Describe a teacher who influenced you
Close cousin of the influential-person card, but the classroom setting gives you concrete scenes for free.
The cue card
Describe a teacher who influenced you.
You should say
- who they were
- what they taught you
- what they were like as a person
- and explain what effect they had on you
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.
- Which subject, which year of school, and what you thought of that subject before them.
- Their method — how they taught differently from everyone else. Be specific about the technique.
- One lesson or exchange you still remember, reconstructed as a scene.
- What you carried out of that classroom that had nothing to do with the subject.
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.
bring a subject to life
the natural collocation for inspiring teaching
strict but fair
a common and accurate characterisation
get the best out of
for a teacher who raised your performance
spark an interest in
for the moment a subject became yours
hold the class's attention
concrete classroom skill
it stuck with me
for lasting effect, better than 'I never forgot it'
The trap on this card
Saying they were 'a very good teacher' three times in different words.
Describe the method. What did they do on a Tuesday morning that other teachers didn't? That sentence is worth the whole 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 teacher I'd choose is Mr Raghavan, who taught me physics for two years when I was about sixteen. He had a reputation for being difficult and I'd been dreading his class. What made him unusual was that he refused to give answers. You'd ask him something and he'd ask you three questions back, and the third one was always the one that made you feel stupid for asking in the first place. It was infuriating at the time. Half the class hated him. The influence, though, has outlasted anything I actually learned about physics, most of which I've forgotten. What stayed is the habit of not accepting the first explanation — of asking what would have to be true for this to be right. I use that constantly at work and I can trace it directly to a man who wouldn't tell me why a ball rolls down a slope. I'd like to say I thanked him, but I was sixteen, so I almost certainly didn't.
What earns the band
- 'I'd like to say I thanked him, but I was sixteen' is self-aware humour, and humour that lands is very hard to fake at a lower band.
- It distinguishes what was taught from what was learned, which is a genuinely thoughtful answer to 'how they influenced you' rather than a restatement of it.
- Reported speech and hypotheticals — 'he'd ask you three questions back', 'what would have to be true' — bring in complex structures without any sign of strain.
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:
- the qualities that make a good teacher
- whether technology could replace teachers
- how schooling differs between generations
Other people cards
Describe a person who has had an important influence on your life.
The most common Part 2 card there is, and the one most often answered with a list of adjectives instead of a story.
Describe an older person you admire.
A card that rewards specific life detail — the era someone lived through is free material most candidates leave on the table.
Describe a person who helped you with something.
A narrative card disguised as a person card — the marks are in the situation, not the description.
Describe a famous person from your country.
One of the few cards where you can prepare real content in advance without it sounding memorised.
Describe a friend you have known for a long time.
The 'how you met' bullet is the story engine here — most people rush it and then run dry.
Describe someone you know who is very good at their job.
A card that hands you an entire vocabulary field — work, skill, standards — if you pick someone whose job you can actually describe.
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.