Describe a journey or trip that you remember well
The word is journey, not destination — and the difference is worth a band.
The cue card
Describe a journey or trip that you remember well.
You should say
- where you went
- who you went with
- what you did there
- and explain why it was memorable
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.
- Where you were going, why, and with whom.
- The journey itself: how you travelled, how long, what it was like en route.
- The thing that made it memorable — a delay, a stranger, a view, a disaster.
- How you think of it now, which is often different from how it felt then.
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 off
the natural verb for beginning a journey
the scenery
and 'the scenery was spectacular' as a ready collocation
we hit traffic
concrete and idiomatic
it dragged on
for a journey that felt longer than it was
in hindsight
for the retrospective view at the end
a story we still tell
strong closing line for a memorable trip
The trap on this card
Describing the holiday and skipping the travelling entirely.
The card says journey. The bus, the airport, the road — that's the subject, and it's where the unusual material is.
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 journey I'd describe is an overnight train I took from my home city to the coast when I was nineteen, with two friends and almost no money. We'd booked the cheapest class, which meant no reserved berth, so we sat on the floor at the end of a carriage for about fourteen hours. It should have been miserable. What actually happened is that by about midnight there were maybe eight of us down there — us, a soldier going home on leave, an older couple, a man who produced an alarming quantity of food and insisted on sharing it — and it turned into one of the better nights of my life. Nobody exchanged numbers. I have no idea what happened to any of them. What made it memorable wasn't the destination, which was fine but unremarkable. It was that the discomfort forced a kind of contact that a comfortable journey would have completely prevented. I've taken that train since in a proper berth and it was nothing.
What earns the band
- The return journey in comfort, deliberately mentioned at the end, proves the point rather than asserting it.
- 'Forced a kind of contact that a comfortable journey would have prevented' is a third conditional idea expressed cleanly under pressure.
- Populating the scene with specific strangers rather than 'some people' is what makes a narrative score.
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 and why travel has changed over time
- the benefits and drawbacks of tourism
- whether travel really broadens the mind
Other events & experiences cards
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.
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.