The three parts of the Speaking test
The test is face to face with an examiner and is recorded.
- Part 1 (4 to 5 minutes): familiar questions about your home, work or studies, hobbies and daily life. Answers of two or three sentences are about right.
- Part 2 (3 to 4 minutes): you get a cue card, one minute to prepare and up to two minutes to speak. The examiner may ask a short follow-up.
- Part 3 (4 to 5 minutes): a deeper discussion linked to the Part 2 topic. You are expected to give opinions, compare, speculate and explain.
It is marked on Fluency and Coherence, Lexical Resource, Grammatical Range and Accuracy, and Pronunciation.
Fluency versus accuracy
Many students try to speak perfectly and end up speaking slowly. Fluency in IELTS means speaking at length without long pauses or obvious searching for words, while staying organised. Accuracy matters too, but a small error delivered smoothly costs less than a perfect sentence built in silence.
- Use natural fillers sparingly: "That's an interesting question", "Let me think".
- Extend answers with a reason or an example: "I live in Sector 50, mainly because it's close to my office and the metro."
- Self-correct quickly and move on, the way native speakers do.
Pronunciation points for Hindi speakers in Noida
Most Noida candidates speak Hindi at home, often alongside another language from Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Uttarakhand or elsewhere. Clear pronunciation does not mean a British accent. It means being easy to understand. These are the points Hindi speakers most often work on:
- V and W. Hindi has one sound between them, so "vest" and "west", or "vine" and "wine", can merge. Practise rounding the lips for W and touching the top teeth to the lower lip for V.
- Z and J. "Zero" sometimes becomes "jero". Keep the tongue off the roof of the mouth for Z.
- Extra vowels before S clusters. "School", "station" and "speech" can become "ischool", "isteshan" and "ispeech". Start directly on the S.
- Word stress. English has strong and weak syllables: de-VE-lop, PHO-to-graph, pho-TO-gra-phy. Stressing every syllable equally makes speech sound flat and harder to follow.
- Sentence rhythm and intonation. Hindi rhythm is fairly even; English stresses key words and reduces small words like "to", "and" and "of". Listening to our British recordings and copying short phrases helps a lot.
- TH sounds. "Think" and "this" are often said with a T or D. Put the tongue lightly between the teeth.
If your first language is Bengali, Punjabi, Maithili or a Northeastern language, your list will be slightly different, and a teacher can point out which two or three points matter most for you.
Practising when you have no partner
Noida life can be isolating for Speaking practice. Flatmates in a PG are on different shifts, colleagues in Sector 62 speak Hindi on breaks, and the family may be busy. You can still practise effectively alone.
- Speak answers out loud, every time. Thinking an answer is not practice.
- Use our 186 prompts across Parts 1, 2 and 3, recorded on the platform so you get an AI-generated transcript and feedback.
- Practise on local topics. Cue cards often ask you to describe a place, an event or a journey. Prepare ideas around things you know well: a weekend at the Okhla Bird Sanctuary, a crowded evening in the Sector 18 market, your daily metro commute or a festival in your society.
- Find a speaking buddy from the same course or office and swap Part 3 questions twice a week over a video call.
The cue-card timer: use it properly
The one-minute preparation goes faster than you think. Our cue cards run on a real one-minute preparation timer, followed by a two-minute speaking timer, so you can learn what two minutes of speech feels like.
- In the minute, write four or five key words, not sentences.
- Cover each bullet point on the card, then add a feeling or a reflection at the end.
- Keep talking until the examiner stops you. Stopping at 70 seconds wastes time you could use to show your range.
When to book a teacher session
AI feedback is good at spotting grammar slips, repetition and filler words in your transcript. It cannot fully replace a person listening to you. Book a roughly 20-minute online session with an IELTS teacher (from ₹299) when you want a realistic three-part practice, a check on pronunciation, or a second opinion before your test. Many students book one early and one in the final week.
Start your IELTS Speaking test preparation with the free sample mock on the practice tests page, which includes a Speaking section, then sign up for the full set of prompts.