IELTS speaking cue cards 2026: 15 Part 2 cards with one-minute plans, band 7 answers and Part 3 follow-ups

Describe a person who has influenced you. You should say: who the person is, how you know them, what they have done, and explain how they influenced you.

The person who has influenced me most is my school chemistry teacher, Mr Pillai, who taught me in Classes 11 and 12 at a government school in Thrissur. What made him different was that he refused to let us memorise; every reaction had to be explained in our own words, or he would say, Then you do not know it yet, and come back tomorrow. The week before my board exam, four of us were panicking about electrochemistry. He stayed back till seven for three evenings, unasked and unpaid, and rebuilt the chapter from first principles. I got 94, but the real influence is that I now cannot accept anything I do not understand; as a pharmacist I still explain every prescription to myself the way he would have wanted. So that is why, ten years later, I still message him every Teachers' Day.

Pillai, Thrissur, chalk; no memorising; three evenings before boards; influence = understanding.

Describe a family member you spend the most time with. You should say: who this person is, what you do together, how often you see them, and explain why you spend so much time with them.

The family member I spend most time with is my younger brother, Aman, who is 19 and studying engineering in Jaipur, where I work. We share a two-bedroom flat in Mansarovar, so I see him every day, but the time that counts is the evening. Around nine we cook together, usually dal and rice, and then we play badminton in the parking area under the streetlight until the watchman complains. We are close partly by circumstance; our parents are in a small town near Alwar, and when he got admission they asked me to look after him. But it has become something I need as much as he does. After a bad day at work, an hour of badminton with someone who makes fun of you is better than any therapy. I think we will look back on these two years as the best time we had before life separates us.

Aman, 19, Jaipur flat; cooking, badminton, Sunday bike; parents asked; what it gives me.

Describe a famous person you would like to meet. You should say: who they are, how you know about them, what they have achieved, and explain why you would like to meet them.

The famous person I would like to meet is Mary Kom, the boxer from Manipur. I first heard of her when she won bronze at the 2012 London Olympics. She has six world championships, several of them won after becoming a mother of twins, in a sport and a region where almost no women competed. What impresses me more than the medals is the ordinariness of her story: she trained in a borrowed ring in Imphal, her father sold a cow to buy her kit, and she kept going through injuries that would have ended most careers. I would like to meet her because I coach a small girls' sports group in my colony in Guwahati, and the parents constantly ask whether sport is worth the risk. I want to ask how she dealt with that question at home and whether she ever doubted the choice.

Mary Kom; 2012, PT teacher; six titles, twins, borrowed ring; my girls’ group; the question.

Describe a place you like to visit in your hometown. You should say: where it is, how often you go there, what you do there, and explain why you like it.

The place I like most in my hometown is Sukhna Lake in Chandigarh, on the northern edge of the city near the Rock Garden. I go almost every Sunday around six in the morning, before the joggers crowd the promenade. The lake is man-made, a reservoir built in the 1950s, but after sixty years it looks natural: migratory birds in winter, pedal boats, and a long walkway with the Shivalik hills behind it. What I do there is nothing much, which is the point. I walk one round, about three kilometres, buy tea from the stall at the far end, and sit on the steps watching the rowers train. I like it because it is the only place in Chandigarh where the whole city mixes; retired colonels, students and migrant workers walk the same path. So for me it is a thinking place rather than a tourist spot, and I would miss it badly if I moved abroad.

Sukhna, Sunday 6 a.m.; walk, tea, rowers; whole city mixes; 2023 decision.

Describe a city you would like to live in for a short time. You should say: which city it is, what you know about it, what you would do there, and explain why you would like to live there.

The city I would like to live in for a few months is Pondicherry, on the Tamil Nadu coast. It was French until 1954, so the old quarter, White Town, has yellow colonial houses, quiet streets with French names and a seafront promenade where cars are banned in the evenings. If I lived there, I would rent a room in the Tamil quarter rather than the tourist part, cycle to a cafe every morning to work remotely, and spend evenings learning to surf at the village just north of the city. I want to live there rather than visit because every trip has felt rushed; three days is enough to see it but not to slow down to its speed. My job in Bengaluru allows two months of remote work a year, so it is actually possible, and I think a few months of walking everywhere and finishing work by five would change how I work when I come back.

Pondicherry; French till 1954, White Town; rent, cycle, surf; slow down; two months remote.

Describe a quiet place where you go to relax. You should say: where it is, how you found it, what it is like, and explain why you go there to relax.

