Free to start — no card
IELTS Speaking practice
All three parts end to end, on the real windows, with Part 3 follow-ups generated from what you actually said. The Part 2 long turn is free; the full interview is on every paid plan.
Format checked against IELTS on .
The interview, as IELTS runs it
Eleven to fourteen minutes, three parts, and identical for Academic and General Training candidates.
- Part 1 — four to five minutes of familiar questions about you: home, work, study, the everyday.
- Part 2, the long turn — a task card, one minute to prepare, then up to two minutes speaking without interruption.
- Part 3 — four to five minutes discussing the abstract side of the Part 2 topic.
The prep and answer windows here are the published ones: 60 seconds, then the turn. Practising Part 2 without the clock is practising a different task — filling two minutes is most of what it tests.
Part 3 reacts to you, which is the part most tools skip
A fixed list of follow-up questions is not Part 3. The real examiner asks about the position you took, and the difficulty is defending it under questions you did not anticipate.
Here your answer is transcribed and the follow-up is generated from it, so the discussion goes where your answers take it. That is also why a low-effort answer in Part 2 makes Part 3 harder, exactly as it does in the real test.
Four criteria, and what Pronunciation actually means
- Fluency and Coherence — keeping going, and whether the ideas connect. Hesitation to search for content is treated differently from hesitation to search for language.
- Lexical Resource — range and precision, including paraphrase when the exact word is not there.
- Grammatical Range and Accuracy — variety of structures and how often they are error-free.
- Pronunciation — intelligibility, not an accent. The descriptors ask whether you are understood without strain. Nobody is marked down for sounding like where they are from.
What a transcript can and cannot judge
Said plainly, because it matters here more than anywhere else on the site: the marking works from a transcription of your recording. That is strong evidence for Fluency, Lexical Resource and Grammar, and it is weaker evidence for Pronunciation than a human examiner listening to you.
A transcriber also tends to correct — it hears an unclear word and writes the word it expected. That flatters a candidate, which is the safe direction for practice, and it is a reason to treat the Pronunciation band as the least certain of the four.
Questions, answered
How long is the IELTS Speaking test?
Eleven to fourteen minutes across three parts. Part 1 is four to five minutes of familiar questions, Part 2 is the long turn — one minute to prepare and up to two minutes to speak — and Part 3 is a four to five minute discussion of the abstract side of the Part 2 topic.
What are the four IELTS Speaking criteria?
Fluency and Coherence, Lexical Resource, Grammatical Range and Accuracy, and Pronunciation. Each is scored on the published band descriptors and the four are averaged. Pronunciation is about being understood, not about sounding British or American.
How long should I speak in IELTS Speaking Part 2?
Up to two minutes, after one minute to prepare, and you should aim to fill it. Stopping at forty seconds gives the examiner too little to judge and reads as a fluency problem whether or not it is one. Our practice runs the real windows: sixty seconds to prepare, then the turn.
Can I practise IELTS Speaking without a partner?
Yes, and that is what this is for. You speak and the recording is transcribed. The Part 2 long turn is on the free plan; on a paid plan the full interview runs all three parts, and the follow-up questions in Part 3 are generated from what you actually said rather than read off a fixed list — so the discussion goes where your answers take it, which is what the real Part 3 does.
Is IELTS Speaking the same for Academic and General Training?
Yes, identical. Speaking and Listening are the same test on both tracks. Only Reading and Writing differ.
Free to start — the Part 2 long turn, four speaking evaluations a month, no card. The full three-part interview is on every paid plan.
The rest of the paper
Reading, Listening, Writing Task 1 and Task 2 each have their own page, and the full IELTS practice test covers all four sections.
What the numbers mean: the band descriptors explained.