The question
Are you a polite person?
Do you think people should be polite?
Who taught you to be polite?
Have people become less or more polite over time?
How to answer it
"Are you a polite person?" is a trap in the sense that yes is boring and no sounds odd. The interesting answer is a qualified one: polite to strangers and terrible to your own family, or polite in your first language and blunter in English because you have fewer words to soften things with. The third question wants a person and a memory, not "my parents" on its own. The fourth is the only one where the examiner is really listening for range — it is a comparison across time and needs the grammar to match.
What moves the band
- Politeness differs by culture and language, and saying so is a strong, specific answer nobody else gives.
- For the last question, used to and tend to carry the comparison: people used to, whereas now they tend to.
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.
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