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IELTS Speaking — Practice Test 2

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Part 1 — Introduction and interview (4–5 minutes)

Answer each question aloud in 2–4 natural sentences. Press 🔊 to hear the examiner ask it. Don't script — react.

Food and cooking
What's the one meal in your week you genuinely look forward to?
Who does most of the cooking where you live — and how did that arrangement come about?
Is there a dish you've learned to make properly? Who or what taught you?
Do you eat the way your grandparents' generation ate, or has that changed in your family?
Twenty years from now, do you think people will still cook at home much, or will most meals arrive ready-made?
Public spaces in your town
Is there a park, square or market in your town that you keep going back to?
When you meet friends somewhere other than your homes, where do you usually end up?
What makes a public place somewhere people actually want to linger, in your view?
Have the public spaces where you live changed much since you were a child?
If your town could build one new shared space, what do you think it needs most?

Part 2 — Individual long turn (3–4 minutes)

You have one minute to prepare (make notes!) and should then speak for one to two minutes. Use the timers — the discipline is the practice.

Describe a useful object you own that you would find hard to replace.

You should say:

  • what it is
  • how you got it
  • how you use it
  • why replacing it would be difficult

and explain what this object says about what you value, and whether you think you own too many or too few things.

You will have one minute to prepare and should speak for one to two minutes.

Examiner follow-up
Do you carry it with you, or does it stay in one place?
Would the people close to you know how much it matters to you?
Have you ever come close to losing it?

Part 3 — Two-way discussion (4–5 minutes)

These get harder as they go. Build answers with: Answer → Explain → Example → Alternative view → Evaluation. Open the follow-ups only after you've answered — that's what the examiner asks when an answer is thin.

Why do people grow attached to particular objects, even quite ordinary ones?
Examiner follow-ups
  • Is it really the object they're attached to, or something the object stands for?
  • Does that attachment change as people get older?
When something breaks these days, do people around you tend to repair it or simply replace it?
Examiner follow-ups
  • What's driving that behaviour, do you think?
  • Was it different for your parents' generation?
What part does advertising play in making people feel that what they already own isn't good enough?
Examiner follow-ups
  • Can you think of a product category where this is especially visible?
  • Are some groups of people more exposed to this than others?
Some people now deliberately try to own as little as possible. What do you think draws them to that way of living?
Examiner follow-ups
  • Is it a realistic option for most people, or something of a luxury in itself?
  • Could it ever become the norm rather than the exception?
Buying second-hand goods once carried a certain stigma in many places. Is that changing where you live?
Examiner follow-ups
  • What's behind the change, if there is one?
  • Are there things people still wouldn't buy second-hand?
Do possessions still signal status the way they once did, or has something else taken over that role?
Examiner follow-ups
  • What might be replacing them, if anything?
  • Does this differ between generations?
Manufacturers are sometimes accused of designing products to wear out quickly. Should governments force companies to make things that last longer, even if prices rise?
Examiner follow-ups
  • Who would bear the cost of a rule like that?
  • Is there a downside you can see to longer-lasting products?
Is it fair to expect individual shoppers to consume responsibly, or does that responsibility really sit with companies and governments?
Examiner follow-ups
  • Can individual choices make any measurable difference here?
  • Where exactly would you draw the line between the two?
Where is the line between valuing your possessions and being defined by them?
Examiner follow-ups
  • How would someone even know they'd crossed that line?
  • Do societies as a whole cross it, or only individuals?
Some predict that future generations will own far less — streaming, renting and sharing instead of buying. If that happens, will life be better, worse, or just different?
Examiner follow-ups
  • What might be quietly lost in a world where little is owned outright?
  • Who stands to gain most from that shift?

What a Band 8–9 performance should demonstrate

Judge your recording against the four official criteria. An accent is not required — clarity is.

Fluency & Coherence

  • Sustains the full two minutes on a single object without padding — the story moves from how it was acquired to why it matters without circling back.
  • Uses natural spoken connectors for a personal history ("the funny thing is", "to this day", "at the time") rather than essay signposts.
  • Handles the double-barrelled explain line — what the object says about your values AND whether you own too much — without forgetting the second half.
  • In Part 3, moves smoothly from a personal object to society-level talk about consumer habits; the examiner shouldn't have to drag the abstraction out of you.
  • Buys thinking time on the harder policy questions in English ("That's a tricky one, because…") instead of stalling.

Lexical Resource

  • Precise topic vocabulary: sentimental value, irreplaceable, wear and tear, built to last, throwaway culture, planned obsolescence, declutter, hand-me-down.
  • Natural collocations — "it's seen better days", "I'd be lost without it", "good as new", "on its last legs" — used where they genuinely fit.
  • Distinguishes near-synonyms the topic invites: possession vs belonging, valuable vs priceless, thrifty vs stingy, consume vs acquire.
  • Can talk about food and public places in Part 1 with everyday specificity (simmer, street vendor, a shaded bench) rather than vague nouns like 'stuff' and 'place'.
  • Shifts register cleanly for Part 3: consumerism, disposable income, status symbol, the second-hand economy — without sounding like a memorised economics lecture.

