Study guide · Speaking
IELTS Speaking: what’s tested across the three parts
Speaking is the shortest paper and the one people most misread. It isn’t a vocabulary exam or an accent test — it’s a short face-to-face conversation, scored on four things at once, built to find out whether you can actually use English under a little pressure. Here is what happens in each of the three parts, what the examiner is really marking, and where good candidates quietly leak marks.
- Parts
- Three
- Time
- 11–14 min
- Format
- Face-to-face
- Criteria
- Four
What the test actually is
One examiner, face to face, 11 to 14 minutes, recorded — and the format is identical for Academic and General Training. It runs in three parts that get harder on purpose: a warm-up, a solo turn, then a real discussion. The whole thing is a conversation, not an interview you can rehearse.
The three parts
| Part | What it tests | What a strong answer looks like |
|---|---|---|
| Part 1 — Introduction & familiar topics (~4–5 min) | Talking comfortably about everyday subjects: home, work or study, your hometown, hobbies | A direct answer plus a reason or a detail — two or three sentences, natural; never one word, never a speech |
| Part 2 — The long turn (~3–4 min incl. prep) | Speaking alone at length and organising your own thoughts | A cue card, 1 minute to prepare with pen and paper, then 1–2 minutes of talk that covers the prompts as one small, structured story and fills the time |
| Part 3 — Discussion (~4–5 min) | Developing, justifying and speculating about abstract ideas tied to the Part 2 topic | Extended, reasoned answers: a position, a because, an example, maybe a comparison or an “it depends on…” — the opposite of one-liners |
The four criteria — each worth 25%
Your Speaking band is the average of four equally-weighted criteria. As in Writing, your weakest one drags the score down, so it is usually where the fastest gains hide.
- Fluency & Coherence — speaking at a natural pace without long unnatural pauses, and linking ideas so they follow logically. Self-correcting is fine; grinding to a halt is not.
- Lexical Resource — the range and precision of your vocabulary, including paraphrase and natural collocation. The right word, not the biggest one.
- Grammatical Range & Accuracy — a mix of simple and complex structures with real control. Range and accuracy — one without the other caps this column.
- Pronunciation — how intelligible you are: individual sounds, word and sentence stress, rhythm and intonation.
Where good candidates leak marks
- Memorised answers. They sound rehearsed, and Part 3 is built to knock them over — one unexpected follow-up and the script collapses, taking your fluency with it. Examiners are trained to spot them and can mark them down.
- One-sentence Part 3 answers. Part 3 is where the higher bands are won or lost. Stopping after a single sentence signals you’ve run out of ideas or language; extend with a reason and an example every time.
- Fluency without complexity. You can be perfectly smooth and still stuck at a low Grammatical Range if every sentence is simple. Reach — carefully — for conditionals, relative clauses and the perfect tenses.
- Answering the word, not the question. In Part 1 especially, a bare “Yes, I do” gives the examiner nothing to score. Always add the why.
The one thing that actually moves the score
Every criterion above is scored on what you say out loud — not what you know, not what you could write. So the practice that counts is spoken practice, ideally against questions that push back the way Part 3 does. That’s what Axiom’s Reyes v2 voice examiner is for: it holds a real back-and-forth, replies in real time so the rhythm stays human, and hands back an honest band on the four criteria instead of empty praise.
Honest, high-leverage tips
- Extend every Part 3 answer with a reason and an example — a single sentence tells the examiner you’ve run out.
- Speak out loud every day: the examiner scores what you say, not what you know, so silent study can’t move this paper.
- Aim for accurate complex sentences, not rare words — control beats vocabulary you can’t land.
- Don’t memorise scripts; Part 3 is designed to knock them over, and a recited answer can lower your score.
Train it — don’t just read about it
The free quiz asks 8 honest questions about how you actually prepare — it’s not a mock test — and returns a realistic band range to aim at before you spend a minute studying.