Every few months the same thing happens. Lists appear with titles like "confirmed IELTS speaking topics for January to April" and they spread through forums, coaching groups and WhatsApp. This article is not one of those lists, and I want to say why before you read further.
Cambridge does not publish the live speaking questions, and neither do test centres. Nobody outside the exam board can confirm what is in the current rotation, so a list that calls itself confirmed is claiming something it has no way of knowing.
There is a bigger problem than a list being wrong. If the list is right, and you memorise answers from it, you can score lower than if you had never seen it. I will show you exactly how, using the wording of the public band descriptors.
So this guide does the useful version. It shows the themes that keep coming back, using real questions from the speaking bank on this site, how one theme escalates from Part 1 to Part 2 to Part 3, and a way to prepare that works whichever card you draw.
#What a forecast list actually is
Three kinds circulate. Recall lists, where candidates post the card they were given: honest, but one person sees one card out of a set nobody has counted, and exact wording fades within hours. Aggregated forecasts, built from hundreds of recalls: real work, sensible themes, but always describing the past. And copied lists, which are old content with a new date.
Even the best of the three has a structural problem. The examiner is not reading from a public script. Part 1 questions vary, examiners reword, and Part 3 is a discussion, so the questions you get depend on what you just said. A list cannot predict a conversation.
The only reliable fact is this: the themes are stable, the wording is not. Prepare the themes.
#Why a memorised answer costs you marks
Forecast lists never mention this, so let us be specific. IELTS tells candidates not to give prepared answers, and examiners are trained to notice them. You do not have to take that on trust, because the penalty is visible inside the descriptors.
Fluency and Coherence at Band 8 asks you to develop topics "coherently and appropriately". That word appropriately is where a memorised answer dies. A learned paragraph about your grandmother is a fine paragraph. Attached to a question about a well designed public place, it is not appropriate, and the examiner marks what you did with the question in front of you.
The second mechanism is hesitation. Band 9 describes hesitation that "is content-related rather than to find words or grammar". A memorised speaker produces both kinds at once: smooth while the script lasts, then a dead stop when it runs out. That gap is far more noticeable because it follows a stretch of unusually fluent speech.
The third is range. Lexical Resource at Band 7 wants vocabulary used "flexibly to discuss a variety of topics". A memorised answer shows you can produce one topic once. Reframe the question and the vocabulary does not bend, because it was never yours.
So the script often marks lower than the same person speaking naturally, because it caps two criteria at once. And an examiner who suspects memorisation can simply ask a follow up you were not expecting.
#The part of the test that barely changes
Part 1 is the most predictable four minutes in IELTS. It opens with identity and one settled area, your work or study and your home, then moves through two everyday themes.
Our Part 1 bank is built as 14 complete sets, each a full examiner script from the opening question to the last. The themes across those 14 sets are narrow: hometown and daily life, family and hobbies, travel and technology, weather and entertainment, friends and health, sleep and routine, reading and free time, music and culture, shopping and money, pets and outdoor time, school memories and studying, cooking and eating out, photography and memories, cities and neighbourhoods.
Nothing there will surprise you, and that is the point. These are the safe, personal, low-controversy areas an examiner can ask anyone in the world about. Real questions from the bank: "Has your hometown changed much in recent years?", "Do you think people spend too much time on their phones?", "Does the weather affect your mood?", "What facilities should every neighbourhood have?"
None of these needs a leak. All of them need a second sentence ready.
#What a second sentence looks like
Band 6 shape: "Yes, I think so. People use phones a lot. It is not very good for health."
Three short sentences, all correct, no reason, no example. It is finished in seven seconds and the examiner has nothing to mark.
Band 7 shape: "Honestly yes, and I would include myself in that. I check mine first thing in the morning, before I have even got out of bed, which is a habit I am not proud of. What bothers me more is what it has done to conversations. When I meet friends now there is usually a phone face up on the table, and you can tell people are only half listening."
Same opinion, same person, no rare vocabulary. The answer commits to a position, gives a personal specific, then adds one observation nobody asked for. Grammatical Range and Accuracy at Band 7 wants "a range of complex structures with some flexibility", and there are three here: a relative clause, a time clause, and a noun clause opening a sentence. Nothing was memorised.
#Six shapes cover every Part 2 card
Part 2 is where forecast lists sell hardest, because a cue card feels like something you could be handed in advance. Here is a more useful way to look at it.
Our Part 2 bank holds 26 cue cards. Sort them by what the card asks you to produce and every one falls into six shapes:
- A person (3 cards): someone who influenced you, an interesting older person you know, a moment you felt proud of someone else.
