Invites strong opinions and punishes them — the balanced answer consistently outscores the alarmed one.
Whether you can hold two ideas at once. Every question here has an obvious side, and taking it without qualification produces a short, thin answer that runs out in twenty seconds.
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.
it cuts both ways
the exact idiom for a genuinely two-sided issue
up to a point
partial agreement, very natural
I'd be wary of saying
flags that you know a claim is strong
a double-edged sword
common but well placed in this theme
it could well be that
hedged speculation
on balance
for landing after weighing both sides
Examiners often push back precisely to see what you do. A position with no concession in it has nowhere to go when challenged, and freezing under that challenge costs more than the opinion was worth.
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.
Less social in person, more connected at distance, and I don't think those cancel out. The genuine loss is in the weak ties — the person you'd have spoken to in a queue or on a train, who you now don't because you both have a screen. Those interactions seemed worthless and there's reasonable evidence they weren't. What technology has been very good at is keeping strong ties alive across distance. My sister lives four hours away and I know more about her week than I did about my flatmate's twenty years ago.
Why it worksRefuses the binary the question sets up, introduces a genuine concept (weak ties) without jargon, and supports both halves with different evidence.
I think they have to, and I'm fairly pessimistic about how well it'll be done. The case for it is straightforward — these are the largest publishers in history and they're the only ones with no liability for what they carry. The difficulty is that the people writing the rules generally don't understand the systems, so regulation tends to arrive late and aimed at the previous problem. I'd rather have imperfect regulation than none, but I'd hold expectations fairly low.
Why it worksStates a position and its confidence level separately, which is a sophisticated thing to do, and the objection raised is procedural rather than ideological.
The theme most damaged by preparation — memorised statistics are obvious and score badly.
The theme where candidates most reliably slip back into Part 2 and start telling stories about their own family.
The theme with the most room to say something the examiner has not heard before, and the least prepared by most candidates.
Contemporary and opinion-heavy, and the theme where an unsupported claim is most likely to be challenged.
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.
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.