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 something you hope to achieve in the next five years.
You should say:
- what you hope to achieve
- when you first started wanting this
- what you are doing now to work towards it
- what difficulties you expect along the way
and explain why this goal matters so much to you, and how you would feel if you achieved it.
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
- Has that measure changed since your parents were young?
- Do men and women get measured by the same yardstick?
Examiner follow-ups
- Is it simply because money is easy to count?
- What would a better measure look like in practice?
Examiner follow-ups
- Is that pressure heavier now than it was a generation ago?
- At what point does encouragement turn into pressure?
Examiner follow-ups
- Harmful to the ambitious person, or to the people around them?
- How would you tell healthy ambition apart from the harmful kind?
Examiner follow-ups
- Why do you think successful people tend to underestimate the role of luck?
- Does believing in luck make people passive?
Examiner follow-ups
- What's the cost of that belief for people who work hard and still fail?
- Who does that belief let off the hook?
Examiner follow-ups
- Why do we compare ourselves with strangers online but not with, say, our neighbours?
- Is this comparison worse for any particular age group?
Examiner follow-ups
- Why is early success so celebrated?
- What gets lost when we glorify the young achiever?
Examiner follow-ups
- What might success mean at seventy that it can't mean at twenty-five?
- Why do some people struggle to update their definition?
Examiner follow-ups
- Is that a legitimate goal for a government, or manipulation?
- Which country, if any, seems closest to getting this right?
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 Part 2 answer for the full two minutes by moving through the goal's story — origin, current work, expected obstacles — instead of circling the same wish.
- Talks about the future goal without drying up on abstractions: concrete next steps and named obstacles give the speech somewhere to go.
- In Part 3, takes a position on luck versus effort and holds it across several sentences, conceding a point without losing the thread.
- Uses natural signposting for a hoped-for future — "the plan, at least for now, is…", "assuming that works out…" — rather than 'firstly, secondly'.
- Recovers gracefully when a thought stalls: "how do I put this — it's less about the money and more about proving I can" keeps fluency credit intact.
Lexical Resource
- Goal vocabulary with precision: aim for, work towards, milestone, setback, long shot, within reach, give something up, see it through.
- Natural collocations — "a realistic goal", "raise the bar", "fall short", "pay off", "a stepping stone" — used where they belong, not sprinkled.
- Part 3 shifts into evaluative register without strain: aspiration, meritocracy, status, fulfilment, burnout, benchmark, external validation.
- Distinguishes near-synonyms the topic tempts you to blur: a dream you drift towards, a goal you plan for, an ambition that drives you.
- One well-placed idiom — "put all my eggs in one basket", "keeping up with the Joneses" — lands better than five recited from a list.
Grammatical Range & Accuracy
- Future forms are varied and controlled: "I'm hoping to", "by 2030 I'll have finished", "if all goes well, I should be running it myself".
- The 'when you first wanted this' bullet invites past-to-present structures: "I've wanted this since I watched my aunt argue a case in court."
- Conditionals carry the obstacles bullet: "If the funding falls through, I'll have to scale it back — but even a smaller version would count."
- Comparative structures organise Part 3: "the more we broadcast our wins, the smaller everyone else's life looks."
- Concessive openers keep balance on the pressure questions: "However well-meant it is, parental ambition can shade into living through your children."
Pronunciation
- Genuine wanting is audible — stress and warmth on the goal itself, not a flat recital of a five-year plan.
- Contrastive stress carries the luck-versus-effort answer: "effort decides how FAR you go; luck decides where you START."
- Weak forms keep future structures fluid: 'going to' compresses naturally, "I'll have finished" doesn't become three equal beats.
- Multi-syllable topic words stressed correctly: amBItion, aCHIEVEment, comPARison, fulFILment, meriTOCracy.
- A measured drop in pace on the reflective questions — what success means at seventy — reads as thought, not hesitation.
How to develop a Band 9 answer for this test
- Name the goal precisely in the first sentence — "I want to open a small tutoring centre in my hometown" gives the examiner a concrete anchor; "I hope to be successful" gives them fog.
- Trace the origin — the moment or influence that planted it: a person, a failure, a book, a job you hated. Origins are where the past tenses live in an otherwise future-facing card.
- Show the work already happening — the course you enrolled in, the money you're setting aside, the Saturday mornings it costs. Present continuous and present perfect carry this stage.
- Name the obstacles honestly — the exam pass rate, the loan, the parent who thinks it's a mistake. A goal with no expected difficulties sounds invented, and the difficulties bullet is on the card.
- Explain why it matters at a level deeper than money — independence, proving something, repaying someone. This is where the answer earns its 'and explain' section.
- Close on the feeling of achieving it — one vivid imagined moment ("putting the signboard up with my father watching") beats a paragraph of abstract happiness.
“Some people say success is mostly luck, others say it's mostly effort. Where do you stand?”
- Answer: take a genuine position — e.g. effort is real but overrated, because it operates inside limits that luck has already drawn.
- Explain: give the mechanism — where you're born, your family's income, even your health decide which doors exist; effort only decides which of the existing doors you walk through.
- Example: make it concrete — two equally hardworking students, one with a quiet room and fibre broadband, one sharing a single room with four siblings; same effort, different odds.
- Alternative view: concede honestly — within any given set of circumstances, effort is the one variable you control, and people who obsess over luck often use it as permission to stop trying.
- Evaluate: land the judgement — so the useful attitude is a double standard: judge yourself as if it's all effort, judge others as if it's mostly luck. Societies that get this backwards become cruel.
Common mistakes for this specific test
"I hope to be successful and happy" collapses within forty seconds because there's nothing to say about it. The card needs a goal with parts — steps you're taking, obstacles you expect. Specific and modest beats grand and empty every time.
The fourth bullet asks what difficulties you expect. Candidates skip it to sound confident, and the answer loses both a required bullet and its most interesting material. Naming the obstacle is not weakness — it's content.
A goal has a past: when you started wanting it and why. Answers that live entirely in 'I will' rob the examiner of the past and present-perfect evidence the card deliberately invites — and rob the story of its roots.
Candidates who borrow a goal they think examiners like — usually 'to improve my English' — produce thin, detail-free answers, because there's no real Saturday-morning effort or family argument behind it. Real goals generate real language.
"My only weakness is that I work too hard towards my many goals" reads as rehearsed and evasive. The Part 1 questions about abandoned teenage goals and childhood free time are invitations to be human — take them.
You achieve a goal or reach a target; you don't 'win' a goal. You earn money or respect. These are the topic's core verbs, and mixing them in Part 2 is a visible Lexical Resource leak on the exact vocabulary being sampled.
"As we say, hard work is the key to success" is a conversation-ender, not an argument. The examiner is testing whether you can weigh two causes — a memorised saying signals you can't, or won't.
Some candidates insist ambition is purely good, suspecting a trap. There is no trap. The question rewards a distinction — say, ambition that feeds on comparison versus ambition anchored in craft — and punishes flat denial.
"My cousin compares herself on Instagram" is a fine illustration, but the question is about how social media changed self-judgement across society. Band 8–9 answers generalise first, then use the cousin as evidence.
The final question asks what a state could do about how success feels — shorter hours, celebrating trades, valuing care work. Sliding into a prepared complaint about politicians abandons the actual question, and coherence goes with it.