Describe a gift you gave to someone
IELTS Speaking Part 2 cue card: Describe a gift you gave to someone. One minute to prepare, up to two minutes to speak, then follow-up questions.
An intermediate-level session of about 8 minutes. Covers Part 2. 3 prompts in total.
Read the verb twice. The card says a gift you gave, and under pressure people drift into a gift they received, because that version is easier to recall — you were there when it was unwrapped. Giving is the harder memory to reconstruct, and the work sits in why you chose it, which forces you to say something specific about another person: what they had been complaining about for weeks, what they had lost, what they would never buy for themselves. What the gift was takes ten seconds and often gets sixty. Then the card asks how the person reacted. That reaction is the only moment here where somebody other than you gets to speak, and it is the part most often left out.
Angles worth taking
- Set the occasion in one line — a birthday, a farewell, a first salary — then move to the person.
- The reaction wants a scene: what they said, whether they opened it there, who else was watching.
- A gift that missed is better material than one that landed, if that is what actually happened.
- Where you looked for it, and how long that took, fills time honestly when the story is short.
- Say whether they still have it or still use it; a gift with an afterwards is a longer story.
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Browse all IELTS Speaking testsThe format
Parts covered
2
Prompts in total
3
Modes
Learn (guided) · Mock (exam-real)
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.
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.
Speak for 1-2 minutes with clear structure and descriptive language.
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.
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