Describe a shop or market you enjoy going to
IELTS Speaking Part 2 cue card: Describe a shop or market you enjoy going to. 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.
The card offers two things and most people take the first without noticing there was a choice. A shop gives you shelves, a counter and possibly one person who knows your name. A market gives you a walk from one end to the other, fifty stalls, a negotiation, and different produce depending on the month. Both are permitted; the second simply has more inside it. The bullet that collapses here is how often you go there, because a single frequency word — weekly, every Sunday — is over in a second and a half. Turn it into a routine instead: who you go with, what you always buy, the hour you pick to avoid the rush. Enjoy is the card’s own word, and it is asking for evidence rather than adjectives.
Angles worth taking
- Walk the examiner through it — what you pass first, where you stop, where you turn back.
- A seller who recognises you earns a line of actual dialogue, however ordinary the exchange was.
- Seasons change a market: mangoes in summer, flowers before a festival, umbrellas the week the rain starts.
- Say what you buy and where it sits: the third stall on the left, nearest the gate.
- Money is concrete detail: what you paid, what you refused to pay, and where you stopped bargaining.
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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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