Free to start. You need a TalkDrill account to speak — reading this page does not.
The IELTS Speaking test is eleven to fourteen minutes long and it is the only part of the exam with a person on the other side. That changes what you are being measured on. Nobody is marking whether your opinion about public transport is correct; they are marking whether you can keep talking, reach for the right word without stalling, vary a sentence, and be understood by an examiner who has heard four hundred candidates this month.
The three parts test different things and are lost in different ways. Part 1 is familiar questions where candidates under-answer — three words where a sentence was wanted. Part 2 is the cue card: one minute to prepare, up to two minutes to speak alone, and the most common failure is running dry at seventy seconds. Part 3 is the discussion, abstract and argumentative, where a band 6 and a band 7 usually separate — not on vocabulary, but on whether the answer develops or restates.
Practising each part on its own is useful; practising the sequence is what builds stamina. The tests below run in order, with the real timings, and the report gives an estimated band with a line on each of the four criteria the examiner actually uses — plus the specific habit costing you the most, which for most candidates is one repeated thing rather than a general weakness.
How a IELTS Speaking session works
Part 1 — the warm-up
Familiar questions about you: work, home, routines. Short answers, but not one-word ones. The examiner is calibrating to your voice.
Part 2 — the cue card
A topic card with prompts, one minute of prep with notes, then up to two minutes speaking without interruption.
Part 3 — the discussion
Abstract follow-ups on the Part 2 theme. Opinions, comparisons and speculation, where the higher bands are decided.
Your band estimate
A score on each of the four official criteria, what pulled it down, and the habit to change before you sit the real test.
Every IELTS Speaking test in the catalogue
Ielts Part2
Objects Events
Places
People
Experiences
What you're scored on
IELTS Speaking is marked on four criteria of equal weight. The estimate reports each one separately, because they rarely move together.
Fluency and coherence
Whether you keep going, and whether the ideas connect. Hesitation while you search for a word costs less than hesitation while you search for a thought.
Lexical resource
Range and precision, including whether you can paraphrase around a word you do not have instead of stopping at it.
Grammatical range and accuracy
Variety of structures as well as correctness. All-simple-sentences and all-accurate caps out around band 6.
Pronunciation
Intelligibility, stress and intonation. Accent is not penalised; flat stress and swallowed word endings are.
IELTS Speaking practice — common questions
How long is the IELTS Speaking test?
Eleven to fourteen minutes in total: four to five minutes for Part 1, three to four for Part 2 including the one minute of preparation, and four to five for Part 3. The practice tests here follow the same timings, because pacing is part of what you are training.
What happens if I run out of things to say in Part 2?
Stopping early costs fluency marks. Use the prompts on the card as a running order rather than a checklist, and if you finish the story, extend it — why it mattered, what you would do differently, whether you would do it again. Practising the full two minutes is mostly practising that extension.
Is the band estimate the same as a real IELTS score?
No. It is an estimate against the four public band descriptors, useful for tracking whether you are moving and for finding which criterion is holding you back. It is not an official result and cannot be submitted anywhere.
Does my accent lower my band?
No. The pronunciation criterion measures whether you are easily understood — word stress, sentence stress, clear endings. A strong regional accent with accurate stress scores well; a neutral accent with flat, unstressed delivery does not.
How often should I practise?
Short and frequent beats long and rare. Three full tests a week with the report read properly moves a band faster than a daily hour of answering questions with nobody pointing out that you begin every answer with the same four words.