# IELTS Speaking: what the examiner is actually listening for

> How IELTS Speaking really works: all three parts, the four scoring criteria in plain language, a full Part 2 model answer with notes, and the 6.0 to 7.0 fixes.

Canonical: https://resources.ieltsnext.online/speaking/  
Updated: 2026-07-21 · By IELTS Next (https://ieltsnext.online)

Speaking is 11–14 minutes with a human examiner, scored live on four criteria — and your accent is not one of them. This guide walks through all three parts, a full cue-card model answer with notes, the mistakes examiners meet daily, and a practice loop that produces evidence instead of hope.

## Eleven to fourteen minutes with a real examiner

IELTS Speaking is a face-to-face conversation with a trained human examiner, and it is recorded. It lasts 11–14 minutes, runs in three parts, and can happen on the same day as your written test or up to a week before or after it, depending on the centre.
| Part | Time | What actually happens |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Part 1 — Interview | 4–5 min | Questions about familiar topics: home, work, study, hobbies, your daily routine, your hometown. Warm-up territory — but it is scored from the first answer. |
| Part 2 — Long turn | 3–4 min | A cue card with a topic and four bullet prompts. You get 1 minute to prepare notes, then speak for 1–2 minutes on your own, followed by 1–2 short follow-up questions. |
| Part 3 — Discussion | 4–5 min | Abstract questions linked to the Part 2 theme. Opinions, comparisons, speculation — this is where the examiner probes your ceiling. |
*Three parts, one conversation: interview, long turn, discussion — 11–14 minutes total.*

Two things candidates get wrong about the setting. First, the recording is not there to catch you out — it exists so your test can be re-marked if you appeal. Second, the examiner interrupting you is normal. They manage the clock, and cutting you off at the end of Part 2 says nothing about your score.

Same test for everyone

Speaking is identical for Academic and General Training. Same parts, same criteria, same examiners. Whatever module you booked, this guide applies unchanged.
## The four criteria, translated from examiner language

Your Speaking band is the average of four criteria, each worth 25%. Examiners score them separately, live, against public descriptors. Here is what each one actually measures — and what it does not.
| Criterion | What the examiner is listening for | What it is NOT |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Fluency & Coherence | Can you keep going at a natural pace, and can I follow you without effort? Long turns, ideas in a logical order, linking that sounds like speech. | Speed. Fast, breathless answers full of self-correction score lower , not higher. |
| Lexical Resource | Precise words for the idea you actually have, plus flexibility — paraphrasing when a word escapes you. | Idioms. You do not need a single one to score 7.0. A forced “it’s raining cats and dogs” costs marks; an exact everyday word earns them. |
| Grammatical Range & Accuracy | A mix of structures — conditionals, past narrative, comparatives — and stretches of speech with no errors at all. | Perfection. Band 7 allows errors; it just also demands frequent error-free sentences. |
| Pronunciation | Intelligibility first, then the music: word stress, sentence stress, intonation, chunking your speech into meaningful groups. | Accent. Your accent is not scored. Indian, Nigerian, Brazilian, Vietnamese — irrelevant, as long as the listener never has to work to decode you. |

Read that last row twice, because half the internet sells accent-reduction courses to IELTS candidates. Examiners are trained on international Englishes. What they penalise is mumbling, flat robotic delivery, and stress landing on the wrong syllable of a key word — all fixable without touching your accent.
### Sit the whole thing with an AI examiner first

IELTS Next’s live AI Speaking examiner runs a full three-part mock by voice — then hands you a word-level transcript and a pronunciation report so you can see exactly where fluency broke and which words the mic lost.

[Try a Speaking mock free](https://ieltsnext.online/register?utm_source=resources&utm_medium=guide&utm_campaign=speaking)
## Part 1: two to three sentences, every time

Part 1 questions are deliberately easy — “Do you work or study?”, “What do you like about your hometown?” The trap is answering them like small talk. “Yes, I work” is a complete answer in real life and a scoring disaster in this room, because a one-word answer gives the examiner nothing to assess.

The working rule: answer, then extend with a reason or a detail, then stop. Two to three sentences. “I work — I’m a paediatric nurse at a public hospital. I mostly do night shifts, which sounds hard, but the ward is calmer and I get more time with each patient.” That is ten seconds of speech and it has already shown tense control, precise vocabulary and a natural linker.

Do not swing to the other extreme either. A ninety-second Part 1 answer reads as not understanding the format, and it steals time from Part 3, where the higher-band evidence lives.

