IELTS Speaking — full 3-part simulation
A full IELTS Speaking test: Part 1 (familiar questions), Part 2 (cue-card long turn), Part 3 (discussion).
An intermediate-level session of about 15 minutes. 5 prompts in total.
The join to watch for comes right after your long turn. The examiner asks one short question about what you just said, you answer it in a sentence, and then, with no announcement at all, the questions stop being about you. “Do people in your country still do that?” — and the story you spent two minutes building is suddenly no use. Candidates who keep reaching back for it give narrower and narrower answers while the questions get broader. Sat back to back, the three parts are an exercise in rationing. The long turn takes most of what you brought, the discussion that follows lands when you are least fresh, and Part 1 is gone before you were properly warm. Most people have rehearsed the long turn and left the other two alone — so which of the three have you actually practised least?
Angles worth taking
- In Part 1 a bare yes or no hands the question straight back to you; add the reason unasked.
- Once the questions go general, let your own experience be one example among several rather than the whole answer.
- If a question is genuinely too broad, say what it depends on and then narrow it to something you can defend.
- A follow-up asking what you meant is the discussion continuing; take it plainly and try the idea again in other words.
- There is no pause between parts, so do not spend the next set of questions reviewing how the last went.
Who is in the room
You play
An IELTS test candidate
You speak with
A calm, neutral IELTS examiner
Ready to speak?
Free to start. You need a TalkDrill account to speak — reading this page does not.
Browse all IELTS Speaking testsThe format
Prompts in total
5
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.
Demonstrate fluency, range, accuracy and clear pronunciation across all three parts.
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.
More IELTS Speaking tests
All IELTS Speaking tests · Ielts tests · All speaking practice