Free IELTS Speaking Practice Test

How IELTS Speaking is marked

The Speaking test is the same for Academic and General Training. It is a face-to-face conversation with an examiner, recorded, and lasting 11 to 14 minutes. The examiner gives you a band from 1 to 9 for each of four criteria, and they count equally:

• Fluency and coherence: how long and how smoothly you can keep talking, and how clearly you link your ideas.
• Lexical resource: the range and accuracy of your vocabulary, including less common words and natural collocations, and how well you paraphrase.
• Grammatical range and accuracy: whether you use a mix of simple and complex sentences, and how many of them are error-free.
• Pronunciation: how easy you are to understand: word and sentence stress, intonation, rhythm and individual sounds. An accent is not a problem as long as it does not make you hard to follow.

Your overall Speaking band is the average of the four, rounded to the nearest half band.

How to answer each part

Part 1 (4–5 minutes). Short questions about you and familiar topics. Give a direct answer, then add a reason or an example: two or three sentences is the right length. More in how to make a strong first impression in Part 1.

Part 2 (3–4 minutes). You get a topic card and one minute to prepare, then you talk for up to two minutes. Use the minute to note keywords, not sentences, and plan a small story for each point on the card. Aim to keep going until the examiner stops you. More in how to talk for two minutes without drying up.

Part 3 (4–5 minutes). A discussion of more general, abstract questions linked to the Part 2 topic. Give your opinion, explain why, then add an example, a comparison or the other side of the argument. More in how to handle abstract questions with confidence.

What the automatic fluency check measures

When you finish, the page measures your recordings in your browser: how many seconds you actually spoke in each part, how long your Part 2 talk lasted, how often you paused for three seconds or more, and how quickly you started each answer. Those are the habits behind the Fluency and coherence score, and they are easy to improve once you can see them.

It does not judge your grammar, vocabulary or pronunciation, and it does not give you a band. Your recordings never leave your device: nothing is uploaded or stored by us. For a full assessment against all four criteria, a teacher needs to listen to you.

The questions in this practice test

Part 1: introduction and familiar topics

1. Let's talk about what you do. Do you work, or are you a student?
2. Why did you choose that job, or that subject?
3. What's the most difficult part of it for you?
4. Now let's talk about mornings. Are you a morning person?
5. What do you usually do in the first hour after you wake up?
6. Is your morning routine different at the weekend?
7. Let's move on to talk about walking. Do you walk much in your daily life?
8. Where do you like to go for a walk?
9. Do you think people walk less nowadays than they did in the past?

Part 2: the long turn

You have one minute to prepare and up to two minutes to speak. Then the examiner asks a short follow-up question: Do you still use this skill very often?

Part 3: discussion

1. Let's consider, first of all, learning practical skills. What practical skills do you think every young person should learn?
2. Is it better to learn a skill from a teacher, or to teach yourself using videos online?
3. Why do you think some people give up when they're learning something new?
4. Let's move on to talk about skills and work. Which skills do you think will be most important for jobs in the future?
5. Should employers pay for their staff to learn new skills, or is that the employee's own responsibility?
6. Some people say that machines will soon do most practical jobs. How far do you agree with that?