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    Speaking Part 1Reported 31 July 2026

    IELTS Speaking Part 1: Hometown

    The question

    Where is your hometown?

    What do you like about it?

    Is it a suitable place for young people?

    How long have you lived there?

    Is there anything you dislike about it?

    How to answer it

    This question has come back: candidates reported it on 7 July 2026, 31 July 2026. Questions that repeat across sittings are the ones worth rehearsing properly.

    The most common opening topic in the whole exam, and the one candidates most often over-rehearse. Locate the place in one clause and move to something specific — a market, a river, the fact that everyone leaves at eighteen. The 'suitable for young people' question is the only one with a genuine argument in it: answer it with work and nightlife or the lack of both.

    What moves the band

    • Do not recite a tourist-board description; examiners hear it constantly and it flattens your fluency score.
    • Place lexis: it's in the north of, about an hour from, it's a fairly industrial town, it's grown enormously.

    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

    Where is your hometown? — My hometown is Tabriz. It's a city in the north-west of Iran, quite far from the capital.

    What do you like about it? — I like that it is not too big, so it is easy to move around. Also the weather is quite good in spring and the people are friendly.

    Is it a suitable place for young people? — I think yes, because there are some universities and also some cafes and parks where young people can go. But maybe there are not so many jobs.

    Is there anything you dislike about it? — The traffic is very bad, especially in the morning. And in winter it is very cold.

    Why it scores what it scores: Clear, relevant, and slightly flat. Each answer is one idea plus a short reason, which is enough for a 6, and the linking (also, but, and) is the simplest available. The question about young people contains a real argument but abandons it in half a sentence.

    Band 8

    What an 8 sounds like

    Where is your hometown? — Tabriz, up in the north-west, about nine hours from Tehran if the road's kind to you.

    What do you like about it? — Mostly the scale of it. It's big enough to have everything and small enough that I still run into people I know in the bazaar, which I'd miss if I moved.

    Is it a suitable place for young people? — Honestly, it's a place young people love and then leave. There's a decent student population and the social side is fine, but the jobs just aren't there, so more or less everyone I studied with is now in Tehran or abroad. It's suitable for being twenty and not really for being twenty-five.

    Is there anything you dislike about it? — The winters are brutal, and I don't say that lightly. From December you're basically negotiating with the weather every time you leave the house.

    Why it scores what it scores: The band comes from the third answer: it takes a position, qualifies it, and lands it with a phrase the examiner has not heard before. The answers are still short — Part 1 is not a speech — but each one has an opinion in it rather than a description.

    Phrases worth stealing

    • “big enough to have everything and small enough that”
    • “it's a place young people love and then leave”
    • “the jobs just aren't there”
    • “negotiating with the weather every time you leave the house”

    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.