Describe some useful advice you were given
Quote the advice. An answer that only paraphrases it never quite lands.
The cue card
Describe some useful advice you were given.
You should say
- what the advice was
- who gave it to you
- when you received it
- and explain how it helped 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.
- The situation you were in when you got it.
- Who gave it and what they actually said — the words, as closely as you remember.
- What you thought of it at the time, which is often not much.
- How it proved useful later, with an instance.
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.
words of wisdom
slightly ironic register, which suits this card
it went in one ear and out the other
for advice initially ignored
take it on board
for accepting advice
it turned out they were right
the pivot the card usually needs
I've passed it on
strong ending — advice that travels
stand me in good stead
formal idiom for lasting usefulness
The trap on this card
Summarising the advice abstractly — 'they told me to work hard'.
Say the sentence they said. Direct speech is more vivid, easier to deliver, and shows reported-speech control when you frame it.
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 most useful advice I've been given came from a former manager and it was extremely short: never send the email you write when you're angry, but do write it. I'd been about to reply to something that had annoyed me and she suggested writing the reply and then not sending it for an hour. What's clever about it is that it doesn't ask you to be calm, which is not a thing you can do on demand. It gives the anger somewhere to go and then puts a gap in. I've used it a great deal since, and the hit rate is striking — I'd say I send perhaps one in five of those drafts, usually heavily rewritten, and I've never once regretted the four I didn't. The wider version, which took me longer to see, is that most bad decisions I've made were made quickly while feeling something strongly. The advice isn't really about email. It's about putting a delay between a feeling and an action.
What earns the band
- Explaining why the advice works — it doesn't require being calm — is more valuable than the advice itself and shows real analysis.
- 'One in five... and I've never once regretted the four' is a concrete, quantified account of following it.
- The generalisation at the end lifts the answer from an anecdote to a principle, which is the Part 3 register arriving early.
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 people generally take advice they are given
- who young people turn to for guidance
- the difference between advice and instruction
Other abstract cards
Describe a rule you do not agree with.
The strongest answers steelman the rule before attacking it — that's what 'why it exists' is doing in the bullets.
Describe a goal you would like to achieve.
Future card, so it needs a plan with steps. A wish with no mechanism runs out of things to say.
Describe an achievement you are proud of.
Overlaps the difficult-thing card, but the emphasis is different: pride, not struggle.
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.