Describe a city you have visited
Broad enough that the risk is a shapeless list of sights rather than a shortage of material.
The cue card
Describe a city you have visited.
You should say
- which city it was
- when you went there
- what you saw and did
- and explain what impression it left on you
1 minute to prepare · up to 2 minutes to speak
How to fill the two minutes
Four beats, not four answers. The prompts on the card are a scaffold — a turn that flows past them scores better than four disconnected replies.
- Which city, when, and why you were there — tourism, family, work.
- Pick two things only, and describe them properly rather than naming eight.
- What surprised you, or how it differed from what you expected.
- Your overall impression, and whether you'd go back.
Vocabulary this card invites
Lexical Resource is a quarter of your band, and band 7 explicitly allows the occasional wrong word — playing it safe with plain vocabulary is what keeps people at 6.
a city of contrasts
useful framing if old and new sit side by side
steeped in history
collocation for a place with a long past
the old quarter
precise term, better than 'the old part'
sprawling
for a city that spreads without obvious limits
grow on me
for a place you liked more over time
off the beaten track
for the parts tourists miss
The trap on this card
Listing every attraction you visited in chronological order.
An itinerary is not a description. Two places described well beats ten named, every time.
A band 8 answer, and why it works
Read this to see the moves, not to learn the words. An examiner hears memorised answers every working day and it shows up in your fluency score — the hesitation pattern of someone reciting is nothing like the pattern of someone thinking. The details below are invented; yours should be your own.
The city I'd talk about is Lisbon, which I visited for about a week two summers ago and have thought about a suspicious amount since. What struck me immediately was the topography. It's built across a set of very steep hills, so you're constantly either climbing or descending and you end up seeing the city in slices — you come round a corner and the whole river is suddenly there below you. I hadn't expected geography to be the thing I remembered. The other thing was how lived-in the centre felt. In a lot of European cities the middle has been hollowed out into shops and hotels, and there it still felt like people's actual homes, with washing hanging over the streets. I went on my own, which I'd been nervous about, and it turned out to suit the place — it's a city that rewards wandering without a plan. I'd go back, though I'd avoid August. It was unreasonably hot.
What earns the band
- Choosing an unexpected focus — the topography rather than the food or the sights — makes the answer specific and hard to have prepared.
- 'Seeing the city in slices' is a precise image, and the sentence builds to the reveal of the river rather than stating it flatly.
- It includes a mild criticism at the end. Balanced answers read as genuine judgement; uniformly positive ones read as rehearsed.
What Part 3 asks next
Part 3 is loosely tied to your long turn, but the questions turn abstract — about people in general rather than about you. This card usually leads into:
- what makes a city pleasant to live in
- whether large cities are becoming too similar
- the trade-offs between city and countryside life
Other places cards
Describe a place you like to spend your free time.
A description card where the marks come from the atmosphere, not the floor plan.
Describe a crowded place you have been to.
A sensory card. The crowd itself is the subject, and describing it well is most of the score.
Describe a quiet place you like to go to.
The mirror of the crowded-place card, and harder — you have to describe an absence.
Describe a building you find interesting.
The card that most rewards actual descriptive vocabulary — shape, material, scale, age.
Describe a park or garden you like.
An easy card to answer adequately and a hard one to answer memorably — the difference is season and time of day.
Describe a café or restaurant you like going to.
Food, atmosphere and habit all in one card — no shortage of material, so the risk is drift.
Speak this one out loud
Oliver will read you a card, wait out your preparation minute, and then say nothing at all for two minutes — which is the part you cannot rehearse alone. The report afterwards scores fluency, vocabulary, grammar and pronunciation separately. The first test is free.
This guide is written from the published IELTS Speaking band descriptors, in our own words. For the official wording, see the British Council's band descriptors. MockLive AI is an independent practice tool and is not affiliated with IELTS, the British Council, IDP or Cambridge University Press & Assessment.