Describe a time you worked with other people to achieve something
Say what you did. Answers that stay in 'we' the whole way through tell the examiner nothing.
The cue card
Describe a time you worked with other people to achieve something.
You should say
- what you were working on
- who you worked with
- what your part was
- and explain how the group succeeded
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 goal, the group, and the deadline or constraint.
- How the work divided up, and what your part was specifically.
- The friction — disagreement, an absent member, a change of plan.
- The outcome, and what the group did better than you'd have done alone.
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.
pull our weight
for everyone contributing fairly
play to our strengths
for dividing work sensibly
see eye to eye
usually in the negative, for the disagreement
take the lead on
for your specific responsibility
come together
for the point where the parts fitted
we'd never have managed it individually
the natural closing point
The trap on this card
Using 'we' for the entire answer.
The examiner is scoring you, not the team. At least a third of the answer should be 'I' — what you were responsible for and what you decided.
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 example I'd give is a group project in my final year of university, which was a genuinely difficult experience and taught me more than most of the course. There were five of us and the work was badly distributed almost from the start — two people did a great deal, one did nothing, and the remaining two, including me, did a moderate amount while resenting the person doing nothing. Nobody said anything for about six weeks, which is the part I'd change. What eventually happened is that one of the harder-working two lost her temper in a meeting, said what everyone had been thinking, and it was uncomfortable and enormously helpful. The work got redistributed within a day. What I took from it is that the cost of the awkward conversation is almost always lower than the cost of the resentment it prevents. I'm now the person who raises it early, which I don't especially enjoy, but the alternative is six weeks of quietly seething and a worse result.
What earns the band
- 'The cost of the awkward conversation is almost always lower than the cost of the resentment' is a clean, transferable conclusion.
- It positions the speaker honestly among the mediocre contributors rather than as the hero, which is far more credible.
- 'Quietly seething' and 'which I don't especially enjoy' are idiomatic and understated in a way that signals real fluency.
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 work better alone or in teams
- how disagreements in groups should be handled
- what skills teamwork requires
Other events & experiences cards
Describe a journey or trip that you remember well.
The word is journey, not destination — and the difference is worth a band.
Describe an important decision you have made.
A card built on a fork in the road. If there was no real alternative, pick a different decision.
Describe a celebration you enjoyed.
Cultural detail is free marks here — the examiner may genuinely not know how the occasion works.
Describe a time when you were late for something.
A narrative with built-in tension — one of the easiest cards to speak fluently on if you tell it in order.
Describe a time when you helped someone.
Mirror image of the person-who-helped-you card, and the same rule applies: build the problem first.
Describe a problem you solved.
The card rewards process. What you tried and abandoned is worth more than what finally worked.
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.