Oliver runs all three parts in order, exactly as the real test does — asks the Part 1 questions, hands you a cue card, waits out your preparation minute, then pushes into the Part 3 discussion. You answer by talking. She answers back.
At the end you get a band score on each of the four official criteria, with pronunciation measured from your recorded audio rather than guessed from a transcript, plus the full transcript and every answer replayable.
First test free (5 min, full band report) · no card details · no subscription
The real test runs eleven to fourteen minutes and never varies in shape. Practising anything else — a list of questions, a chat with a friend, a chatbot that types back — trains you for a format you will not sit.
Short questions about your life — home, work, study, hobbies. Easy to answer badly by answering too briefly.
You get a cue card, one minute to prepare, and up to two minutes to talk without interruption. The part people fear most.
Abstract questions loosely linked to your Part 2 topic. This is where the band is usually decided.
Flow, speed, hesitation, and how logically ideas connect.
Range and precision of vocabulary, paraphrasing, and collocation.
Variety of structures and how error-free they are.
Clarity and intelligibility measured from your spoken audio.
Each criterion is scored separately and then averaged, which is how the real test arrives at an overall band — and why one weak criterion drags down three strong ones. What changes between band 6 and band 7.
Part 2 is the part candidates fear, and the one that rewards preparation most. There are 60 cards in rotation, each with a suggested two-minute structure, the vocabulary that topic invites, and the specific mistake it tempts people into.
Browse all 60 cue cards →Your first mock test is free and needs no payment details. It runs for 5 minutes and finishes with a full band report across all four criteria. After that, an IELTS pass covers 20 full-length tests.
Eleven to fourteen minutes across three parts: a four-to-five-minute interview, a two-minute long turn from a cue card with one minute to prepare, and a four-to-five-minute discussion.
You speak. The examiner listens, responds in real time, and interrupts and follows up the way a real one does. Typed practice cannot score pronunciation or fluency, which are half the marks.
Against the four published assessment criteria — fluency and coherence, lexical resource, grammatical range and accuracy, and pronunciation — each scored separately and then averaged. Pronunciation is measured from your recorded audio rather than inferred from a transcript.
It follows the same three-part format and is scored against the same public band descriptors, but it is independent practice. MockLive AI is not affiliated with IELTS, the British Council, IDP or Cambridge Assessment English, and no practice score is an official result.
Treat it as a guide, not a guarantee. It is consistent — the same answer scores the same way twice, which a human examiner cannot promise — and it is most useful for tracking whether your speaking is improving between now and your test date.
A mock test is only useful if it tells you something you did not already know. This one gives you four separate band scores, the transcript, and the recordings — so you can hear the hesitation rather than take our word for it. 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.