A low-stakes card that rewards ordinary domestic detail — the kind most candidates think is too small to mention.
The cue card
Describe a neighbour you get on with.
You should say
1 minute to prepare · up to 2 minutes to speak
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.
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.
next door but one
precise and natural for describing proximity
keep an eye on the place
for the practical trust between neighbours
pop round
the idiomatic verb for informal visiting
on nodding terms
for friendly but not close — a useful gradation
look out for each other
the phrase this card is built around
a good sort
informal, warm, and shows register control
The mundane detail is the material. Parcels, noise, the shared drive — small specifics read as fluent; big vague statements don't.
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 neighbour I get on with best is a man called Tomasz who moved into the flat below mine about three years ago. We got off to an unpromising start, actually — he was drilling something at eleven at night in his first week and I went down to complain. He apologised, gave me a beer, and we ended up talking for two hours. What makes it work is that neither of us wants very much from the other. We're not in and out of each other's flats. But if I'm away he'll take a parcel in, and when my boiler failed in January he lent me a heater without my having to ask twice. He's a carpenter, which has been quietly useful — he's fixed two doors of mine and refused payment both times, so I mostly repay him in coffee. I think good neighbours are the ones who are available rather than present, if that distinction makes sense. He's exactly that.
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:
The most common Part 2 card there is, and the one most often answered with a list of adjectives instead of a story.
A card that rewards specific life detail — the era someone lived through is free material most candidates leave on the table.
A narrative card disguised as a person card — the marks are in the situation, not the description.
One of the few cards where you can prepare real content in advance without it sounding memorised.
The 'how you met' bullet is the story engine here — most people rush it and then run dry.
A card that hands you an entire vocabulary field — work, skill, standards — if you pick someone whose job you can actually describe.
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 publicly 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 Assessment English.