IELTS Speaking Part 1: Free time
The topic most likely to produce 'I watch Netflix and sleep', which is honest and scores nothing.
It is a safe, universal topic that lets the examiner hear frequency, preference and habitual language in quick succession.
Questions you can expect
Asked quickly, one after another, with no comment on your answers. Read them aloud and answer each in two or three sentences before you look at the approach below.
- What do you usually do in your free time?
- Do you have much free time during the week?
- How do you prefer to spend a weekend?
- Do you prefer being indoors or outdoors?
- Do you spend your free time alone or with others?
- Has the way you spend your free time changed recently?
- Do people in your country have enough free time?
- Would you like more free time?
- Do you plan your free time or decide on the day?
- What did you do last weekend?
How to answer this topic
- Give two activities, not one, and say when each happens. Weekday evenings and weekends are different answers.
- The 'planned or spontaneous' question is the interesting one — it invites an opinion rather than a list.
- 'What did you do last weekend' is the only past-tense question in the topic. Do not answer it in the present.
- If the honest answer is that you have almost no free time, say that — it is a better answer than an invented hobby.
Vocabulary this topic invites
wind down
for relaxing after work
I tend to
for habitual behaviour, better than 'usually' every time
on the spur of the moment
for unplanned activity
a bit of a homebody
informal and natural for preferring indoors
make time for
for prioritising something despite being busy
recharge
for the purpose of the free time
What costs people marks here
Answering every question in the topic with the same activity.
The examiner asks five questions to hear five answers. Have a weekday answer, a weekend answer and a with-other-people answer ready as three different things.
Three of these, answered at band 8
Read these for the shape, not the words — two or three sentences with a reason or an example attached. The details are invented and yours should be your own; an examiner can hear a recited answer, and it costs you more than the answer gains.
What do you do in your free time?
Climbing, mostly, and reading — those are the two that survive a busy week. I go to a bouldering place near my flat about twice a week, usually in the evening. Beyond that, a lot of walking with no particular destination, which sounds like nothing and is genuinely how I spend most weekends.
Why it worksDistinguishes what survives a busy week from what does not, which is a much better answer than a list of hobbies.
Do you have enough free time?
Not really, though I'm suspicious of that answer because I also waste quite a lot of it. I have the evenings and the weekends, which on paper is plenty. What I don't have is uninterrupted time — it comes in ninety-minute pieces, and some things need longer than that.
Why it worksChallenges its own answer, then makes a precise distinction between quantity and shape of time.
Has the way you spend free time changed?
Quite a bit. In my early twenties it was almost entirely social and almost entirely at night, and now it's more likely to be something physical during the day. Some of that is getting older and some is that I have more money and less energy than I used to, which is a strange trade.
Why it worksCompares two periods with a clear structure and closes on an observation rather than a fact.
Other Part 1 topics
Food
Rich in specific vocabulary and the easiest topic in Part 1 to sound fluent on, if you name actual dishes.
Weather
A pure comparison topic — it exists to hear whether you can contrast seasons without saying 'hot' four times.
Travel
Past, present and future in one topic, which is precisely why examiners like it early.
Transport
A practical topic with its own precise vocabulary, and one where a real complaint makes a better answer than a neutral description.
Music
Everyone has an answer and almost everyone gives the same one — the genre name and nothing else.
Reading
A topic where the honest answer is often 'not much', and where that answer can still score well if you handle it properly.
Answer these at speaking speed
Oliver asks Part 1 questions the way the real examiner does — quickly, with no reaction, moving on before you have finished deciding what you think. Reading them is not the same exercise. 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.