How the Speaking test works
The Speaking test lasts 11 to 14 minutes, face to face with an examiner, and is recorded. It has three parts:
- Part 1 (4–5 minutes): familiar questions about your home, studies, work, hobbies and daily life.
- Part 2 (3–4 minutes): you get a cue card, one minute to prepare notes, then speak for up to two minutes. The examiner may ask one or two short follow-up questions.
- Part 3 (4–5 minutes): a discussion of broader, more abstract ideas linked to the Part 2 topic.
You are marked on four criteria: Fluency and Coherence, Lexical Resource, Grammatical Range and Accuracy, and Pronunciation.
Fluency or accuracy?
Students often ask which matters more. The answer is both, but in a particular order.
Fluency first. Speaking smoothly with natural linking ("Well, actually…", "The main reason is…") matters more than avoiding every small error. Long pauses while you search for the perfect word hurt you more than a slightly simple word.
Accuracy follows. Once you can speak for two minutes without stopping, start tidying up recurring errors: tense consistency, articles (a, an, the), and plural endings.
The examiner is not testing your opinions or your knowledge. A simple idea, explained clearly and extended with an example, scores well.
Pronunciation points for Patiala speakers
Most students in Patiala speak Punjabi at home, often the Malwai variety, along with Hindi and English. That gives you a clear, energetic speaking voice. A few sound patterns are worth practising because they can affect clarity. Pronunciation in IELTS is about being easy to understand, not about sounding British.
- V and W. Punjabi uses one sound between the two, so vest and west, or very and wary, can blur. For /v/, touch your top teeth to your lower lip; for /w/, round your lips without touching your teeth.
- Words starting with s + consonant. School, station, spring sometimes become "iskool" or "sataion". Practise starting directly on the /s/.
- Z and J. Zero and zoo can come out as "jero" and "joo". The /z/ is a buzzing /s/.
- Th sounds. Think and three often become "tink" and "tree". Put your tongue lightly between your teeth.
- Word stress. English stress moves: PHOtograph, phoTOgraphy, photoGRAPHic. Wrong stress makes a word hard to recognise even if every sound is right.
- Sentence stress and intonation. Punjabi has a lively rhythm, but stressing every word equally in English can sound forceful. Stress the important words and let the small ones be lighter.
Pick one point at a time, for a week each, rather than trying to fix everything at once.
Practising when you have no partner
Plenty of students in Patiala have nobody at home who wants to ask them IELTS questions every evening. You do not need a partner to improve.
- Use our prompts. IELTS Learning has 186 Speaking prompts for Parts 1, 2 and 3. Answer aloud and record yourself.
- Read the transcript. Our AI feedback is based on a transcript of what you said, so you can see repeated words, fillers and grammar slips in black and white.
- Talk about Patiala. Part 1 often asks about your hometown. Prepare to describe the city in natural English: the Qila Mubarak area, Baradari Gardens, the National Institute of Sports at Old Moti Bagh, or why people call it a royal city. Do not memorise a script; practise talking about it in different ways.
- Shadow speakers. Play a short English podcast clip, pause, and repeat with the same rhythm and stress.
The cue-card timer
Part 2 trips up more students than any other part, usually because they either run out of ideas after 50 seconds or have never felt how long two minutes is.
Our cue cards use a real one-minute preparation timer followed by a two-minute speaking timer, just like the test. During preparation, write five or six keywords, not sentences. Then cover each bullet point on the card and add a personal detail or a short story. If you finish early, describe how you felt or what you would do differently.
When to book a teacher
AI feedback is useful for daily practice, but a live conversation feels different. A 1-to-1 online session with an IELTS teacher, about 20 minutes and from ₹299, gives you:
- A full mock Speaking test with an unfamiliar voice asking the questions.
- Honest comments on pronunciation patterns that are hard to hear in your own recordings.
- Practice handling Part 3 follow-up questions you did not expect.
Many students book one session early to find their weak points and one a week before the test. Speaking prompts and AI feedback come with Full Access (₹999 for 2 months); create an account or start with the free sample mock.