Describe a time when you helped somebody
IELTS Speaking Part 2 cue card: Describe a time when you helped somebody. 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.
How big does the help have to be? Candidates hear this card and go looking for something heroic, an accident or a rescue, then talk about an event they barely remember. Getting a classmate through a subject they were failing, sitting with a relative at a hospital counter, walking a lost traveller to the right platform, covering for a colleague in their first week: these have what the card actually wants, which is a situation detailed enough to explain. The closing line asks how you felt afterwards, and that is where answers thin out to one adjective and stop. Relief, awkwardness, being thanked far more than you deserved, realising only later that it mattered to them: the card asks for the feeling by name, and one adjective will not cover it.
Angles worth taking
- Small, specific help beats a dramatic story you cannot remember in enough detail to describe.
- Build the situation first: what the other person could not manage alone, and why it mattered then.
- Say what you actually did, step by step, because the middle of this card runs on action verbs.
- Describe the other person's reaction as well as your own, which gives you a second angle to open up.
- Say what helping cost you, whether time, sleep, money or an exam you should have been preparing for.
- Say whether you were asked or simply stepped in, because that changes the whole shape of the 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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