IELTS Speaking Part 1: Music
Everyone has an answer and almost everyone gives the same one — the genre name and nothing else.
Music is universal, requires no specialist knowledge, and lets the examiner hear preference language and a little description in a low-pressure context.
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 kind of music do you like?
- When do you usually listen to music?
- Has your taste in music changed over the years?
- Do you play any instruments?
- Did you learn music at school?
- Do you prefer live music or recordings?
- Is traditional music popular in your country?
- Do you listen to music while you work or study?
- Have you ever been to a concert?
- Does music affect how you feel?
How to answer this topic
- Name an artist or a track, not only a genre. It is the difference between a category and an answer.
- Attach the listening to a situation — commuting, cooking, studying. Context generates sentences.
- 'Has your taste changed' is the best question in the topic: past versus present, in one answer.
- If you play nothing and learned nothing, say so and pivot to what you listen to. A short honest 'no' plus a redirect is fine.
Vocabulary this topic invites
I'm into
informal and natural for musical taste
upbeat
and 'mellow' — two adjectives most candidates never reach for
it grew on me
for taste that developed over time
background music
for music while doing something else
a wide range of
for eclectic taste, without saying 'all kinds'
it puts me in a good mood
concrete answer to the mood question
What costs people marks here
Saying 'I like all kinds of music'.
It is the most common answer in the topic and it says nothing. Name two genres you actually listen to and one you cannot stand.
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 kind of music do you like?
Fairly wide, but the thing I keep returning to is old jazz — a lot of piano trios. I like music where you can hear people responding to each other in real time. I go through phases with everything else and that one has been constant for about ten years.
Why it worksExplains a preference by a quality rather than naming a genre and stopping.
Do you play any instruments?
I played the guitar badly for years and stopped, and I've recently started again with a teacher, which I should have done originally. The difference between practising and just playing the things you can already play turns out to be the entire thing. I'm worse than I was at nineteen and improving much faster.
Why it worksHandles three time frames cleanly and lands on a real insight about learning.
Has your taste in music changed?
Quite a lot, and mostly by subtraction. I listen to far fewer things than I did at twenty but I listen to them much more closely. I suspect that's just what happens — you stop wanting novelty and start wanting depth, or you get lazy and tell yourself it's depth.
Why it works'Mostly by subtraction' is precise, and the self-doubt at the end is the sort of thing that cannot be memorised.
Other Part 1 topics
Reading
A topic where the honest answer is often 'not much', and where that answer can still score well if you handle it properly.
Sport
Works for people who do no sport at all — watching, school memories and opinions are all valid material.
Shopping
The online-versus-in-person comparison is the whole topic, and it is the one question everybody answers the same way.
Technology
Invites an opinion, which is unusual for Part 1 — and the balanced opinion scores better than the enthusiastic one.
Sleep
A routine topic that runs almost entirely on frequency adverbs and time expressions — which is exactly what it is testing.
Animals
Splits cleanly into pets you have, pets you had and animals in general — three answers from one topic.
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.