Describe an item of clothing you wear often

Intermediate

8 min

IELTS Speaking Part 2 cue card: Describe an item of clothing you wear often. 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.

A shirt you actually wear has evidence on it: a faded collar, a button replaced with one that does not match, a sleeve stretched from being pushed up all summer. That evidence is what separates an answer about clothes from an answer about your clothes, and it is why the honest choice beats the impressive one. The card then opens outwards on its own. Where you got it usually involves a person or a particular shop, when you wear it is really a description of your week, and why you wear it so often comes down to comfort, weather, or how you want to look at work. The follow-ups ask outright whether you care about clothes and whether you would take comfort over fashion. If someone asked you to describe what you have on right now, how far would you get before running out?

Angles worth taking

Take the thing you wore yesterday rather than the smartest thing hanging in your cupboard.
Where you got it is a small story: a market, a gift, a cousin's cupboard, a first salary.
Tie when you wear it to your routine: office days, long journeys, winter mornings, weddings you dread.
Push past comfortable to why comfort matters, whether a long commute, a hot afternoon or a fixed uniform.
Say what you wear it with, and what you stopped wearing once you had it.

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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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