IELTS Speaking Part 2 is the Long Turn: 3 to 4 minutes in total, made up of one minute to prepare and roughly two minutes to speak. You get a card with a topic and three or four bullet prompts, paper and a pencil, and then you talk.
Two minutes is longer than it sounds. The candidates who run out at 50 seconds are not short of English — they are short of a structure, and the structure is what the preparation minute is for.
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| Stage | Time | What happens |
|---|---|---|
| Card given | — | Topic plus three or four bullet prompts |
| Preparation | 1 minute | You make notes on paper provided |
| Your turn | About 2 minutes | You speak; the examiner does not interrupt |
| Rounding-off | A few seconds | One or two short follow-up questions |
| Total | 3-4 minutes | — |
| Line | Write | Time to spend |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | The specific thing you will talk about — a name, a place, a date | 10 sec |
| 2 | Three keywords for the descriptive bullets | 15 sec |
| 3 | Two reasons for the “why” bullet | 20 sec |
| 4 | One contrast or complication to extend with | 10 sec |
| 5 | A closing sentence you can reach for if you run short | 5 sec |
Keywords only. A candidate who writes sentences in the preparation minute reads them aloud, and reading aloud is audible in the fluency score.
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Describe a person who has influenced your working life. You should say: |
Model answer (band 7+)
“I want to talk about a woman called Renata, who managed the depot where I had my first proper job. I was twenty-two and had been hired to do data entry, which I was doing badly because I found it dull.
She noticed within about a month, which I did not expect — she managed forty people and I assumed I was invisible. Instead of putting me on a warning she moved me onto the scheduling desk, which was the busiest and least popular job in the building, and she did it without asking me first.
What she did specifically was give me the work rather than a conversation about attitude. She said something like: you are bored, so here is something that will not bore you, and if you cannot handle it we will talk in a fortnight. That was the whole intervention.
The influence has lasted much longer than the job did. Two things stuck. The first is that being bad at a task is often a mismatch rather than a failing, and the useful question is whether the task is wrong. The second is about how she handled it — she gave me a harder job as a form of confidence, not as a punishment, and I have tried to do the same thing with people I have managed since.
I would not say we were close, and I have not spoken to her in years. But she changed the direction of what I do for a living in about four sentences, which is more than most people I know well have managed.”
| What this answer does | Where |
|---|---|
| Names a specific person immediately | First sentence |
| Covers each bullet without announcing it | Paragraphs 1-3 |
| Spends the most time on “explain how” | Paragraph 4 |
| Uses a contrast to extend | Final paragraph |
| Mixes past simple, past continuous, present perfect and conditional | Throughout |
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Describe a place you have visited that was not what you expected. You should say: |
Model answer (band 7+)
“The place I will describe is an industrial town in the north of my country called Halvorsen — not a tourist destination by any measure. I went there for a work training course, three days, entirely reluctantly.
What I expected was fairly specific and fairly negative: a grey town, a chain hotel, nothing to do in the evenings. Everyone who had been there had described it in roughly those terms, and I had no reason to doubt them.
The difference was not that the town turned out to be beautiful, because it did not. The buildings really are grim and the weather was worse than advertised. What surprised me was the food. There is a substantial immigrant population there, drawn originally by the factories, and as a result a town of ninety thousand people has better Eritrean food than the capital does. I ate somewhere different every night and every one of them was good.
The other thing I had not anticipated was how friendly it was, and I think the two are connected. It is not a place people visit, so anyone who does visit is unusual and gets talked to. In the capital nobody would ask me why I was there.
So the expectation was wrong in an interesting way rather than simply wrong. The town is exactly as unattractive as I was told. What nobody mentioned was that being unattractive had kept it from being smoothed out, and that is the part I would go back for.”
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Describe something you own that you have had for a long time. You should say: |
Answer plan — the notes a candidate would make in one minute:
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bike — steel frame, 1994, grandfather |
Six lines, about 25 words, and enough to speak for two minutes. That is the target density.
| Type | Typical bullets | Where the marks are |
|---|---|---|
| A person | who / how you know them / what they did / how they influenced you | The influence bullet — abstract language |
| A place | where / why you went / what it was like / why you remember it | Descriptive adjectives plus a contrast |
| An object | what / how you got it / how you use it / why it matters | The “why” — avoid listing features |
| An event or experience | what / when / who with / why it was memorable | Narrative tenses, then reflection |
| An activity or habit | what / how often / how you started / why you continue | Frequency language plus change over time |
Every type ends with an “explain why” bullet. That bullet is where the abstract vocabulary and complex structures come from, so it deserves about half your speaking time even though it is one bullet of four.
| Technique | Example |
|---|---|
| Be specific immediately | “a woman called Renata who managed the depot”, not “a person I used to work with” |
| Include one concrete detail per bullet | A number, a name, a piece of dialogue |
| Add a complication | “I would not say we were close, and…” |
| Compare with an alternative | “In the capital nobody would ask me why I was there.” |
| Reflect at the end | Move from what happened to what it means |
| Say the unexpected part | “The expectation was wrong in an interesting way rather than simply wrong.” |
| Problem | Why it costs you | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| Running out at 50 seconds | Too little language assessed, and it reads as limited fluency | Plan two reasons and one contrast in the preparation minute |
| Announcing the bullets | “Now I will say how I know them” wastes seconds and sounds mechanical | Move between bullets without labelling them |
| Writing full sentences in the prep minute | You will read them aloud, and it is audible | Keywords only, six lines maximum |
| Choosing an abstract topic | Hard to be concrete, so the answer stays vague | Pick a specific instance even if it fits the card imperfectly |
| Memorised answers bent to fit | Examiners recognise them and the fit is usually poor | Prepare structures, not content |
| Stopping when the card is covered | The bullets are prompts, not a finish line | Extend the “why” bullet until the examiner stops you |
One minute, with paper and pencil provided. The whole Part 2 including the follow-up questions takes three to four minutes, and your talk itself should run to about two.
Nothing formally, but there is less language for the examiner to assess and short answers read as limited fluency. Planning two reasons and a contrast during the preparation minute is what usually fixes it.
They are a suggested structure rather than a requirement. Covering them keeps your answer organised, so use them — but do not announce them, and do not stop speaking simply because you have reached the last one.
The examiner will stop you at around two minutes, which is the timing working normally rather than a signal that you have done something wrong. There is no interruption during the talk itself.
Yes. You are assessed on fluency and coherence, lexical resource, grammatical range and accuracy, and pronunciation — not on whether the events happened. A specific invented answer is easier to deliver than a vague true one.
No. Six lines of keywords is the right density — roughly 25 words. Candidates who write sentences end up reading them aloud, and the change in rhythm is audible to the examiner.
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