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.
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.