Describe a place you like to spend your free time
A description card where the marks come from the atmosphere, not the floor plan.
The cue card
Describe a place you like to spend your free time.
You should say
- where it is
- how often you go there
- what you do there
- and explain why you like it
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.
- Locate it in one sentence — where it is and what kind of place it is.
- Describe arriving: what you see, hear and smell in the first few seconds.
- What you actually do there, as a habit — 'I usually…' rather than one visit.
- Why this place rather than any other, which is the bullet carrying the marks.
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.
tucked away
for somewhere slightly hidden — instantly more vivid than 'small'
unwind
better than 'relax', which everyone uses
a change of scene
for why leaving home matters
buzzing
if it's lively; pairs with 'atmosphere'
I lose track of time
shows absorption without saying 'I like it'
somewhere I can hear myself think
natural and specific
The trap on this card
Giving directions and dimensions — it's near the station, it has three floors.
Nobody is trying to find it. Describe how it feels to be there, which is what 'explain why you like it' is asking.
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.
My favourite place is the reading room of the city library, which is not an exciting answer but it's an honest one. It's on the first floor, it has enormous windows down one side, and the ceilings are absurdly high for what is essentially a room with books in it. I've been going since I was a student and I still go most Saturdays. What I like about it is the quality of the quiet. It isn't silent — there's a low level of pages and chairs and someone's cough — but it's a shared quiet, and I find I can work there in a way I simply can't at home. At home I'll do anything except the thing I sat down to do. There's also something about being surrounded by people concentrating that makes it embarrassing to stop. I'd say it's the only place I go purely because of how it makes me behave, rather than because of anything that's actually there.
What earns the band
- It names an unfashionable choice and defends it, which is more interesting than a beach and much harder to have memorised.
- 'A shared quiet' and 'it's embarrassing to stop' are original formulations. Band 8 vocabulary is precise rather than showy.
- The closing sentence reframes the whole answer — the place is valued for its effect, not its features — which is genuine analysis under time pressure.
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:
- how people spend their free time in your country
- the importance of public spaces
- how leisure habits differ across generations
Other places cards
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 city you have visited.
Broad enough that the risk is a shapeless list of sights rather than a shortage of material.
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.