The quiet place I go to is the terrace of my building in Mulund, Mumbai, specifically the corner behind the water tank. I found it by accident during the 2020 lockdown, when the flat was too crowded with three of us working from home and I went up to take a call. It is not beautiful: a concrete floor, a few plants the society secretary keeps, the Eastern Express Highway on one side and the Sanjay Gandhi National Park hills on the other. But around seven in the evening, when the traffic becomes a hum and the hills go dark, it is the quietest place I have in the city. I take a chair, a cup of tea and no phone, and sit for twenty minutes. I go there because it is the only time I am not available to anyone; there is no network behind the tank, which is the real reason I chose that corner.

terrace, water tank; lockdown 2020; highway and hills; 7 p.m., no network; flatmates’ phrase.

Describe a celebration or festival you enjoyed. You should say: what the occasion was, who was there, what you did, and explain why you enjoyed it.

The celebration I enjoyed most recently was my cousin's wedding in Jodhpur last December, the first big family event after my grandfather passed away. About two hundred people came, including relatives from Canada and Dubai I had not seen in ten years. It was a traditional three-day Marwari wedding, but the part I remember is the mehndi evening in the courtyard of our old family house. My uncles, who normally only discuss property and politics, had been persuaded to perform a dance they rehearsed secretly on video calls for a month. It was terrible, and the whole courtyard was crying with laughter, including my grandmother, who had not laughed properly in a year. I enjoyed it because it was the first time the family felt whole again after a loss; Indian weddings are less about the couple than about everyone else, and that night it did its job.

Jodhpur, December, after grandfather; 200 people; uncles’ dance; music duty; family whole again.

Describe a time you were late for something important. You should say: what you were late for, why you were late, what happened, and explain how you felt about it.

The time I was late for something that mattered was my campus placement interview with Infosys in my final year in Bhubaneswar, in 2022. The interview was at ten on the main campus, four kilometres from my hostel. At eight the auto drivers went on a sudden strike over a police fine, and the one bus that passed was full. I ran the last two kilometres in formal shoes and reached at 10.25, sweating through my shirt. The coordinator said the panel had moved on and would see me at the end, if there was time. They called me in at two, and the first question was why I was late, so I described the strike and the running, and the interviewer laughed. I felt humiliated, then relieved, because I got the offer. What I learnt is that I now leave an hour early for anything important, which my friends find ridiculous and I find peaceful.

Infosys, Bhubaneswar, 2022; auto strike, ran 2 km; waited 3 hours; laughed; leave early now.

Describe a sports event you watched. You should say: what the event was, where you watched it, who you watched it with, and explain why it was memorable.

The sports event I remember best is the 2023 Cricket World Cup semi-final between India and New Zealand, which I watched on a big screen in the canteen of my hospital in Lucknow. I was on night duty in the emergency ward, so about fifteen of us, nurses, residents and two security guards, watched in shifts, running back whenever a patient came in. Virat Kohli scored his fiftieth one-day century that night, breaking Sachin Tendulkar's record, and when he reached it the whole canteen, including a patient's family who had wandered in, stood up and applauded. What made it memorable was the mix of people; the senior surgeon, who never speaks to juniors, was explaining Mohammed Shami's bowling to a security guard. For two hours the hierarchy of a hospital disappeared. But that night in the canteen is why I believe sport does something to Indians that nothing else does.

2023 semi-final, hospital canteen; night duty, shifts; Kohli’s 50th; surgeon and guard; hierarchy gone.

Describe something you own that is important to you. You should say: what it is, how you got it, how long you have had it, and explain why it is important to you.

The thing I own that matters most is a 1998 HMT wristwatch that belonged to my father. It is a plain steel watch with a white dial and a brown leather strap I have replaced twice, and it has to be wound every morning because it is mechanical. My father bought it with his first salary as a clerk in the Indian Railways in Kharagpur and wore it every day for twenty-two years. He gave it to me in 2020, the day I got my first job, which he said was the correct occasion for it to change hands. I have had it for six years and I wear it to every interview and important meeting, partly for luck and partly because winding it is a thirty-second ritual that reminds me where I come from. It matters because HMT no longer exists and neither does the job security my father had; the watch is a small piece of a world that has gone.

HMT 1998; father’s first salary, Kharagpur; given 2020; interviews, winding; a vanished world.

Describe a piece of technology you find useful. You should say: what it is, how you use it, how often you use it, and explain why you find it useful.