Teacher’s rule

In Part 1, every answer gets a “because”, an “although” or a “for example” — one of the three, then finish the sentence and stop talking. Rehearse the habit until it is automatic.
## Part 2: one minute of prep, two minutes of proof

The cue card names a topic and gives four bullet prompts. The bullets are a gift: they are a ready-made structure. Speak to them in order and your Coherence mark largely takes care of itself.
### What to do with the one minute

Do not write sentences — you will read them aloud in a flat voice and the examiner will hear it. Write four quick notes, one per bullet, each just enough to reboot your memory mid-talk. Spend the final ten seconds deciding your *closing sentence*, because candidates who know how they will finish do not trail off into silence at the 90-second mark.
### A full worked example

CUE CARD — DESCRIBE A PERSON WHO TAUGHT YOU SOMETHING IMPORTANT

Describe a person who taught you something important. You should say: who the person is; how you know them; what they taught you; and explain why it was important to you.
**One-minute plan (four notes):** *grandmother — school holidays, her garden — patience, seed diary — changed how I study*

I’d like to talk about my grandmother, who taught me something I still use every single day — how to be patient with slow progress. I know her better than almost anyone, because I spent most of my school holidays at her house when I was growing up.

She kept a vegetable garden behind the kitchen, and when I was about ten she gave me one corner of it to look after. What she actually taught me, though, wasn’t gardening. I wanted my seeds to come up within a week, and when they didn’t, I dug half of them up to check. She didn’t get angry — she just said we’d plant the row again together, and this time we’d keep a diary instead of digging. So on every visit we wrote down what had changed, even when it looked like nothing had.

Looking back, that little notebook changed how I deal with anything slow — including preparing for this exam. When my practice scores stayed flat for a month, I didn’t panic and switch methods; I kept my records and waited for the line to move. So that’s why she matters to me: she showed me that progress is usually invisible while it’s happening , and that my job is simply to keep showing up.
**Why this scores:** It walks the four bullets in order, so the examiner never loses the thread (Fluency & Coherence). The story runs on past narrative tenses — *gave, wanted, dug, didn’t get angry* — with a clean shift to present for the reflection (Grammatical Range). Linking is spoken, not essayed: *though, so, looking back* — no “moreover” in sight. And it lands on a planned closing sentence instead of fading out, which is exactly what the one-minute plan was for. Around 200 words: comfortable pace for a 1½–2 minute turn.

Notice what the model does not do: it never lists (“first… second… third…”), never recites impressive vocabulary, and never leaves a bullet unanswered. Ordinary story, told in order, finished on purpose. That is a high-band Part 2.
## Part 3: opinion, reason, example — then stop

Part 3 lifts the Part 2 theme into the abstract: “Do you think schools teach patience?”, “Is technology making people less patient?” These questions have no right answer. The examiner wants to watch you build a position out loud.

Use a three-move shape for every answer: give your opinion in the first sentence, give one reason, then ground it in an example — and let the example be ordinary. “My cousin”, “at my office”, “in my city last year” all outscore invented statistics, because examiners assess development, not evidence.

Buying-time phrases are legal, and at 7.0+ they are expected — but only the honest kind. “That’s not something I’ve thought about before — my instinct is…” is real communication. A memorised “That is indeed a multifaceted issue with myriad dimensions” is filler wearing a suit, and it drags Lexical Resource down.

If you don’t understand the question

Ask. “Sorry — do you mean in education, or in general?” costs you nothing and is itself natural interaction. Answering the question you wished you’d been asked costs Coherence marks every time.
## Five mistakes examiners meet every single day
- Memorised answers. Examiners are trained to spot recitation — the pace flattens and the eyes go elsewhere. When they suspect it, they redirect: “Interesting — but tell me about a time that didn’t work.” The script collapses, and what’s left is a candidate with no practised speaking at all. Prepare topics and stories, never scripts.
- Confusing speed with fluency. Fluency & Coherence rewards continuity and followability. Racing produces more errors, more self-correction and worse chunking — three of the four criteria go down at once.
- Whispering and mumbling. If the examiner strains to hear you, Pronunciation is scored on what they could decode. Speak to the person, not to the desk. Volume is the cheapest band-saver in this test.
- One-word Part 1 answers. “Yes.” “Cricket.” “Since 2019.” Each one is a scoring window you closed yourself. Two to three sentences, every time.
- Asking to change the Part 2 topic. You can’t — there is no second card. If the topic feels alien, adapt it: “a person who taught you something” can be a stranger, a boss, a character you read about. The examiner marks language, not the truth of the story.
## A practice method that actually moves the band

