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Part 2 of the IELTS speaking test is where you have to speak for 2 minutes.  Well, in reality, you have to speak for minimum of 1 minute 40 seconds as this is when the examiner can stop the test and move onto the rounding off question and part 3.

So, part 2.  You will find that nearly all the topics can be squeezed into 4 categories;

People, Places, Events, Objects

Let’s look at the most common questions.

People – you will nearly always be asked about someone you know and it’s nearly always a friend/relative or a famous person.

Places – here, you will be asked about a place you have been to, or a place you would like to go to.

Events – These questions are always positive.  You will never be asked about a sad event.  They will be happy memories like from a birthday party/wedding etc, or a cultural celebration.

Objects – These questions are nearly always about an object you have or have ought recently, or something you would like to own.

So with this in mind, how can you prepare for part 2?

You need to go into the exam with 8 ideas ready to use.  Let’s take people, for example.  For me, I would go in with someone I know who I can speak about easily, and that’s my brother.  As for a famous person, I don’t know much about famous people, but I will go for Tom Cruise as he is pretty weird and has made lots of films.

Now I need to do the same for the other 3 categories. You are now far better prepared to use the 1-minute prepara

tion time as you already know who you are going to talk about.  This is not the end though!!

Now you need to take each person/place/object/event and put them into a simple  spidergram.

Here is one I did for Tom Cruise.

Do this for each one and you will find that Part 2 of the speaking exam is much much easier.  Part 2 affects your Part 3 and the overall score you can get.  Not sure why?   Then you need to read this article. 

If you want to do an IELTS speaking test with an IELTS speaking examiner, you can book one here.  You will know exactly what you need to do to get higher marks.  It’s the only place on the internet where you can do this.