Eleven minutes, three parts

IELTS Speaking is a recorded conversation with one examiner, eleven to fourteen minutes long. There is no written element and no computer. It comes in three parts, and they are not the same kind of task.

Part 1 — familiar topics, 4–5 minutes. Short questions about your home, work, family, food. The questions are easy on purpose. This part is warming you up and taking a first reading of your fluency.

Part 2 — the long turn, 3–4 minutes. You get a card with a topic and bullet points, one minute to prepare with paper and pencil, then you speak alone for one to two minutes. The examiner stops you at two.

Part 3 — discussion, 4–5 minutes. Broader, more abstract questions linked to the Part 2 topic. If Part 2 was a shop you like, Part 3 might be how shopping has changed a city. This is where higher bands are won and lost.

The parts get harder deliberately: Part 1 is about you, Part 2 is a monologue, Part 3 is argument. Performing well in Part 1 and collapsing in Part 3 is extremely common, and the reason is rarely vocabulary — it is that nobody warned the candidate the questions would stop being personal.

Your opinions are not marked. There is no right answer to *is city life better than village life*. You are marked on how you speak, not on what you believe.

The examiner is following a script and timing the test. Do not read their face for approval — there is nothing there to read.