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IELTS · Articles · October 19, 2026 · 4 min read

IELTS Speaking Part 2: how to answer a cue card for two minutes

A person speaking at a table with a topic card and a sand timer

In Speaking Part 2 the examiner gives you a cue card with a topic and three or four prompts. You have one minute to prepare, with paper and a pencil for notes, and then you speak for up to two minutes. The examiner stops you at two minutes and may ask one or two short follow-up questions.

The goal is a long, connected answer without help. This is where fluency is easiest to see, and where many learners lose marks by stopping after 50–60 seconds.

What a cue card looks like

Describe a skill that took you a long time to learn. You should say:

  • what the skill was
  • when and why you started learning it
  • how you learned it

and explain how you feel about this skill now.

The prompts are a guide, not a checklist you must cover in order. But they are useful: they give you four small parts to talk about, and the last one (“explain…”) is where you can develop your answer the most.

How to use the one minute

Do not write sentences. Write five or six keywords, one line per prompt, and add one detail you can tell as a short story.

For the card above, notes could look like this:

That is enough for two minutes. A story with a time, a place and a problem keeps you talking naturally and gives you a reason to use past tenses.

A simple structure

  1. One sentence of introduction: say what you are going to talk about.
  2. The prompts in order: two to four sentences for each, with one detail or example.
  3. The “explain” prompt: the longest part, with your feelings, reasons and what changed.
  4. A closing sentence that links back to the topic.

If you finish early, add to the last prompt: a comparison with the past, what you would do differently, or advice you would give someone else.

A sample answer

I’d like to talk about swimming, which is something I only learned as an adult, and it took me far longer than I expected.

I started when I was about twenty-five. I was on holiday by the sea with a group of friends, and while they were all swimming out to a small island, I was sitting on the beach pretending I was happy to read my book. That was the moment I decided I had to learn.

When I got home, I signed up for adult lessons at a local pool, twice a week. The strange thing was that my arms and legs weren’t the problem at all. The hardest part was breathing: every time I put my face in the water, I panicked and stood up. My instructor made me practise just breathing out under water for weeks, which felt a bit ridiculous at the time.

It took about eight months before I could swim four hundred metres without stopping, and I still remember that day because I was so tired I could hardly climb out of the pool.

As for how I feel about it now, I’m genuinely proud of it, probably more than of things I learned easily. It taught me that being slow at something isn’t the same as being bad at it. These days I swim every Sunday morning, and it’s actually become the calmest part of my week. So, in a way, the skill that scared me most turned into the one that relaxes me.

This answer is a little under two minutes at a natural pace. Notice what makes it strong: a clear opening, a short story with details, a range of tenses, and a developed final part with a reflection rather than “it was good”.

Mistakes that cost bands

How to practise

Pick a card, set a timer for one minute, make notes, then record yourself for two minutes. Listen back and check three things: did you reach two minutes, did you cover the “explain” part, and which words did you search for. Then try the same card again the next day.

In Nomto you can practise Part 2 with cards like these, get your answer scored on the four official criteria, and see exactly which sentences to improve. The test format guide explains how Part 2 fits between Parts 1 and 3.

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