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    Speaking Part 2Reported 30 June 2026

    Describe a plan you changed recently

    The cue card

    Describe a plan you changed recently.

    • You should say: when it happened
    • You should say: what your original plan was
    • You should say: why you changed it
    • You should say: what the new plan became
    • You should say: and explain how you felt about the change

    How to answer it

    Five bullets in two minutes means roughly twenty seconds each — this card punishes anyone who spends a minute setting the scene. The 'why' is the hinge: something intervened, so name it (a price, an illness, a job offer, weather). The feelings bullet works best if the change turned out well but did not feel that way at the time, which gives you a contrast to build on.

    What moves the band

    • Past plans need the right forms: I was going to, we'd arranged to, I ended up + -ing.
    • For Part 3, distinguish planning from over-planning — the strongest answer says what planning buys you and where it stops helping.

    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 plan which I changed a few months ago, in the spring of this year, when I was preparing for my summer holiday.

    In the beginning I planned to travel abroad with two of my friends. We wanted to go to a European country for about two weeks and we had been discussing it since the winter. We looked at many websites, we compared the prices of flights and hotels, and we made a list of the cities we wanted to see and the museums we wanted to visit. We were all very excited about this trip and we talked about it constantly.

    However, in the end I changed my plan because of the visa. The process was long and expensive and I did not get an appointment in time.

    So my new plan was to travel inside my own country instead, and I went to the coast for one week with my family.

    I felt disappointed at first but later it was fine.

    Why it scores what it scores: The English is comfortable and all five bullets do appear. The pacing is the problem, and this card punishes it more than most: the original-plan bullet takes a third of the answer while the last two bullets — what the new plan became and how the candidate felt — get one sentence each. Five bullets in two minutes is roughly twenty seconds apiece, and setting the scene at length is what makes candidates rush the interesting half.

    Band 8

    What an 8 sounds like

    This was in April, about four months ago.

    The original plan was two weeks in Italy with two friends. Booked-ish — flights held, a rough route, an argument already under way about how many museums was too many.

    What changed it was mundane: my visa appointment came through for a date three days after we were supposed to fly, and there was no earlier slot anywhere in the country. There's no drama in that, which is somehow worse. I wasn't turned down. I just lost to a calendar.

    The new plan was a week on our own coast with my parents, which I agreed to in the mood of someone accepting a consolation prize. I drove them, they paid, we swam a lot, and my father talked more in that week than in the previous year — I think because there was nothing else to do.

    How I felt has changed twice. At the time, genuinely bitter — my friends sent photographs and I stopped opening them. Now I'm aware that was the last long stretch I've had with my parents, and Italy will still be there. I'm not going to pretend it was better. It was just worth something I hadn't planned for.

    Why it scores what it scores: Every bullet gets roughly its fair share of the two minutes, which is the whole skill this card tests, and the setup is deliberately compressed to buy time for the ending. The feeling bullet is split across two time-frames — then and now — which is a natural way to reach more complex tenses. Note the refusal to tidy the story into a lesson: I'm not going to pretend it was better is more convincing than a neat resolution.

    Phrases worth stealing

    • “an argument already under way about how many museums was too many”
    • “There's no drama in that, which is somehow worse”
    • “I just lost to a calendar”
    • “in the mood of someone accepting a consolation prize”
    • “I'm not going to pretend it was better”

    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.

    • Do people often change their plans?
    • How important is planning?
    • Why do some people dislike changes to their plans?

    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.