Speaking exams

IELTS Speaking Part 2 is two minutes you can rehearse

The examiner hands you a card with a topic and a few bullet points, gives you a minute to make notes, and then you talk on your own for up to two minutes while they say nothing. The topics change every time. The shape never does, which is what makes this the most rehearsable part of the whole test.

What actually happens

You are given the card
A topic, then three or four bullet points telling you what to cover. You also get a pencil and paper. The bullets are prompts, not a checklist you have to tick off in order.
One minute to prepare
Long enough for keywords, not for sentences. Anyone who tries to write out what they will say runs out of time and then reads it aloud, which sounds exactly like reading aloud and is marked accordingly.
One to two minutes talking
You speak alone. The examiner will not help you, will not react, and will stop you somewhere between one and two minutes. Being stopped is a good sign. It means you were still going.
One or two follow-up questions
Short ones, on the same topic, answered in a sentence or two. Then the examiner moves on to Part 3. The whole of Part 2 takes three to four minutes including the preparation.

Test format as published by the exam board on their own site, checked August 2026. Formats are revised from time to time and vary by grade or module, so confirm the current rules with the board before you sit it. ConvoLive is not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by any examining body.

Two patterns worth having ready

Opening, so you never start cold

I'd like to talk about something that happened a couple of years ago, when I was still living with my parents. It's probably not the most exciting example, but it's the one that comes to mind.

This buys you fifteen seconds while your brain catches up, and it costs nothing because it is natural speech rather than a memorised formula. Notice it also sets a time and a place, which gives you somewhere to go next.

Stretching, for when you dry up early

Looking back, I think it mattered more than I realised at the time. If the same thing happened now, I'd probably handle it completely differently, because I'd know what to expect.

When the story runs out, move in time. What it meant then, what you would do now, what you expect later. Every card can be extended this way and it sounds like reflection rather than padding.

Where the marks go

Writing sentences in the preparation minute

Reading from notes is audible and it is penalised. Five or six keywords is the right amount, because it forces you to build the sentences live, which is the thing being measured.

Stopping at forty-five seconds

The single most common way to lose a band here. Silence at fifty seconds is scored as an inability to sustain speech, even if everything you said was correct. Aim to be interrupted.

Racing through the bullet points

Answering all four in twenty seconds leaves you with a minute and forty to fill and nothing left. Treat the first bullet as the story and the rest as places to go if you need them.

How to practise the long turn

Reading model answers does almost nothing for this task, because the difficulty is not knowing what a good answer looks like. It is producing one, alone, at speed, with a clock running and nobody helping. Take one card, set a timer, and say it out loud four times. The first will die at forty seconds. By the fourth you will be reaching for the follow-up. Then change the card and do it again, because what you are training is the shape, not the topic.

What this will not do for you

This is rehearsal, not assessment. There is no band score here, and nothing will tell you whether an answer would be marked a 6 or a 7. IELTS scores lexical resource, grammatical range, coherence and pronunciation as separate criteria, and none of them are measured here. You can get completely comfortable with the long turn and still lose marks on something this never looked at. What it removes is the reason most people never rehearse out loud at all.

Rehearse it out loud

Free, and the first run can be as bad as it needs to be. Nobody is listening.

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