IELTS Speaking Part 1: Technology and phones
Invites an opinion, which is unusual for Part 1 — and the balanced opinion scores better than the enthusiastic one.
It is contemporary, everyone has direct experience, and it lets the examiner hear light opinion language before Part 3 demands the real thing.
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.
- How often do you use your phone?
- What do you mainly use it for?
- Could you manage without it for a day?
- Do you think people spend too much time on their phones?
- How old were you when you got your first phone?
- Do you use a computer for work or study?
- Has technology made your life easier?
- Do you learn to use new technology quickly?
- Do you worry about your personal information online?
- What technology would you find hardest to give up?
How to answer this topic
- Name specific uses rather than categories: maps on an unfamiliar street, transferring money, calling your mother on Sunday.
- The 'too much time' question wants a view with a concession. 'Probably, though I'd say it depends what they're doing' is band-7 shaped.
- 'How old were you' is past simple and a small piece of autobiography. Use it as one.
- Give one genuine downside. Unbroken enthusiasm about technology sounds rehearsed.
Vocabulary this topic invites
glued to my phone
idiomatic and self-aware
at my fingertips
for instant access to information
I'd be lost without it
natural expression of dependence
a time sink
for something that consumes time unproductively
pick it up quickly
for learning new technology easily
cut down on screen time
current and precise
What costs people marks here
Answering entirely about social media.
The examiner asks what you use it for. Maps, banking, tickets, alarms, music, translation — the boring uses produce better vocabulary than the obvious one.
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.
How often do you use a computer?
All day, unfortunately — my job is entirely on one, and then I go home and read on a screen and it's a computer too. I've started deliberately doing one thing a day that doesn't involve one, usually cooking or walking, and I notice the difference on the days I don't manage it.
Why it worksThe self-correction 'and it's a computer too' is the kind of mid-sentence thinking examiners listen for.
Is technology important in your daily life?
Completely, which I think is uninteresting to say and hard to avoid. The more useful answer is that the technology I depend on most is boring — a calendar, a map, a messaging app. The exciting things I've mostly abandoned within a month.
Why it worksRejects the obvious answer, then supplies a better one. That is a strong move on a bland question.
Do you think technology has made life easier?
Easier in most specific ways and not obviously better overall. Individual tasks are enormously faster than they were for my parents. What's also happened is that the expectation of how many tasks you'll do has risen to fill it, so nobody I know feels like they have more time.
Why it worksDistinguishes easier from better and supports it with a mechanism, which is close to Part 3 register.
Other Part 1 topics
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.
Clothes
A description topic that needs adjectives most candidates have never had to produce out loud.
Photography
A modern topic that tests whether you can describe an image and a habit in the same breath.
Work
Almost guaranteed if you are not a student, and the topic where candidates most often describe a job title instead of a job.
Studies
The alternative to work, and the topic where memorised answers are most obvious because everyone rehearses it.
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.