Speaking to yourself in the mirror is rehearsal, not practice, because nothing gets measured. This loop takes about 20 minutes a day and produces evidence:
- Record a two-minute talk daily. Take any past cue card, one minute of notes, then record on your phone. Non-negotiable: recorded, timed, no restarts — the discomfort is the training.
- Transcribe it and count. Type out exactly what you said, fillers included. Count the “uh”s, the abandoned sentences, the word you repeated eight times. Most candidates discover one filler carrying half their hesitation — you can only kill what you can count.
- Shadow a native speaker for stress. Take 30 seconds of clear speech — a podcast, an interview — and speak along with it, matching stress and intonation, not just words. Ten minutes of shadowing does more for sentence stress than an hour of theory.
- Band your own recordings weekly. Once a week, score a recording against the four criteria yourself, in writing. You will be wrong at first and sharper every week — and the habit of hearing your speech as an examiner does is the point.
### Stop guessing what your recording is worth

Speak on IELTS Next and the AI examiner scores you on the four real criteria, with a word-level transcript that shows every filler, restart and mispronounced word — the transcribe-and-count step, done for you.

[Get my Speaking band](https://ieltsnext.online/register?utm_source=resources&utm_medium=guide&utm_campaign=speaking-2)
## From 6.0 to 7.0: what actually changes

The 6-to-7 jump in Speaking is not vocabulary. Side by side, the descriptors separate on four behaviours:
- Longer coherent turns. A Band 6 speaker keeps going but wanders; a Band 7 speaker holds a two-minute turn where each sentence follows from the last. Practise extending answers by one linked idea at a time.
- Flexible linking. Not more connectors — better-fitting ones. “Which is why”, “even so”, “the thing is” — spoken linkers, deployed where the logic actually turns.
- Less self-correction. Band 6 speech corrects itself constantly; Band 7 lets small slips go and keeps the message moving. Perfectionism is a fluency tax — train yourself to finish the sentence anyway.
- Clearer chunking. Band 7 pronunciation groups words into meaningful phrases with stress on the words that carry the message. Shadowing builds this faster than anything else on this page.

The honest timeline

Moving 6.0 to 7.0 in Speaking is typically a 6–10 week project at 20 focused minutes a day — record, transcribe, shadow, re-band. It is rarely faster, and it does not happen from silent study at all.
## Sit a full three-part Speaking mock tonight

IELTS Next’s live AI Speaking examiner takes you through Part 1, the cue card and Part 3 by voice, then scores all four criteria — with a word-level transcript and a pronunciation report showing exactly which habits are holding your band down.

[Start free on IELTS Next](https://ieltsnext.online/register?utm_source=resources&utm_medium=convert&utm_campaign=speaking)

[Next: Listening →](https://resources.ieltsnext.online/listening/)

Free to start · no card required
## Keep going

[### Writing Task 2 The other examiner-marked module — same four-criteria logic, on paper. Read the guide →](https://resources.ieltsnext.online/writing-task-2/)

[### Listening Four parts, 40 questions, one playback — the timing and traps explained. Read the guide →](https://resources.ieltsnext.online/listening/)

[### IELTS for nurses Why NMC and AHPRA care so much about your Speaking score. See the requirements →](https://resources.ieltsnext.online/ielts-for/nurses/)

## Frequently asked questions

**Can I ask the examiner to repeat a question?**

Yes — in Part 1 and Part 3, “Could you say that again?” is fine and costs nothing. In Part 3 you can also ask for clarification (“Do you mean in education specifically?”). What you cannot do is ask the examiner to explain vocabulary in Part 1, or change your Part 2 topic. Asking naturally, occasionally, is itself normal interaction; asking after every question signals a listening problem.

**Does my accent affect my Speaking score?**

No. Accent is not on the marking criteria. Pronunciation is scored on intelligibility — whether the examiner can understand you without effort — plus word stress, sentence stress and intonation. Examiners are trained on international varieties of English. Mumbling, flat delivery and misplaced stress cost marks; sounding like where you come from does not.

**What if my mind goes blank on the Part 2 topic?**

Adapt the topic rather than freezing on it — the examiner marks your language, not the accuracy of your story. “A person who taught you something” can be a teacher, a stranger, a boss, even someone from a book. If you truly have nothing, talk about why the topic is hard for you and what the nearest experience was; continuous, coherent speech on an adjacent angle scores far better than long silence on the exact one.

**Is it OK to pause and think before answering?**

Short, natural pauses are fine — everyone thinks. What hurts Fluency & Coherence is long silence or constant mid-sentence stalling. Bridge honestly while you think: “That’s not something I’ve considered before — my first instinct is…” buys three seconds and counts as communication. A memorised time-buying speech does the opposite.

**Is Speaking on the same day as the written test?**

Sometimes. Listening, Reading and Writing run together in one sitting of about 2 hours 45 minutes; Speaking is scheduled the same day or up to a week before or after, depending on the centre. Computer-based centres usually keep everything on one day. Check your booking confirmation — and do not book travel assuming same-day until you see the schedule.