IELTS Speaking Part 2 cue cards with band-8 answers
Every cue card below comes with the full prompt, a band-8 model answer you can learn from, the Part 3 questions the examiner asks next, and strategy. Pick a topic and practise it out loud.
How IELTS Speaking Part 2 works
In Part 2 (the "long turn"), the examiner gives you a cue card with a topic and a few prompts. You get one minute to prepare and make notes, then you speak on your own for one to two minutes. The examiner will not interrupt — it is a test of whether you can keep talking coherently. It is marked on the same four criteria as the rest of Speaking: fluency and coherence, lexical resource, grammatical range and accuracy, and pronunciation.
The single most common mistake is finishing early. Aim to use the full two minutes, cover each prompt briefly, and spend the most time on the final "explain why / how" prompt. To convert what you practise here into a band, take a free full Speaking test with expert feedback and check your raw score on the band calculator.