Speaking Part 2: what to do with your prep minute
Sixty seconds and a pencil. Most students waste them writing sentences they'll never read. Here's a better use.
The cue card minute is the only planning time you get in the whole Speaking test, and it's routinely wasted. Students write full sentences, then read them aloud in a flat voice, and the examiner marks down fluency because it stops sounding like speech.
Write five words, not five sentences
One word per bullet on the card, plus one for the ending. Words are prompts you can speak around; sentences are scripts you'll recite. The difference is audible from the first line, and fluency and coherence is where it shows up.
Plan the ending first
Almost every Part 2 answer dies in the last twenty seconds, when the student runs out of things to say and trails off. Decide your final beat during the prep minute — how the experience changed something, why you'd do it again, what you'd tell someone else. Knowing where you're landing lets you stretch comfortably to the two-minute mark.
- 0–15s: pick a real memory, not an impressive one. Detail beats drama.
- 15–40s: one word per bullet point on the card.
- 40–55s: decide your closing line.
- 55–60s: breathe. Starting calm is worth a half band on its own.
Examiners aren't scoring how interesting your story is. They're scoring whether you can keep talking coherently for two minutes without hesitating.
Record yourself, once a day
Two minutes a day on your phone, played back once. You'll hear the filler words and the run-on sentences yourself, and hearing them is most of the fix. Bring the recordings to your next session and we'll score them against the real rubric.