Describe a part of your daily routine that you enjoy
The smallest card in the bank, and it lives or dies on whether you can make a small thing vivid.
The cue card
Describe a part of your daily routine that you enjoy.
You should say
- what it is
- what time of day it happens
- how long you have done it
- and explain why you look forward to 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.
- What it is and exactly when it happens.
- The sequence of it — the small steps, in order.
- How long you've done it and how it started.
- Why it matters, given it's five minutes of an ordinary day.
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.
first thing
as in 'first thing in the morning' — natural and compact
without fail
for absolute regularity
the highlight of my morning
gives an ordinary thing proportion
before the day gets going
for the quiet window early on
it sets me up for the day
the exact idiom for a good start
creature of habit
for someone who likes routine — 'I'm a creature of habit'
The trap on this card
Deciding it's too ordinary to describe and finishing in forty seconds.
Slow it right down. Five minutes described second by second is easily two minutes of speech, and specificity is what's marked.
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 part of my routine I'd describe is the first forty minutes after I wake up, which I've become fairly rigid about and which I'd defend against most things. I get up at about six, I don't look at my phone, and I make coffee and sit with it and do nothing in particular. Reading is allowed. Anything with a notification is not. This started about four years ago after a stretch where I was checking work email before I was properly awake, and I noticed that the entire day took its tone from whatever was in that first message. Which is an absurd way to let a day be decided. What I get from it is a sense that the day started as mine before it became everyone else's. It's a small thing and it's disproportionately effective. The only time it breaks is travel, and I can genuinely feel the difference — I'm more reactive and less patient, all day, from forty minutes.
What earns the band
- 'The day started as mine before it became everyone else's' is the memorable line the whole answer builds to.
- The travel exception functions as evidence, showing the effect by its absence.
- Short declarative sentences used deliberately for rhythm — 'Reading is allowed. Anything with a notification is not.' — which is a sign of real control.
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 routines make people more productive
- how daily life differs between age groups
- why some people dislike routine
Other activities & habits cards
Describe a skill you would like to learn.
A future card, so the grammar is conditional — and the plan needs to be plausible, not aspirational.
Describe a sport or physical activity you enjoy.
Works equally well for someone who plays badly — how you started and why you continue is the material.
Describe a hobby you have taken up recently.
'Recently' is the operative word — it means you can talk about being a beginner, which is more interesting than expertise.
Describe a meal you like to cook or eat.
Process, sense and culture in one card. The risk is reciting a recipe rather than describing a meal.
Describe something you do to relax.
Needs a contrast to work — what you're relaxing from gives the answer somewhere to start.
Describe a journey you make regularly.
Repetition is the subject. Describing something you've done four hundred times needs a different approach from a one-off trip.
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.