Your browser has no English speech voices, so the examiner's questions cannot be read aloud. You can still run the interview by reading the questions yourself.

IELTS Speaking — Practice Test 21

⏱ 00:00
🎙️ Your recording not recording

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.

Money and saving
Are you more of a saver or a spender, would you say?
When you do save money, is it usually for something specific?
Where did you learn how to handle money — was it from anyone in particular?
Did you get pocket money as a child? What did you do with it?
Do you think you'll manage money the same way in ten years as you do now?
First jobs and part-time work
Is it common for students in your country to work while they study?
What kinds of part-time jobs do young people around you usually do?
Why do you think some parents encourage part-time work and others forbid it?
Were the jobs available to teenagers different in your parents' time?
Do you think today's teenagers will find their first jobs harder or easier to get than you did?

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 the first time you earned your own money.

You should say:

  • what you did to earn it
  • how old you were and how it came about
  • how much you earned and what you did with it
  • how the people around you reacted

and explain how earning that money felt, and whether it changed the way you think about money.

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

Examiner follow-up
Would you do that kind of work again now?
Do you remember that money more clearly than money you've earned since?
Did you tell your friends about it at the time?

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.

What do young people actually learn from earning money that they can't learn from being given it?
Examiner follow-ups
  • Does it matter how hard the work is?
  • Is there an age below which that lesson doesn't land?
Some parents pay children for household chores, others say chores are simply part of family life. Which side are you on?
Examiner follow-ups
  • Does paying for chores teach the wrong lesson about family?
  • Would you treat schoolwork the same way?
Should teenagers be free to spend the money they earn however they like?
Examiner follow-ups
  • Where would you draw the line, if anywhere?
  • Does it change if the family needs the money?
Who should teach children about money — schools or parents?
Examiner follow-ups
  • What happens to children whose parents are bad with money themselves?
  • What would a good school money lesson actually cover?
Many children today almost never see cash — money is a card their parents tap. How does that change their sense of what things cost?
Examiner follow-ups
  • Is spending invisible money easier than handing over notes?
  • How could parents make digital money feel real to a child?
Employers often complain that young people have different attitudes to work than earlier generations. Is that a real change or just an old complaint?
Examiner follow-ups
  • What might explain the difference, if it exists?
  • Is any of that change actually an improvement?
In many countries, young adults now reach financial independence much later than their parents did. What's driving that?
Examiner follow-ups
  • How does that delay change the relationship between parents and adult children?
  • Is any part of it a matter of choice rather than economics?
Is it fair that some sixteen-year-olds earn money from social media that their parents couldn't earn in a year of ordinary work?
Examiner follow-ups
  • What does that do to how their generation values ordinary jobs?
  • Should that kind of income be regulated differently?
Advertising aimed at children turns them into consumers years before they earn anything. Should governments restrict it?
Examiner follow-ups
  • Where does persuasion end and exploitation begin?
  • Or is resisting advertising a skill children simply have to build?
Some argue that growing up with some financial hardship builds better money habits than growing up comfortable. Do you buy that?
Examiner follow-ups
  • Can hardship also damage someone's relationship with money?
  • What would that mean for wealthy parents trying to raise sensible children?

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 earning story with momentum — the job, the payday, the spending — without drying up before the explain line.
  • Handles the opinionated Part 3 questions (chores, spending freedom) by taking a position immediately and building on it, rather than circling.
  • Uses natural discourse markers for a money story ("to be honest", "looking back", "at the time") instead of mechanical listing.
  • Extends answers unprompted — the cashless-children question should draw out a mechanism and a consequence, not one sentence.
  • Recovers smoothly when a number or date won't come: "it must have been… two hundred rupees, something like that" and straight on.

Lexical Resource

  • Topic vocabulary used precisely: wages, allowance, budget, splurge, thrifty, financial independence, make ends meet, disposable income.
  • Natural collocations — "earn a living", "save up for", "blow it all on", "the value of money" — not invented pairings.
  • Can discuss money without repeating 'money' every sentence: income, earnings, cash, funds, what I'd saved.
  • One authentic idiom ("money burned a hole in my pocket") lands better than five forced ones.
  • Shifts register cleanly from the childhood story to Part 3 abstractions: consumer culture, financial literacy, generational attitudes.

Grammatical Range & Accuracy

  • Past narrative under control in Part 2: past simple for events, past continuous for background, past perfect for what led up to the job.
  • 'Used to' and 'would' for childhood money habits: "I used to count it every night", "my grandmother would slip me a coin".
  • Conditionals across Part 3: "If children never handle cash, they'll…", "If I'd been paid for chores, I would probably have…".
  • Comparatives and contrast structures for the generational questions: "far later than their parents did", "whereas my father started at fifteen…".
  • Errors are rare, minor and self-corrected without derailing the sentence.

