The Topic Card of IELTS Speaking Test
The
topic cards are printed in the same way. The basic topic is presented and there
are some guidelines or prompts on the card.
Describe an interesting trip you have been on.
You should say:
Where / When you went
What you did there
Why it was interesting
Whether you would like to go on a similar trip
again.
One
of the most important things to remember is that the card is slightly
misleading!
On the topic card, it says
"You should say..." This is not actually true: the guidelines on the card
are simply there to help you! If you want to talk about those aspects, then
that is OK; however if you don't want to follow the guidelines, that is also
OK.
The prompts on the card are
not compulsory questions - you are not required to provide answers.
As long as you are describing
some aspects of the main topic "an interesting trip you have been
on", there is no problem.
For
most of the topic cards it is a good idea to use the guidelines because it
means you have to think less about content and can therefore concentrate more
on language, but if there is a guideline prompt that you don't like or you
think is a little difficult, e.g., "Whether you would like to go on a
similar trip again", feel free to ignore it and just talk about some other
aspect of your trip.
Irrelevant content
Although
we have said that content is irrelevant to your score - you cannot produce
two-minute content that is not related to the topic.
A
fairly common problem in Part Two is that candidates talk about a topic different
to the one on their card. Example:
Describe
a sport that you like playing or watching.
Sometimes
a candidate will say:
I
don’t like sport so I will describe my favorite hobby which is playing computer
games.
Clearly this is off-topic
and Part Two speeches which are off-topic are marked down –basically you lose
marks.
If
you are given the topic “sports”, the examiner is expecting to hear language
(especially vocabulary) related to that topic. If you avoid the topic, you will
not produce language related to your topic and your score will be seriously
affected.
Later
in this section we will look at how to select your content in Part Two.
