The three parts of the Speaking test
The test lasts 11 to 14 minutes and is face to face with an examiner.
- Part 1 (4–5 minutes): questions about familiar topics such as your home town, studies, work or hobbies. Expect questions you can answer easily, like where you live or what you do at weekends.
- Part 2 (3–4 minutes): you get a cue card, one minute to prepare and then speak for up to two minutes. The examiner may ask a short follow-up question.
- Part 3 (4–5 minutes): a deeper discussion linked to the Part 2 topic. Questions become more abstract: why things happen, how society is changing, what the future may hold.
Your performance is marked on four criteria: Fluency and Coherence, Lexical Resource, Grammatical Range and Accuracy, and Pronunciation.
Fluency vs accuracy: finding the balance
Many students from Kandy's schools were taught to avoid mistakes above everything else, so they pause, restart and correct themselves constantly. That protects accuracy but damages fluency. Others speak quickly but use the same simple patterns again and again.
Aim for steady, connected speech: keep going, use linking phrases naturally, and correct only errors that change your meaning. Extend your answers. In Part 1, two or three sentences is about right. In Part 3, give a view, a reason and an example.
Pronunciation points for Sinhala and Tamil speakers
Sri Lankan English is generally clear and easy to follow, and you do not need a British or Australian accent. Pronunciation is marked on how easy you are to understand and how well you use features like stress and intonation. These are the areas Kandy students most often work on:
- V and W. Both Sinhala and Tamil speakers often use one sound for both, so "west" and "vest" sound alike. Practise with your top teeth on your lower lip for V and rounded lips for W.
- TH sounds. "Think" and "this" often become "tink" and "dis". The tongue should touch the back of the top teeth.
- Initial consonant clusters. Sinhala speakers sometimes add a short vowel before words starting with s plus a consonant, so "school" sounds like "ischool". Say the S and move straight into the next sound.
- F and P. Some speakers replace F with P. Check words like "family", "fifteen" and "coffee".
- Long and short vowels. "Ship" and "sheep", "full" and "fool" need clearly different lengths.
- Word and sentence stress. Sinhala and Tamil rhythm tends to give syllables more even weight. English stresses key syllables and words strongly, as in "phoTOgraphy" and "I didn't say HE took it".
Practising when you have no partner
You do not need a speaking partner to improve. Try these, all of which fit around life in Kandy:
- Commentary practice. On a walk round the lake or on the bus to Peradeniya, describe silently or quietly what you see in English: the traffic, the weather, the market.
- Answer out loud, every day. Use one Part 1 question and one Part 3 question daily. On IELTS Learning you can record your answer and get AI feedback on the transcript.
- Topic banks from your own life. Prepare ideas, not scripts, for common topics: a festival you enjoy, a place you would show a visitor (the Royal Botanic Gardens at Peradeniya, a hill-country train journey, a tea estate), a teacher who influenced you, a skill you learned.
- Shadowing. Listen to a short clip of clear English, pause and repeat it with the same rhythm and stress.
Avoid memorising complete answers. Examiners are trained to notice them, and memorised speech usually sounds flat.
The cue-card timer and AI feedback
IELTS Learning has 186 Speaking prompts for Parts 1, 2 and 3. Part 2 works like the real test: you see the cue card, a one-minute preparation timer runs, then a two-minute speaking timer begins. Most students are surprised how short one minute feels, so practise making quick notes: a key word for each bullet point, not full sentences.
After you answer, you get AI feedback on your transcript, including range of vocabulary, grammar and how well you developed your ideas. It is a fast way to see whether you repeat the same words or stop too early.
When to book a teacher
AI feedback helps you practise often. A real conversation helps in a different way. You can Book a Teacher for a 1-to-1 online session of about 20 minutes, from $5, and run through a full mock Speaking test with a live listener. It is especially useful:
- early on, to identify your biggest pronunciation or fluency issue
- in the last week before your test, for confidence with a real person asking follow-up questions
Full Access, at $12 for 2 months, includes every Speaking prompt and AI feedback; teacher sessions are booked separately. Create a free account and try a free sample test with Speaking today.