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    Speaking Part 2Reported 27 July 2026

    Describe a boring place you visited

    The cue card

    Describe a boring place you visited.

    How to answer it

    The trap is that a boring place produces a boring answer. Beat it by making the boredom specific and slightly funny: a waiting room, a town that closed at four, a museum of one industry described in fourteen rooms. Then explain why it was boring — nothing to look at, nothing to do, or nothing at stake — because that reasoning is the language the examiner is marking.

    What moves the band

    • Boredom lexis: it dragged, there was nothing going on, dull as anything, I was clock-watching.
    • Say what would have made it interesting; the contrast gives you a second minute without repeating yourself.

    Two answers, two bands

    Both answers below respond to this exact question. Read them in order: the difference between them is what a band is actually made of. They are written by us for this page — they are not candidate transcripts.

    Band 6.5

    What a 6.5 sounds like

    I would like to talk about a place I visited last year which was very boring. It was a small town in the north of my country. My family went there for a weekend because my father wanted to visit his cousin.

    The town was very quiet. There was only one main street with a few shops, and most of them were closed because it was Sunday. There was no cinema, no shopping centre and no park where young people could go. We stayed for two days and we did almost nothing. We just watched television at my father's cousin's house and walked in the street for maybe half an hour.

    It was boring because there was nothing to do and nothing to see. I prefer big cities because there are always activities and places to go. If the town had more facilities for young people, it would be much more interesting.

    Why it scores what it scores: Fluent, well sequenced and clearly relevant, so it passes without difficulty. The problem is the one the answer plan predicts: a boring place has produced a boring answer. The detail is all absence — no cinema, no shopping centre, no park — and absence gives the examiner very little language to reward. The final paragraph reaches for a conditional, which is the strongest moment in it.

    Band 8

    What an 8 sounds like

    The most boring place I've ever been to is, and I say this with real affection for the people who live there, a small mining town my aunt moved to. We went for a long weekend when I was about seventeen, which at seventeen is roughly a geological age.

    The town had one museum, and the museum had fourteen rooms, and all fourteen rooms were about coal. Room one: coal. Room seven: a slightly different coal. I remember standing in front of a glass case containing a lamp and thinking, with genuine desperation, that there were still two days of this. Everything shut at four in the afternoon, including, as far as I could tell, the weather. My cousin and I walked the length of the high street so many times that shopkeepers started nodding at us.

    What made it boring wasn't really the lack of things — it was that nothing was at stake. Nobody was waiting for anything to happen. And I'll admit the town has had the last laugh, because it's the trip I remember in the most detail, and half the holidays I actually enjoyed have blurred into one.

    Why it scores what it scores: This is the answer the plan describes: the boredom is made specific and slightly funny, and the humour buys attention rather than replacing content. The candidate then does the thing that separates a 7 from an 8 — explains why it was boring in analytical terms (nothing at stake, nobody waiting) and turns the conclusion against the premise. Range is wide but never ornamental; the repetition of coal is a deliberate rhetorical choice, not a vocabulary gap.

    Phrases worth stealing

    • “which at seventeen is roughly a geological age”
    • “Room one: coal. Room seven: a slightly different coal.”
    • “Everything shut at four in the afternoon, including, as far as I could tell, the weather”
    • “shopkeepers started nodding at us”
    • “it was that nothing was at stake”

    Part 3 questions reported with it

    Part 3 follows the topic of the cue card, so these are the discussion questions the same candidates were asked next.

    • What situations make people bored?
    • Why do students find lessons boring?
    • How can people avoid boredom?

    These are candidate recalls. These are questions reported by test-takers after their exams, not official or leaked IELTS material. Wording varies by test version, location and memory. Use them for timed practice — never as a prediction of what you will be asked.

    Practise these next

    Know the number. Now move it.

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