Describe a goal you would like to achieve
Future card, so it needs a plan with steps. A wish with no mechanism runs out of things to say.
The cue card
Describe a goal you would like to achieve.
You should say
- what the goal is
- when you set it
- what you are doing to reach it
- and explain why it matters to 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.
- The goal, stated specifically enough to be checkable.
- When you set it and what prompted it.
- The steps you've already taken, and the next one.
- What it would mean if you got there, and what would stop you.
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.
set my sights on
the idiom for choosing a target
in the long run
for the eventual timeframe
a stepping stone
for an intermediate goal
work towards
the correct collocation — not 'work for'
realistically
signals a considered rather than fantasised plan
further down the line
natural future phrasing
The trap on this card
Naming a goal so large that there's nothing concrete to say about it.
Pick something with a next step you can name. The 'what you are doing to reach it' bullet is where the answer either has substance or doesn't.
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 goal I'm working towards is being able to hold a proper conversation in Portuguese, which I've defined fairly precisely as being able to have dinner with my partner's family without anyone switching to English out of kindness. That switch is the thing I'm trying to eliminate. I've been at it about eighteen months and I can read reasonably well, which turns out to be the easy part and slightly misleading — it made me think I was further along than I am. What I've realised is that I've been practising the wrong thing. Reading and app exercises are comfortable and speaking is not, so I'd been quietly avoiding the only thing that would actually work. I've started a weekly conversation session with a tutor, which I find genuinely stressful and which has moved me further in two months than the previous year did. I'd like to get there by next summer. I think it's achievable if I keep doing the uncomfortable version.
What earns the band
- Defining the goal by a concrete observable event — nobody switching to English — is far stronger than 'become fluent'.
- Identifying that comfort had been driving the practice choice is honest self-diagnosis, not a progress report.
- Future and conditional forms handled cleanly at the close, which this card specifically invites.
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:
- whether setting goals makes people more successful
- how ambitions differ between generations
- the pressure to achieve in modern society
Other abstract cards
Describe some useful advice you were given.
Quote the advice. An answer that only paraphrases it never quite lands.
Describe a rule you do not agree with.
The strongest answers steelman the rule before attacking it — that's what 'why it exists' is doing in the bullets.
Describe an achievement you are proud of.
Overlaps the difficult-thing card, but the emphasis is different: pride, not struggle.
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.