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.
The cue card
Describe a journey you make regularly.
You should say
- where you go
- how you travel
- how long it takes
- and explain how you feel about 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.
- Where from, where to, how often, and why you make it.
- The route itself, in stages, with what you see at each.
- What you do during it — and what makes a good one different from a bad one.
- How you feel about it now compared with when you started.
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.
the commute
the precise noun if it's for work
door to door
for total journey time, including the walking
on autopilot
for a route you no longer think about
rush hour
and 'off-peak' as its counterpart
a change at
the standard phrasing for connecting services
it eats into my day
for the cost of a long journey
The trap on this card
Describing one specific instance, which turns it into the memorable-journey card.
Stay in the habitual: 'I usually', 'most mornings', 'if it's running late'. That grammar is the point of this card.
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 make most is my commute, which is about fifty minutes each way and involves a bus and then a train. I've been doing it for three years and I could do it without looking up, which is both convenient and slightly depressing. The bus is the unpredictable part — it's supposed to be every ten minutes and in practice is every ten minutes or every twenty-five with nothing in between. The train is reliable and always full. What I've come to think about it is that the journey isn't really wasted time, though I used to describe it that way. It's the only hour of my day with no expectations attached to it. Nobody can reach me usefully. I read considerably more than I would otherwise and I've listened to an absurd number of podcasts. If I moved next to the office tomorrow I think I'd lose something, though I'd probably be too pleased about the extra hour in bed to notice for a while.
What earns the band
- The reversal — the commute as valuable rather than wasted — turns an ordinary topic into an argument.
- 'Every ten minutes or every twenty-five with nothing in between' is an exact and funny piece of observation.
- The conditional ending, imagining moving closer, sustains a hypothetical cleanly at the end of a past-and-present answer.
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 public transport could be improved
- the effects of long commutes on people's lives
- whether remote work will reduce travel
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 something you do to stay healthy.
Honesty scores here. An answer about something you manage three times a week beats an invented daily regime.
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.