IELTS Speaking Part 2: how to talk for two minutes on any cue card

Part 2 is the part of IELTS Speaking that students worry about most. You get a topic card, one minute to prepare, then you talk alone for up to two minutes while the examiner listens. With a simple method, it becomes the most predictable part of the test.

The Speaking test at a glance

The whole test takes 11–14 minutes with a real examiner:

• Part 1 (4–5 minutes): short questions about familiar topics: your home, studies, work, hobbies.
• Part 2 (3–4 minutes): the cue card. One minute to prepare, then up to two minutes of talking.
• Part 3 (4–5 minutes): a discussion of more abstract ideas linked to the Part 2 topic.

How you are scored

Four criteria, each a quarter of your speaking band:

• Fluency and Coherence: speaking at length without long pauses, with ideas that connect.
• Lexical Resource: using a range of vocabulary, including some less common words, accurately.
• Grammatical Range and Accuracy: a mix of sentence structures, mostly correct.
• Pronunciation: how clearly and easily you can be understood. Accent itself is not marked down.

Use the minute: the four-note method

A cue card usually says “Describe a…” followed by three or four prompts and “explain why…”. In your minute, write just a few words for each:

1. What / who: the thing, person or place.
2. When / where: set the scene.
3. What happened: two or three details.
4. Why it matters: your feelings and the reason. This is the part examiners most want to hear.

Write key words, not sentences. You won’t have time to read sentences back, and reading sounds unnatural.

Talk in a story, not a list

Answering each prompt in one sentence takes about 30 seconds and leaves you stuck. Instead, tell it as a short story with details:

“I’d like to talk about a trip I took to Pokhara with my cousins last winter. We’d been planning it for months, but…”

Stories naturally use past tenses, time linkers (at first, after that, in the end) and descriptive vocabulary, which all help your score.

Ways to keep going for two minutes

• Add a comparison: “It was completely different from what I’d expected, because…”
• Add a feeling: “What I remember most is how relieved I felt when…”
• Add a detail with the senses: what you saw, heard or tasted.
• Add the present: “Even now, whenever I…”

If you run out of points, go back to the “why” prompt and expand it. It’s almost impossible to say too much about why something mattered to you.

Prepare topics, not scripts

Examiners spot memorised answers quickly, and a recited answer that doesn’t quite fit the card scores poorly. Instead, prepare a small set of flexible stories: a memorable trip, a person who helped you, an important decision, a skill you learned. One good story can fit many different cards.

Common mistakes

• Reading notes word for word.
• Stopping after a minute and waiting.
• Speaking very fast to sound fluent. Steady and clear scores better.
• Using rare words wrongly to sound impressive.

A practice routine

Pick a cue card, set a timer for one minute of notes, then record yourself speaking for two minutes. Listen back and note long pauses, repeated words and grammar slips. Do this daily for two weeks and the two minutes will start to feel short.

On Prepyo you can answer IELTS speaking tasks out loud and get a transcript of what you said with feedback on the four criteria. The full speaking mock runs all three parts in order. See IELTS Academic preparation.