Describe an important decision you have made
A card built on a fork in the road. If there was no real alternative, pick a different decision.
The cue card
Describe an important decision you have made.
You should say
- what the decision was
- when you made it
- how you made it
- and explain why it was important
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 situation that forced a choice, and the two options as they looked then.
- What pulled you each way — including who was advising what.
- The moment you decided, and whether it felt decisive or reluctant.
- How it turned out, honestly, including what you gave up.
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.
weigh up the pros and cons
the standard phrase for deliberation
at a crossroads
the idiom for a life fork
sleep on it
for delaying a decision deliberately
go with my gut
for instinct over analysis
there was no going back
for irreversibility
I've never regretted it
or its honest opposite, which scores just as well
The trap on this card
Presenting the decision as obvious, which removes the tension and the material.
Give the rejected option real weight. A decision with only one plausible answer isn't a decision and won't fill two minutes.
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 most important decision I've made was leaving a stable job to go back and study something completely different, which I did at twenty-six against a fair amount of advice. I'd been in the job three years, I was reasonably good at it, and I was extremely bored in a way I'd started to think was just what work felt like. The decision took about eight months of not deciding, which I think is how most real decisions actually go. What tipped it was working out that I was more afraid of being in the same seat at thirty-five than I was of the money. I gave notice in the January. It was not a clean triumph — the first year was genuinely hard and I nearly went back twice. But I'd make it again. What I learned is that I'd been treating the decision as a prediction, and it isn't one. It's a bet, and you can make a good bet that goes badly.
What earns the band
- 'A good bet that goes badly' is a sharp distinction and exactly the kind of abstract reasoning the fourth prompt on this card invites.
- 'The decision took about eight months of not deciding' is a genuinely original observation about how decisions work.
- It resists the tidy ending — nearly went back twice — which makes the whole answer more credible than a success story.
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 make big decisions
- whether it is better to decide quickly or slowly
- the role of advice from others in decision-making
Other events & experiences cards
Describe a journey or trip that you remember well.
The word is journey, not destination — and the difference is worth a band.
Describe a celebration you enjoyed.
Cultural detail is free marks here — the examiner may genuinely not know how the occasion works.
Describe a time when you were late for something.
A narrative with built-in tension — one of the easiest cards to speak fluently on if you tell it in order.
Describe a time when you helped someone.
Mirror image of the person-who-helped-you card, and the same rule applies: build the problem first.
Describe a problem you solved.
The card rewards process. What you tried and abandoned is worth more than what finally worked.
Describe a mistake you made that you learned from.
Needs a turn in it. A mistake with no consequence and no lesson is just an anecdote.
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.