In IELTS Speaking Part 2 the examiner hands you a printed cue card, then takes it back about four minutes later. One topic line, three or four bullet points, one minute to prepare, one to two minutes to talk. Outside the exam the same term means an actor’s prompt card, so this page settles that […]

IELTS Speaking questions follow one shape: the same subject at three depths. Part 1 asks “Do you like music?”, Part 2 hands you a cue card reading “Describe a concert you attended”, and Part 3 asks why musical taste changes. This page counts the questions, covers the unmarked introduction, and lists the Part 1 topics […]

The examiner hands you a printed task card and gives you one minute of preparation with paper and a pencil. Then you talk alone for one to two minutes, and the examiner closes with one or two rounding-off questions. That shape is IELTS Speaking Part 2, the individual long turn: three or four printed points […]

Google’s own AI Overview on connectors for IELTS Speaking tells you to avoid moreover and furthermore, then says you can use and, but and because as often as you like. The official band descriptor settles which rule is right. A connector is marked under Fluency and Coherence, not under vocabulary, so the only thing that […]

IELTS Speaking Part 3 runs four to five minutes, and neither test owner publishes how many questions it holds. The examiner takes the theme of your Part 2 card, turns it away from you towards people in general, and keeps pushing until the time is gone. IDP describes this two-way discussion as a test of […]

An examiner never counts your words. What gets marked is whether each word fits the thing you are describing, and that judgement carries the name Lexical Resource. IELTS Speaking vocabulary runs on two axes, not one. There is topic lexis for the themes that keep coming back, and there is the functional phrase set that […]

A band-9 cohort at IELTS Advantage averaged 1.2 idioms across the whole test, and many of those students used none at all. What the examiner hears is a fixed phrase whose meaning is not the sum of its words, and it either lands naturally or announces itself as a memorised phrase. Lexical Resource rewards idiomatic […]

Eleven to fourteen minutes, three parts, one examiner. You arrive, your photo ID goes through an ID check, and then you talk: Part 1, a Part 2 card with one minute of preparation, then Part 3, all of it recorded. Four marking criteria produce the band, not five, and the IELTS Speaking test format sets […]

Four to eight weeks of short daily practice moves IELTS Speaking by one band, and seven days only stops you losing marks you already had. A preparation routine that works is small and repetitive: a fifteen-minute daily session, recorded practice you listen back to, and one fix per session aimed at a single criterion. This […]

Matching paragraph information hands you a set of statements and the passage’s paragraph letters. Beside each statement you write the letter of the paragraph that contains its specific detail. The answers ignore passage order, and one paragraph can answer two statements. That reuse is what makes the type expensive. It is the only Reading question […]

A matching headings task hands you a list of headings and asks which one sums up each of the passage’s paragraphs. There are always spare headings, and the answers run in non-linear order, so the reliable move is elimination rather than matching. This guide covers what the task is, how many headings you get, and […]

IELTS Reading matching features hands you numbered statements and a lettered list of options, and you write the letter of the option each statement belongs to. Many publishers call the same task matching names. Two rules make it different. The answers ignore passage order, and one option can be used more than once, so you […]