IELTS Speaking Part 1: Travel and holidays
Past, present and future in one topic, which is precisely why examiners like it early.
Where you have been is past, how you like to travel is present, where you would go is conditional. Three tenses in five questions, without the candidate noticing they are being tested.
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.
- Do you like travelling?
- Where did you go on your last holiday?
- Do you prefer travelling alone or with others?
- What kind of places do you like to visit?
- Do you prefer short trips or long holidays?
- How do you usually travel — by car, train or plane?
- Do you plan your trips in detail?
- Where would you like to go next?
- Do many people in your country travel abroad?
- Do you take many photographs when you travel?
How to answer this topic
- Name the place and the year for the last-holiday question. Vagueness here reads as invention.
- Track the tense the question is in and answer in it. This topic switches faster than any other in Part 1.
- The planning question invites a personality answer rather than a factual one — take it.
- 'Where would you like to go next' is conditional. 'I would love to' rather than 'I want to'.
Vocabulary this topic invites
a city break
the exact term for a short urban holiday
off the beaten track
for less touristy destinations
I'm not much of a planner
natural self-description
get away
the idiomatic verb for taking a holiday
a stopover
precise travel vocabulary
it's been on my list for years
for a long-held travel wish
What costs people marks here
Answering the past-tense question in the present because you rehearsed a general 'I love travelling' answer.
Listen to the auxiliary. 'Did you go' needs 'I went'. Getting that wrong in the first three minutes is expensive and entirely avoidable.
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.
Do you like travelling?
Yes, though I've become fussier about how. I used to want to see as much as possible in a short time and now I'd rather spend a week in one place and actually learn where things are. Two-city trips in five days I now find exhausting rather than exciting.
Why it worksAnswers yes and then complicates it, which is far more interesting than enthusiasm alone.
What is the best place you have visited?
Lisbon, which I went to two summers ago and have thought about a suspicious amount since. It's built across very steep hills, so you're constantly climbing or descending and the city keeps revealing itself in pieces. I hadn't expected the geography to be the thing I remembered.
Why it worksOne concrete, unexpected reason instead of a list of attractions.
Do you prefer travelling alone or with others?
Alone, increasingly, which I was nervous about the first time and now actively prefer. You stop constantly when you want to and you talk to more people, because nobody's there to talk to already. With that said, I wouldn't want every trip to be alone. There's nobody to remember it with.
Why it worksSustains a preference with two reasons and then concedes something real, which lifts it well above a one-word answer.
Other Part 1 topics
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.
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.
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.