Pronunciation

  • Clearly intelligible throughout — the risk with numbers is rushing them; amounts and ages need clean stress ("two HUNdred", "at fourTEEN").
  • Contrastive stress carries the argument: "they know the price of everything but the VALUE of nothing."
  • The Part 2 story sounds lived-in — pride and amusement audible in the intonation, not a flat report.
  • Connected speech natural ("first_job", "saved_up", "couldn't_afford_it") rather than word-by-word delivery.
  • Multi-syllable topic words — independence, responsibility, generation, advertising — stressed on the right syllable.

How to develop a Band 9 answer for this test

Part 1. Answer in two to four sentences: direct answer, then a reason or a tiny example. For "Did you get pocket money as a child?" a Band 9 answer is concrete: "I did — fifty rupees a week, and it went almost entirely on cricket cards. My brother saved his, which told you everything about the two of us." Specific amount, specific purchase, a flick of humour — that's what genuine sounds like, and it can't be pre-scripted.
Part 2 — two-minute planning framework.
  1. Opening / context — how old you were, where this was, and how the chance to earn came about; one line of background ("my uncle ran a small shop…") anchors everything.
  2. The work itself — what you actually did, concretely enough to picture: the hours, the tasks, the bit that was harder than expected.
  3. Payday moment — the handover is the emotional centre; describe receiving the money ("he counted out the notes into my hand") rather than skipping to the total.
  4. What you did with it — spent, saved, gave some away; the choice you made says something, so say what it was and why.
  5. Reactions — the third and fourth bullets reward a line of reported speech: what your mother or friends actually said when they found out.
  6. Concluding reflection — answer the explain line directly: what earning felt like versus being given money, and name one way it still shapes how you handle money now.
Part 3 — Answer → Explain → Example → Alternative View → Evaluation

“Who should teach children about money — schools or parents?”

  1. Answer: take a clear position — parents first, schools as the safety net, because money habits are caught at home long before they're taught anywhere.
  2. Explain: the mechanism — children absorb how the family treats money years before any lesson; by the time a school covers budgeting, the attitudes are largely set.
  3. Example: one concrete illustration — a child who watches parents compare prices and save for things learns more from that than from a worksheet on compound interest at fifteen.
  4. Alternative view: concede genuinely — plenty of parents are themselves in debt or anxious about money, so leaving it entirely to families guarantees the children who most need the education never get it.
  5. Evaluate: land the judgement — so the honest answer is both, with different jobs: parents supply the habits, schools supply the mechanics, and the school's real role is levelling the field for children whose homes can't.

Common mistakes for this specific test

⚠️ Describing a job instead of a first earning

The cue card is about the first time — the novelty is the point. Candidates describe a part-time job in general terms and never land on the specific first payment, which is where the feelings the explain line asks about actually live.

⚠️ Vague amounts

"I earned some money and bought some things" wastes the card. The exact figure and the exact purchase — three hundred rupees, a second-hand cricket bat — are what make the story credible and give the examiner concrete language to credit.

⚠️ Skipping the reactions bullet

How people around you reacted is the bullet candidates most often drop, and it's the easiest source of natural reported speech — "my mother pretended not to be impressed, but she told the neighbours."

⚠️ One-line Part 1 answers

"Are you a saver or a spender?" answered with "A saver" forces the examiner to dig. Two to four sentences with a because — and ideally one tiny example — is the natural length.

⚠️ Reciting a prepared 'importance of money' speech in Part 3

These questions are about children, work and habits — not money in the abstract. A memorised essay on "money is important but not everything" answers none of them and the examiner hears it within seconds.

⚠️ Moralising instead of analysing

Questions about social media earnings and advertising invite sermons. "Young people these days only care about money" is a complaint, not an answer; Band 8–9 responses explain mechanisms and consequences before judging.

⚠️ Only personal examples in Part 3

Your first-salary story belongs in Part 2. Part 3 asks about generations and societies — 'many families', 'in most middle-class households' — with personal experience used only as brief illustration.

⚠️ Refusing to take sides on chores-for-pay

The chores question is a genuine debate and either side scores well. What fails is listing both positions and stopping; commit, defend, then concede the other side one fair point.

⚠️ Repeating 'money' in every sentence

The topic invites it. Vary the language: earnings, income, cash, savings, what I'd put aside, the amount — and let 'financial' carry some of the abstract weight in Part 3.

⚠️ Treating the cashless question as a technology question

It's a psychology question — what happens to a child's sense of cost when spending is a beep rather than notes leaving their hand. Reciting payment-app features misses the point entirely.

Try another test Pronunciation practice (Spoken English)