IELTS-Speaking Test Sample Questions

Objectives of the IELTS Speaking is to evaluate your ability to communicate verbally using English language. The factors used to evaluate your communication skills is certainly not to be underestimated. To achieve a decent score, you have to demonstrate a good understanding of the instructions and IELTS Speaking Questions given to you. Your responses also need to be clear and have a direct relationship with topics in the questions. If you want to score better, the grammar, tenses and vocabulary you use must be as precise as possible. In addition, it is very important to talk with confidence, without repeating the contents of your own words or the questions from the examiner, because this can give an impression that your English-speaking skill is not very strong. Have you done these things and you still need to achieve higher scores? Then you shouldn’t forget to do these 6 tips below when answering IELTS Speaking questions:

• Share your opinions or personal thoughts coherently, along with the supporting facts,

• Use a variety of idioms and uncommon phrases available in English language,

• Keep your tempo, avoid talking too fast or too slow,

• Use different voice intonations to create appropriate effects. For example, you might want to sound decisive or firm when you’re giving a direct answer, or sound curious and inquisitive when you’re telling a question,

• Use various conjunctions and complex sentence structures to show your English skills,

• And do not forget to give a relevant conclusion in the end of your discussion.

Major key in achieving the maximum score is none other than the perfect preparation of your spoken English skills which preferably started long before the test day. Even though you may feel like you’re already fluent in speaking English, it is possible that there are some communication techniques that you missed and prevent you from showing your best appearance. This way, you risk your score to become less satisfactory as a result. Therefore, it is important to do the speaking exercises correctly before it’s time for you to be ushered to the test room and have the real discussions with your examiner.

Like other exam preparation training us with various examples of questions, a good speaking practice will require a sample set of IELTS Speaking questions that have officially been used in the test. Within the 11-14 minutes time duration of Speaking exam, you will be given questions which are divided into three parts. To support your practice, we have provided some sample questions for the three parts as follow.

Part 1-Introduction and interviews

(The first part of the test always starts with a brief introduction by the examiner followed by verification of the candidate’s identification.)

Let’s talk about your home town or village.

1. What kind of place is it?

2. What’s the most interesting part of your town/village?

3. What kind of jobs do the people in your town/village do?

4. Would you say it’s a good place to live? (Why?)

Let’s move on to talk about accommodation.

5. Tell me about the kind of accommodation you live in?

6. How long have you lived there?

7. What do you like about living there?

8. What sort of accommodation would you most like to live in?

Part 2 – Individual Long Turn

(in the second part of the test, you will be given Candidate Task Card which is a card that contains a particular topic or task.)

Examples of IELTS Candidate Task Card contents:

Describe something you own which is very important to you.

You should say:

- Where you got it from

- How long you have had it

- What you use it for

And explain why it is important to you.

You will be given a one-minute allotted time to digest it and then discuss according to the task from the card for 1-2 minutes)

Part 3 – Two-way discussion

In this part, you will expand the topics in part 2 to discuss with the examiner. Here you should be able to hold an interactive session of questions and answers while explaining the supporting points of your views and opinions. You can see a set of sample questions as follows.

Let’s consider first of all how’s people’s values have changed.

- What kind of things give status to people in your country?

- Have things changed since your parents’ time?

Finally, let’s talk about the role of advertising.

- Do you think advertising influences what people buy?

Based on the Speaking Questions samples provided by IELTS Essentials from IDP, you can now understand how the Speaking tests will be conducted and practice the best way to answer. If possible, do the speaking test simulation with someone who can foster an interactive or back and forth discussion. To make it feel like a real simulation test, the whole of your exercise session should be done in English.

For both Academic and General Training test modules, you will have the same Speaking test, one-on-one with a certified examiner. For more information about IELTS Speaking, click here.