Contemporary and opinion-heavy, and the theme where an unsupported claim is most likely to be challenged.
Whether you can attribute and qualify. The questions invite claims about what 'the media' does, and band 7 shows in how carefully you say who and how much.
Longer answers than Part 1 — thirty to forty-five seconds each. The examiner may disagree with you, which is the format working as intended.
Part 3 is scored on whether you can generalise and speculate without overstating. These are the phrases that do that work in this particular area.
outlets
the precise noun that avoids 'the media' as a monolith
sensationalise
exact verb for exaggerated reporting
take it with a pinch of salt
idiomatic scepticism
there's a tendency to
generalises without overstating
an echo chamber
current and precisely useful here
hold power to account
the standard phrase for journalism's function
Qualify as you go. 'Some outlets, particularly the ones funded by advertising, have an incentive to…' is both safer and better English than a flat accusation.
Watch the moves, not the opinions — take a position, hedge it as far as you actually believe it, support it, and give the strongest objection its due. Your views can be the opposite of these and score the same. A memorised Part 3 answer is more obvious than a memorised Part 1 one, because the examiner follows up on what you just said and a script cannot survive the follow-up.
Individual outlets, sometimes; any single story, rarely without checking. I don't think the main problem is fabrication — outright invention is fairly rare and gets caught. The bigger issue is selection, which is invisible: what gets covered, what doesn't, and how much space each gets. That shapes what you think is important without any individual sentence being false. So I'd say read several sources with different incentives rather than trying to find the one that's reliable, because I don't think it exists.
Why it worksDistinguishes fabrication from selection — a distinction most answers miss entirely — and converts the analysis into practical advice.
It's moved from a scheduled event to a continuous stream, and I think that's a bigger change than the shift from paper to screen. My parents watched the news at a particular time and then it was over. Now it arrives all day and there's no moment where you're finished, which I think explains a lot of the exhaustion people report. The other change is that the feed is personalised, so two people in the same house genuinely see different events as important.
Why it worksIdentifies the less obvious change as the more significant one and supports it with a consequence, which is exactly the analytical move Part 3 rewards.
Responsibility and behaviour change, not medicine — no specialist knowledge is needed or wanted.
Abstract and comfortable to overgeneralise about, which is exactly where this theme catches people.
Concrete, policy-shaped, and the theme most improved by naming an actual place.
Sits right next to the Part 2 travel cards, so the drift back into personal narrative is unusually strong here.
The theme where a political speech is most tempting and most costly.
Age distinctions are the whole game — an answer that treats 'children' as one group has already lost most of its marks.
Oliver pushes back in Part 3 the way a real examiner does — not to catch you out, but because holding a position under mild pressure is exactly what is being scored. That is not something you can rehearse against a list of questions. The first test is free.
This guide is written from the publicly 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 Assessment English.