The piece of technology I find most useful is a pair of noise-cancelling earphones I bought in 2024 for about four thousand rupees, which felt extravagant at the time. I use them for three things: work calls, because our open office in Hyderabad has forty people on the phone at once; the Metro commute, where they turn an hour of announcements into a quiet hour of podcasts; and, oddly, sleeping, because my flatmate snores. So I use them five or six hours a day, which makes them, per hour, the cheapest thing I own. The reason goes beyond blocking sound. Before I had them I could not concentrate at work for more than ten minutes, and I thought the problem was me. It turned out the problem was forty people. The earphones gave me back long stretches of attention, and my manager noticed the change in my reports within a month.

earphones, 2024, Rs 4,000; calls, Metro, sleep; five hours a day; attention, manager noticed.

Describe a gift you gave to someone. You should say: what it was, who you gave it to, why you chose it, and explain how the person reacted.

The gift I want to describe is a photo book I made for my mother's sixtieth birthday last year. She has lived in the same house in Coimbatore for thirty-five years and keeps all our photographs in plastic bags inside a steel trunk. Over three months I scanned about four hundred of them, from her wedding in 1989 to my brother's graduation, and had them printed as a hardcover book with captions in Tamil, which my cousin helped me write. I chose it because my mother refuses to use a smartphone for anything except video calls, so a digital album would have been pointless; she needed something to hold. Her reaction was not what I expected. She did not cry; she sat with the book the entire evening, correcting my captions aloud and telling me who each person was and what happened to them, and only looked up when the guests had left. The book now lives on the dining table, not in the trunk, which I count as a victory.

photo book, mother’s 60th, Coimbatore; 400 scans, Tamil captions; no smartphone; correcting captions.

Describe a time you helped someone. You should say: who you helped, what the situation was, how you helped, and explain how you felt afterwards.

The time I want to talk about is when I helped our office watchman, Ramesh, get his daughter into a government college in 2024. His daughter had scored 88 per cent in Class 12, but the Maharashtra admission portal had rejected her application twice over a spelling mismatch between her mark sheet and her Aadhaar card. Over two weeks I got the correction done at the Aadhaar centre, wrote to the college principal, and went to the college with him twice on leave from work. She got a seat in the second round, in BSc nursing. How I felt is complicated. I felt useful, which is a good feeling, but also angry that a bright girl nearly lost a year over a spelling error and a father who could not read the portal. Since then I have helped four more families in the building with the same forms, so the experience made me more patient, and angrier at the system.

Ramesh, Nagpur, 2024; 88 per cent, name mismatch; Aadhaar, principal, two visits; useful and angry.

Describe a skill you learnt that took a long time. You should say: what the skill is, how you learnt it, how long it took, and explain why it was difficult.

The skill that took me longest to learn is swimming, which I finally managed at 27, last summer. I grew up in Agra, nowhere near water, and a cousin once pushed me into a village pond, so for twenty years I avoided pools. I learnt at a municipal pool in Noida, in a beginners' batch that was otherwise entirely children under ten, with a coach called Mr Yadav who had no patience for fear but endless patience for repetition. It took four months of lessons three mornings a week; the eight-year-olds took three weeks. It was difficult for two reasons. The physical part was breathing; I kept lifting my whole head out instead of turning it. The bigger part was mental; every time my feet left the floor my body panicked, and I had to learn to trust that the water would hold me. The morning I swam a full 25-metre length without stopping, the kids cheered, which was both the proudest and the most ridiculous moment of my adult life.

swimming at 27; Agra pond; Noida pool, kids’ batch, Mr Yadav; four months; breathing, panic; cheering.

Describe a time you had a problem with technology. You should say: what the problem was, when it happened, how you solved it, and explain how you felt.

The technology problem I remember best happened in March 2025, the night before I had to submit my master's thesis in Pune. Around eleven my six-year-old laptop refused to turn on; the screen stayed black and the power light blinked twice and stopped. The thesis was on the laptop and, I discovered with a sinking feeling, my Google Drive backup was two weeks old. Nothing on YouTube worked. At one in the morning my hostel friend Sameer suggested taking the hard disk out and reading it through his laptop with a cable from an old project. We did it on the corridor floor with a screwdriver from the warden's drawer, and the files were intact. I submitted at nine, printed from his laptop. I felt pure panic for two hours, then a sort of stupid gratitude. The lesson I now preach to every junior is that a backup you have not updated this week is not a backup.

March 2025, thesis, Pune; black screen, old backup; Sameer, hard disk, corridor; panic, gratitude.