Describe an elderly person you enjoy talking to

Intermediate

8 min

IELTS Speaking Part 2 cue card: Describe an elderly person you enjoy talking 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.

Think of the last conversation rather than the whole biography. A grandfather who repeats the same three stories, a neighbour on the terrace in the evening, a retired colleague who still phones on your birthday. The card asks what you usually talk about, and that middle bullet is the one answers skip in favour of age, warmth and a general sense of respect. Enjoyment is the thing to explain, and enjoyment comes from content: what they know that you do not, the way they disagree with you, the questions they ask about your life. The follow-ups take the topic outward and then forward, to young people and older people in your country, and to whether you would want to be like this person at that age. If you sat down to prepare this card, which conversation would you actually write on the paper?

Angles worth taking

Choose someone you speak with regularly, so the conversation bullet has real material behind it.
Report one topic you return to together, with enough detail that a listener could picture the exchange.
Calling them wise or kind costs seconds and shows nothing; say what they actually said to you.
Admit what you get out of it — news, old stories, advice, or plain argument about politics.
A neighbour, a grandparent and a former colleague open very different conversations, so place them first.

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The format

Parts covered

Prompts in total

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.

Your objective

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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