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    Speaking Part 1Reported 23 July 2026

    IELTS Speaking Part 1: Study and work

    The question

    Do you study or work?

    What is your major?

    What will you do after your studies?

    Would you change your major?

    Do you prefer studying in the morning or the afternoon?

    Are you looking forward to working?

    How much time do you study each week?

    What would you change about your school?

    How to answer it

    This question has come back: candidates reported it on 30 June 2026, 23 July 2026. Questions that repeat across sittings are the ones worth rehearsing properly.

    This is the standard identity set and it opened sittings in both June and July, so it is worth actually preparing. The two questions that reward thought are 'would you change your major' and 'what would you change about your school' — both hypothetical, both easy to fumble into a flat no. Have a genuine second choice of subject and one concrete complaint about your institution.

    What moves the band

    • The conditional questions need would throughout: I'd probably have gone for, what I'd change is.
    • Give the study-hours question a real number and a qualification — it sounds like a person rather than a script.

    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

    Do you study or work? — I am a student. I study civil engineering at university and I am in my third year.

    Would you change your major? — No, I do not think I would change it. I chose civil engineering because I was good at maths and physics at school, and there are many job opportunities in this field. So I am happy with my choice.

    How much time do you study each week? — It depends on the week. Usually I study about twenty hours a week, but before exams I study much more, maybe thirty or thirty-five hours.

    What would you change about your school? — I would change the library, because it is very small and there are not enough seats for all the students. Also, sometimes it is too noisy to concentrate there.

    Why it scores what it scores: This is a solid 6.5 and the study-hours answer is genuinely good — a real number with a qualification attached, exactly as the tips ask. What keeps it from going higher is the hypothetical question. Would you change your major gets a flat no with the reasons for the original choice, which is the commonest way to fumble it: the conditional is never actually used, so the grammar the question was designed to elicit never appears.

    Band 8

    What an 8 sounds like

    Do you study or work? — Studying, third year of civil engineering, and working two evenings a week in a bookshop, which is the more sociable half of my life by a distance.

    Would you change your major? — I wouldn't switch out of it now, but if I'd known myself better at eighteen I'd probably have gone for architecture. Engineering answers the question can this stand up, and I keep finding I'm more interested in whether anyone wants to be inside it. So: no regrets, but a slightly different path if I could rewind.

    How much time do you study each week? — Twenty-odd hours in a normal week, which roughly doubles in the fortnight before exams and then collapses to nothing for a week afterwards. I'm not proud of the pattern.

    What would you change about your school? — The library closes at eight, which is when students actually start working. Everything else I'd forgive.

    Why it scores what it scores: The second answer is the one doing the work: it holds a genuine conditional across three sentences — if I'd known myself better, I'd probably have gone for — and then resolves into a real position rather than a shrug. The tips flag exactly this as the question that rewards thought. The final answer is one sentence long and still lands, which is a reminder that Part 1 rewards precision over volume.

    Phrases worth stealing

    • “the more sociable half of my life by a distance”
    • “if I'd known myself better at eighteen I'd probably have gone for architecture”
    • “Engineering answers the question can this stand up”
    • “which roughly doubles in the fortnight before exams”
    • “The library closes at eight, which is when students actually start working”

    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.