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    Speaking Part 2Reported 16 July 2026

    Describe a meal you had with friends

    The cue card

    Describe a meal you had with friends.

    How to answer it

    Describe the occasion, not the menu. Two sentences on the food is plenty; the rest belongs to who was there, why you were all together, and what the conversation was. The Part 3 run here is unusually long and broad, so keep each of those answers to two sentences or you will be cut off mid-argument.

    What moves the band

    • Food lexis worth having: we shared everything, it was a proper feast, we sat there for hours, home-cooked.
    • For the technology question, pick one concrete change — delivery apps, refrigeration, or crop yields — rather than surveying all three.

    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 describe a meal that I had with my friends in a restaurant about two months ago.

    We went to a Turkish restaurant in the centre of the city which is famous for its kebabs. There were five of us and we sat at a big table near the window.

    We ordered a lot of different dishes. First we had some starters, such as hummus, yoghurt with cucumber, and warm bread which came directly from the oven. After that we had the main course: three of us ordered chicken kebab, one ordered lamb and one ordered a vegetarian dish with rice and vegetables. For dessert we shared baklava, which was very sweet, and we drank tea afterwards.

    The food was delicious and the service was also very good. The prices were reasonable, so we paid about fifteen dollars each.

    I enjoyed this meal a lot and I would like to go to that restaurant again with the same friends.

    Why it scores what it scores: The vocabulary is good and the answer never stalls, which is why it clears 6.5 comfortably. But the plan asks for the occasion rather than the menu, and roughly half the answer is a list of what was ordered. Nothing is said about why the five of them were together, what was talked about, or what made that evening different from any other meal — so there is no story for the language to attach to.

    Band 8

    What an 8 sounds like

    The meal I keep thinking about was the last one before my closest friend moved abroad, though nobody at the table would have described it that way at the time.

    There were five of us, in the same cheap kebab place we'd been going to since we were seventeen, mostly because it's the only restaurant we all still agree on. I'll be quick about the food: too much of it, ordered badly, and somebody insisted on the yoghurt dish that nobody actually likes.

    What I remember is the shape of the evening. For the first hour it was completely normal — arguing about something stupid, the same jokes we've been repeating for years. And then somewhere around the tea it went quiet, and my friend said the thing everyone had been avoiding, which was that this was probably it for a while. Nobody handled it well. One of us made a joke immediately, which I was grateful for.

    We stayed another two hours after the plates were cleared, and the owner didn't say anything, which I've always appreciated.

    It wasn't a special meal. It's just the last time the five of us were in a room, and I didn't know that then.

    Why it scores what it scores: The candidate deliberately dispatches the food in one line and spends the answer on the occasion, which is the plan's central instruction and the reason this reads as an experience rather than a review. The evening has a shape — normality, a turn, an aftermath — so tenses vary because the story needs them to. The closing line reframes everything above it without any signposting.

    Phrases worth stealing

    • “mostly because it's the only restaurant we all still agree on”
    • “somebody insisted on the yoghurt dish that nobody actually likes”
    • “somewhere around the tea it went quiet”
    • “Nobody handled it well. One of us made a joke immediately, which I was grateful for.”
    • “It's just the last time the five of us were in a room, and I didn't know that then”

    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.

    • Is home cooking better than eating in restaurants?
    • What are the advantages and disadvantages of restaurants?
    • What foods are eaten at festivals in your country?
    • Is food delivery replacing home cooking?
    • How has technology changed food and agriculture?

    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.