Langujet
    Commencer gratuitement
    All recent IELTS questions
    Speaking Part 2Reported 12 August 2026

    Describe a special cake you received from someone

    The cue card

    Describe a special cake you received from someone.

    • You should say: what it was and who gave it to you
    • You should say: when and where you received it
    • You should say: what made it special
    • You should say: and explain how you felt about it

    How to answer it

    This question has come back: candidates reported it on 16 July 2026, 12 August 2026. Questions that repeat across sittings are the ones worth rehearsing properly.

    This is a description card wearing a feelings card's clothes: the marks sit in the last bullet, not the first three. Spend about fifteen seconds on what the cake was and who gave it, then push into why it mattered — who made the effort, what they knew about you that showed in it, what the moment around it was. Examiners hear 'it was chocolate and very delicious' from most candidates; a cake with a misspelt name piped on it by a younger sibling gets you a story with a middle and an end.

    What moves the band

    • Anchor the tense: narrate in past simple, then switch to present perfect for the lasting part ('I've kept the photo ever since').
    • Feelings need range beyond 'happy': touched, overwhelmed, a bit embarrassed by the fuss, quietly proud.
    • For Part 3, separate the food from what the food is for — the ritual, the visible expense, the signal that someone is worth the trouble.

    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 cake that my mother gave me for my birthday last year. It was a chocolate cake with white cream on the top and my name written on it.

    She gave it to me at home in the evening, when all my family were there. My aunt and my cousins also came, so it was quite a big party for us.

    It was special because my mother made it herself. Usually we buy a cake from the shop, but that time she baked it in the kitchen, and it took her a long time. The taste was very delicious and everybody said it was better than a shop cake.

    I felt very happy and also a bit surprised, because I did not expect it. I think it is one of the best birthdays I have had.

    Why it scores what it scores: Everything the card asks for is there, in order, and the grammar holds up — which is what a 6.5 looks like. What keeps it there is that the fourth bullet, the one carrying the marks, gets two flat sentences: very happy, a bit surprised. The cake is described but never seen, and phrases like very delicious and a big party are the first words anyone reaches for.

    Band 8

    What an 8 sounds like

    The one that comes to mind is a cake my younger brother made me, which is not a sentence anyone in my family expected to hear.

    He was about eleven at the time and he had never baked anything, so he did it while I was out and nobody warned me. When I got home there was this slightly collapsed chocolate thing on the table with my name piped on it in blue icing, except he had run out of room, so the last two letters were squeezed down the side.

    It tasted, honestly, quite bad. It was dry in the middle and he had used salt somewhere he shouldn't have. But that is not really the point, and I think I knew that even while I was eating it.

    What got me was the effort in it — he had gone and found a recipe, spent his own money, made a mess of the kitchen he then had to clean up, all without being asked. Every other cake I have been given was bought. That one cost him something.

    I've kept the photo ever since, and we still bring it up whenever anyone mentions baking.

    Why it scores what it scores: The same four bullets, but the answer is built around one image — two letters squeezed down the side of the icing — and everything else hangs off it. Admitting the cake was bad is the move that makes the ending land: the feeling is argued rather than announced. Note the tense control the plan asks for, past simple throughout and then I've kept the photo ever since for what carried forward.

    Phrases worth stealing

    • “which is not a sentence anyone in my family expected to hear”
    • “But that is not really the point”
    • “What got me was the effort in it”
    • “That one cost him something”
    • “I've kept the photo ever since”

    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.

    • Will the role of cakes in celebrations change in the future?
    • How are special foods in your country different from those eaten abroad?
    • Why do people spend heavily on meals for special occasions?

    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.