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    Speaking Part 2Reported 25 July 2026

    Describe a friend from your childhood

    The cue card

    Describe a friend from your childhood.

    • You should say: how you met
    • You should say: how long you were friends
    • You should say: what you did together
    • You should say: and explain why you liked them

    How to answer it

    Four bullets and all of them past, so this card is really a tense test. Pick a friendship that ended or faded, because 'we are still close' gives you nothing to narrate; drifting apart when one of you moved is a natural arc. The 'what you did together' bullet should be one repeated activity described in detail, not a list.

    What moves the band

    • Childhood narrative forms: we used to, we'd spend whole summers, we fell out over, we lost touch.
    • The candidate who reported this said the follow-up drifted onto clothing and colours — Part 3 does not always stay on the card's topic, so be ready to switch.

    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 my childhood friend Ali, who is still one of my best friends today.

    We met in primary school when we were about seven years old. We were in the same class and the teacher put us at the same desk, so we started talking and we became friends very quickly.

    We have been friends for more than fifteen years now. When we were children we played football together almost every day after school, we went to each other's houses, and sometimes we did our homework together, although usually we just played computer games instead.

    I like him because he is a very kind and honest person. He always helps me when I have a problem and I can tell him anything. He is funny too and he makes everybody laugh.

    We still see each other every week and I hope we will be friends for the rest of our lives.

    Why it scores what it scores: All four bullets are answered and the friendship is warmly described. The card is really a tense test, though — every bullet points at the past — and choosing a friendship that is still going lets the answer slide into the present for the whole final third. The plan suggests picking one that faded for exactly this reason: he is kind and honest is a description of a person now, not a memory of a child.

    Band 8

    What an 8 sounds like

    The friend I'd pick is one I haven't spoken to in about nine years, which is probably why I can describe him properly.

    We met the way children do, which is that our mothers knew each other and we were put in a room together at six and told to get on with it. It worked. We were inseparable for roughly eight years, all through primary school and the first part of secondary.

    What we did was mostly build things that didn't work. He was convinced we could make a go-kart out of a broken pram and some rope, and we did make it, and it steered only left. We spent an entire summer on a treehouse that never got a floor. I don't think we ever finished a single project we started.

    I liked him because he was completely unembarrassable. I was a cautious child and he simply wasn't, and being around him made me braver than I actually was.

    We drifted when he changed schools. Nothing happened — that's the strange part. I still think about the go-kart.

    Why it scores what it scores: Choosing a faded friendship keeps the whole answer in the past, which is what the card is testing, and it also produces the best line in it: nothing happened, that's the strange part. The activities are specific and slightly absurd rather than the football-and-video-games default, and why the candidate liked him is answered with an effect (being made braver) instead of a list of virtues.

    Phrases worth stealing

    • “we were put in a room together at six and told to get on with it”
    • “we did make it, and it steered only left”
    • “I don't think we ever finished a single project we started”
    • “being around him made me braver than I actually was”
    • “Nothing happened — that's the strange part”

    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.

    A conversion table tells you where you stand today. Langujet's AI marks your writing and speaking against the real rubric and tells you exactly which criterion is holding your score down.