Three parts in 11 to 14 minutes
The Speaking test is a face-to-face conversation with an examiner, lasting 11 to 14 minutes.
- Part 1 (4–5 minutes): familiar questions about your home, work, studies, hobbies and daily life.
- Part 2 (3–4 minutes): you get a cue card, one minute to prepare, and then speak for up to two minutes on the topic.
- Part 3 (4–5 minutes): a deeper discussion linked to the Part 2 topic, with more abstract questions.
You are marked on four criteria: Fluency and Coherence, Lexical Resource, Grammatical Range and Accuracy, and Pronunciation.
Fluency vs accuracy
Many students in Abu Dhabi fall into one of two groups.
Fluent but loose. You have used English at work for years, in a hospital, a site office or a ministry. You speak easily but your grammar slips, you repeat the same few words, and your Part 3 answers wander.
Accurate but slow. You studied English formally and know the grammar, but you pause to build each sentence, and your answers are short.
The test rewards both, so you need to work on whichever is weaker. Fluent speakers should slow down slightly and listen back for errors. Careful speakers should practise speaking for longer without stopping, accepting small mistakes.
Pronunciation for Abu Dhabi's many first languages
Pronunciation is not about having a British or American accent. It is about being easy to understand. A clear Emirati, Keralite or Filipino accent is fine. These are common points speakers from the capital's main communities work on:
- Arabic speakers: /p/ and /b/ ("park" vs "bark"), /v/ and /f/, and the short vowels in "bit", "bet" and "bat". Clusters such as "str" in "street" sometimes gain an extra vowel.
- Malayalam and other South Indian language speakers: /v/ and /w/ ("vest" and "west"), word stress on longer words, and keeping a clear rhythm rather than giving every syllable equal weight.
- Tagalog and Filipino speakers: /f/ and /p/, /v/ and /b/, and the "th" sounds in "think" and "this". Many Filipino speakers are very fluent, so pronunciation is often the area with the most room to gain.
- Urdu, Punjabi and Pashto speakers: /v/ and /w/, an extra vowel before "s" clusters ("school" said as "ischool"), and sentence intonation, which can sound flat to an examiner.
- Bengali and Nepali speakers: /v/ and /b/, /s/ and /sh/, and final consonants that can get dropped.
Pick the two points that apply to you and practise them in short daily drills, rather than trying to change everything at once.
IELTS Speaking practice when you have no partner
Many people in Abu Dhabi live in shared accommodation, work long shifts or have families who speak another language at home. Finding a speaking partner is hard. You can still practise effectively:
- Use our 186 prompts for Parts 1, 2 and 3. Speak your answer out loud and the platform transcribes it.
- Read the AI feedback on your transcript. It points out repetition, short answers and grammar slips that you will not notice while speaking.
- Use the real Part 2 timer. The cue card gives you exactly one minute to prepare and two minutes to speak, just like the test. Most students discover they stop after 70 or 80 seconds; the timer trains you to keep going.
- Record yourself on your phone in the car (when parked) or during a quiet break, and listen back once a week.
- Think aloud in English during routine tasks, such as describing your drive along the Corniche or planning your week.
Good IELTS Speaking practice is spoken, not silent: even ten minutes a day of out-loud practice is far better than an hour of silent reading about Speaking.
When to book a teacher session
AI feedback is excellent for volume, but a human examiner-style conversation is different. Book a Teacher gives you about 20 minutes one-to-one with an IELTS teacher online, from $5. Most students use a session to:
- do a full Part 1–3 practice round and get honest feedback;
- check pronunciation points that are hard to judge alone;
- rehearse Part 3 follow-up questions, which are hard to simulate by yourself.
One session early on and one about a week before your test is a common pattern.
Getting started
Try a Speaking task from the free sample mock, including a cue card with the one-minute timer. Open the free practice, and when you want all 186 prompts, create your account. Full Access is $12 for 2 months; teacher sessions are booked separately.