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.
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 an occasion when something made you laugh a lot.
You should say:
- when and where this happened
- who you were with
- what it was that made you laugh
- why you found it so funny
and explain whether you still laugh about it now, and what it would take to explain the joke to someone who wasn't there.
You will have one minute to prepare and should speak for one to two minutes.
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.
Examiner follow-ups
- Can a friendship survive without shared humour?
- Why do inside jokes feel so bonding?
Examiner follow-ups
- Is anything universally funny?
- What gets lost first — the words or the context?
Examiner follow-ups
- Why do those in power often fear ridicule more than criticism?
- Are there limits you'd defend even in a free society?
Examiner follow-ups
- Can the same joke be both, depending on who tells it?
- Where does teasing between friends fit?
Examiner follow-ups
- Should a boss try to be funny?
- Why does the same joke land differently between colleagues and between a manager and a junior?
Examiner follow-ups
- Does that mean the people who laughed then were worse people?
- What might today's comedy look like to audiences in thirty years?
Examiner follow-ups
- Who should make that decision?
- Does the answer change for material aimed at children?
Examiner follow-ups
- Is 'it was just a joke' ever a fair defence?
- Does that licence come with any responsibility?
Examiner follow-ups
- Why might people's defences drop when they're laughing?
- Can you think of a risk in mixing comedy and serious persuasion?
Examiner follow-ups
- What would be lost if humour became globalised?
- Which kind of comedy travels best, in your experience?
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
- Tells the Part 2 story with momentum — setup, the moment it tipped into helpless laughter, the aftermath — instead of a flat 'it was very funny' summary.
- Recovers gracefully when the story is hard to convey: "you probably had to be there, but let me try" keeps the floor rather than abandoning the anecdote.
- Moves from personal anecdote to social analysis in Part 3 without stalling — from 'my friend's terrible timing' to what ridicule does to the powerful.
- Extends the hard questions unprompted: on jokes ageing badly, a strong candidate reaches 'so what does that reveal?' before the examiner asks.
- Doesn't dodge the sensitive questions about offence and censorship with silence — a careful, thinking-aloud answer beats a safe non-answer.
Lexical Resource
- Rich humour vocabulary in active use: burst out laughing, couldn't keep a straight face, in stitches, witty, deadpan, punchline, an in-joke.
- Separates near-synonyms cleanly: funny vs fun, joke vs prank, teasing vs mocking, sarcastic vs ironic.
- Part 3 register shifts to the abstract naturally: ridicule, satire, self-deprecating, offence, censorship, taboo — without sounding swallowed from a textbook.
- Paraphrases around gaps — if 'satire' is missing, "comedy that attacks the powerful by imitating them" carries the idea.
- Collocations are real: "the joke fell flat", "couldn't help laughing", "take a joke" — not invented pairings like 'do a laugh'.
Grammatical Range & Accuracy
- Past narrative machinery works under laughter: "We'd been sitting there for an hour when…", "By the time he realised, everyone had already…".
- Handles 'the harder I tried, the worse it got' structures — comparative correlatives are natural to this story and impressive when clean.
- Present perfect for the lasting-joke question: "We've been laughing about it for years", "It's become a kind of shorthand between us".
- Modals of speculation in Part 3: "a joke like that might have seemed harmless then", "audiences may well find our comedy dated too".
- Concessive and conditional structures for the censorship question: "Even if a joke offends some people, banning it would…".
Pronunciation
- Stays intelligible while animated — the story invites speed, and Band 8–9 candidates let the pace rise without losing word endings.
- Uses timing as a tool: the small pause before the story's turning point is pronunciation-as-delivery, and examiners hear it as control.
- Stress lands on the words that carry the contrast: "laughing WITH someone versus laughing AT them".
- Multi-syllable topic words stressed correctly: hilarious, ridiculous, comedian, sarcastic, controversial.
- Intonation genuinely varies between the lively anecdote and the measured Part 3 analysis — one flat tone for both costs marks.
How to develop a Band 9 answer for this test
- Opening / context — set the scene fast: when, where, who was there, and the mood before it happened, so the laughter has something to break.
- Build-up — the ordinary situation the moment grew out of; comedy lives in contrast, so let the listener see the normality first.
- The moment — what actually happened, told concretely and in sequence; one line of quoted speech or one precise physical detail does more than five 'it was so funny' claims.
- Why it landed — the card asks why it was so funny; name the mechanism: the timing, the person it happened to, the week you'd all been having.
- The aftermath — the failed attempts to stop laughing, the joke resurfacing for days; this shows the scale of the laughter better than adjectives can.
- The reflection — answer the explain-part directly: whether it still makes you laugh, and why the story never quite works on people who weren't there — what the retelling loses.
“Some people say you can judge how free a society is by what its comedians are allowed to joke about. Do you agree?”
- Answer: take a clear position — broadly yes; comedy is a fast, honest gauge of where a society's real red lines sit.
- Explain: give the mechanism — a joke about the powerful requires the joker to feel safe from them, so the range of permitted targets maps the range of permitted dissent; laughter is also public and contagious, which makes it harder to police than a pamphlet.
- Example: one concrete illustration — political satire runs nightly on television in some countries, while in others a comedian can face charges over a single sketch about a leader; same profession, entirely different risk.
- Alternative view: concede genuinely — the test isn't perfect: some free societies have strong social taboos comedians avoid without any law forcing them, and offence-driven backlash online can silence jokes the state never would.
- Evaluate: land the judgement — so the sharper version of the test is not what comedians joke about, but what happens to them afterwards; a society where the joke costs a career or a court date fails it regardless of what's written in the constitution.
Common mistakes for this specific test
Some funny moments are purely visual and die in words. If the story only works with 'you had to see his face', choose a different occasion — one with a sequence of events you can actually narrate.
"It was so funny, we laughed so much, it was really hilarious" is one idea in three costumes. Spend those sentences on what happened — the examiner will supply the amusement if the telling is concrete.
The card asks you to describe laughter, not produce it. Candidates who chase the examiner's laugh rush the story and mangle grammar. A calm, precise telling of a genuinely absurd moment scores higher than a performance.
This card's explain-part — what it would take to convey the joke to an outsider — is unusual, and most candidates never touch it. It's a gift: it invites exactly the reflection on context and shared history that Band 9 answers are made of.
True, and empty. If every question gets 'well, it depends, everyone is different', there's no position for the examiner to credit. Say what it depends on — power, context, audience — and argue it.
A party is fun; a comedian is funny; 'my friend is very fun' is the single most common slip this topic produces, and it appears within the first minute. Fix it before test day.
Referencing a local comic is fine — Band 9 answers do it — but two sentences of unexplained fandom communicate nothing. One line on what their humour does ('he mimics exactly how officials talk') makes the reference work.
Candidates panic and produce the blandest possible line: 'jokes should never hurt anyone'. The questions ask for reasoning about licence, power and context — a thoughtful position, even a cautious one, outscores a platitude.
A chuckle is human and costs nothing; dissolving into giggles mid-sentence for thirty seconds costs fluency. If the memory is that strong, pause, smile, take a breath, and finish the sentence.
It almost never survives, and the silence after it is brutal. If you mention a joke from your culture, describe why it's funny rather than performing the translation — which, usefully, is exactly what the cue card's final part asks about.