Grammatical Range & Accuracy

  • Present perfect for ownership across time is under control: "I've had it since university", "it's been repaired twice".
  • Relative clauses carry the object's history densely: "the watch my grandfather bought in Bombay, which still keeps perfect time, …".
  • Hypotheticals do the heavy lifting in the explain section: "If I lost it tomorrow, I could buy another one, but it wouldn't be the same."
  • Comparatives and concession structure the consumerism questions: "Things are cheaper than ever, and yet…", "However convenient renting is, …".
  • Passive voice appears naturally when talking about manufacturing and regulation ("products are designed to fail", "companies should be required to…").

Pronunciation

  • Clearly intelligible throughout — accent is irrelevant; dropped final consonants in words like 'possessed' and 'replaced' are not.
  • Contrastive stress lands where this test needs it: "I could replace the THING, but not what it MEANS to me."
  • Weak forms keep the policy questions fluent: 'should be required to' runs together naturally rather than word by word.
  • Multi-syllable topic words — consumerism, obsolescence, deliberately, irreplaceable — stressed on the right syllable.
  • Intonation warms up for the personal story in Part 2 and levels out for measured Part 3 analysis, instead of one flat tone throughout.

How to develop a Band 9 answer for this test

Part 1. Answer in two to four sentences: direct answer first, then a reason or a tiny concrete detail. For "Is there a dish you've learned to make properly?" a Band 9 answer names the actual dish and its small story ("Dal tadka, oddly enough — my mother refused to write the recipe down, so I stood next to her for a month of Sundays until I could do it by feel") rather than the generic "Yes, I can cook many dishes." React to the question asked; don't unload a prepared speech about food culture.
Part 2 — two-minute planning framework.
  1. Opening / identification — name the object in the first sentence and give it one vivid physical detail, so the listener can picture it before the story starts.
  2. Acquisition story — how it came to you: bought, inherited, gifted, found. This is where the past tenses live, and where the object starts carrying meaning.
  3. Use in daily life — one or two genuinely specific routines ("it's the first thing I reach for when…"), not a catalogue of features.
  4. The replacement problem — separate the two kinds of difficulty explicitly: practical (cost, availability, things stored in it) and emotional (who gave it, what it's been through with you).
  5. Values reflection — say plainly what the attachment reveals: that you prize usefulness over novelty, memory over money, or whatever is actually true for you.
  6. Concluding judgement — answer the cue card's final question head-on: too many things or too few, in one honest sentence with a reason.
Part 3 — Answer → Explain → Example → Alternative View → Evaluation

“When something breaks these days, do people around you tend to repair it or simply replace it?”

  1. Answer: commit to an observation — e.g. replacement has quietly become the default, and repairing now feels like the unusual choice.
  2. Explain: give the mechanism — repairs cost nearly as much as new goods, spare parts are scarce, and the hours spent finding a repairer feel more expensive than the object itself.
  3. Example: one concrete illustration — a phone with a cracked screen or a torn kurta: name what actually happens to it in households you know, and who (a tailor, a local electrician) is disappearing as a result.
  4. Alternative view: concede genuinely — for some things the calculation flips: vehicles, expensive appliances, anything under warranty, and in lower-income households repair is still the norm, not a lifestyle statement.
  5. Evaluate: land a judgement — the repair-or-replace choice turns out to be about economics and infrastructure more than personal virtue, which suggests where the fix would have to come from.

Common mistakes for this specific test

⚠️ Choosing an object with no story

"My phone, because it has my contacts" gives you thirty seconds of material. The cue card rewards an object with history — how you got it and why replacing it is hard are two of the four bullets. Pick the thing with a past, not the newest thing you own.

⚠️ Ignoring the second half of the explain line

The card asks what the object says about your values AND whether you own too many or too few things. Most candidates never touch the second question, and it's precisely where the reflective, Band 8–9 language lives.

⚠️ Listing features instead of use

"It has a great camera, long battery life, 256 gigabytes…" is an advertisement, not an answer. The bullet says how you USE it — describe the moment in your day it belongs to.

⚠️ One-word Part 1 answers about food

"Who cooks at home?" answered with "My mother." wastes the easiest scoring ground in the test. Add the how and the why — two to four sentences — before the examiner has to prompt you.

⚠️ Reciting an environment essay in Part 3

The consumerism questions brush against waste and sustainability, and memorised climate-change paragraphs surface immediately. The questions here are about ownership, status and behaviour — answer those.

⚠️ Treating 'minimalism' as automatically good

The question asks what draws people to owning less, and the follow-up whether it's a luxury in itself. Candidates who just praise minimalism miss the more interesting — and higher-scoring — tension the examiner is offering them.

⚠️ Only personal examples in Part 3

"I once repaired my cycle…" belongs in Part 2. Part 3 asks about people in general — 'in most middle-class households', 'among people my age' — with a personal case used only as brief illustration.

⚠️ Repeating 'buy new things' endlessly

The topic invites it. Vary the language: upgrade, replace, splash out on, get rid of, hold on to, trade in, do without.

⚠️ Dodging the policy question

"Should governments force companies to make longer-lasting products?" needs a position. "Both sides have merit" with no landing is Band 6; take a stance, concede the strongest objection, and still land.

⚠️ Panicking at the 'defined by possessions' question

The line-drawing question near the end is meant to be hard. A slower, thought-aloud answer ("I suppose the test would be…") scores far better than a rushed platitude about money not buying happiness.

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