- A place (4 cards): a place you would like to visit, a small business in your area, a well designed public place, a place near water.
- An object (4 cards): a book or film, a website or app, a piece of music, technology you would find hard to live without.
- An event, or a time when (9 cards): a memorable journey, a time you helped someone, an achievement, a meal you remember, a childhood event, a piece of advice, a time you tried something new, a time you had to wait, a positive change in your community.
- An activity or skill (3 cards): a skill you learned, a sport you enjoy watching, a family tradition.
- A plan (3 cards): a five year goal, a hobby you would like to take up, a skill you would like to teach.
The largest group by far is "a time when". Nine of 26. That is the most valuable line on this page, because one well chosen story from your own life can be pointed at most of them.
Notice what the shapes demand grammatically. People and places want description and comparison. Events want past narrative tenses. Plans want future forms and conditionals. Handle those three grammar sets and the card cannot catch you out, whatever it says on the day.
#How one theme climbs through the three parts
The three parts are not three separate tests. They walk up the same ladder, and this is why theme preparation beats card preparation.
Part 1, from our School Memories and Studying set: "Do you prefer studying alone or in a group?" and "What is the best way to prepare for an exam in your view?"
Part 2: "Describe a skill you learned that you are proud of." Say what the skill is, when you learned it, how you learned it, and explain why you are proud of it. The follow up in our bank is "Have you taught this skill to anyone else?"
Part 3, from our Skills and Learning set: "What kinds of skills do you think are most important for young people to learn today?", "Do you think practical skills are valued enough in the education system?", "Some people say that natural talent is more important than hard work. Do you agree?"
The Cities ladder runs the same way: "What facilities should every neighbourhood have?", then "Describe a public place that is well designed", then "Should city centres be car-free?"
Three things move as you climb:
- The subject. Part 1 is I. Part 2 is still I, but one specific instance of me. Part 3 is people, governments, most families. Candidates who keep saying "in my country I always" in Part 3 are answering a Part 1 question nobody asked.
- The tense. Part 1 lives in the present simple, because it is about habits. Part 2 lives in the past. Part 3 uses the present simple for generalisations plus modals for speculation: might, tends to, is likely to.
- The certainty. Part 1 answers can be flat facts. Part 3 questions have no correct answer, so hedging is the right register, not a weakness. "I suspect", "it probably depends on", "in most cases".
#A Part 2 answer built from notes, not a script
Here is the card again: Describe a skill you learned that you are proud of. These are the notes I would write in the one minute. Keywords, never sentences.
What: swimming, age 29
When: two years ago, Tuesday evenings, adult class
How: six of us, all adults, terrified. Instructor Ravi. Floating first, no stroke for 3 weeks
Proud: late, embarrassing, nearly quit week 4. Sea last summer
"The skill I want to talk about is swimming, which I only learned two years ago, at twenty-nine, so quite late by most standards.
I signed up for an adult beginners class at the local pool on Tuesday evenings. There were six of us and I think every one of us was slightly embarrassed to be there. Our instructor was a man called Ravi, and what I remember most is that he would not let us attempt a stroke for the first three weeks. All we did was float and breathe out underwater. At the time it felt like we were wasting our money.
I nearly gave up in week four. I could float perfectly well and I still could not move forward, and there is something particularly demoralising about being an adult who is bad at a thing children do easily. What kept me going was stubbornness, and the fact that I had already paid.
The reason I am proud of it is not really the swimming. It is that I did something badly in front of other people for two months without stopping. Last summer I swam in the sea on holiday, properly out of my depth, and I remember floating there thinking that two years earlier I would have stayed on the sand."
What is doing the work is not vocabulary you do not have.
- All four bullet points, in order. The examiner has the card in front of them too.
- Specifics, not adjectives. Tuesday evenings, six people, a name, three weeks, week four. Specifics are what let you keep talking, and you cannot memorise them for a card you have not seen, which is exactly why they sound real.
- Tenses that move. Past simple for the story, past continuous for background, past perfect for "I had already paid", a conditional for "I would have stayed on the sand".
- A last line that reflects. It closes instead of trailing off, and it answers the "explain why" bullet rather than repeating the opening.
#The same story, four different cards
Here is the payoff of the six shapes. That one swimming story, with a different first and last sentence, answers at least four cards in our bank:
- Describe a time you tried something new for the first time. Open on the first lesson.
- Describe an achievement you are proud of. Open on the sea, tell the story as the route to it.
- Describe a person who has influenced you. Make Ravi the subject. The three weeks of floating becomes what he taught you about patience.
- Describe a useful skill you would like to teach someone. Shift into future forms. You would teach it the way Ravi did, and here is why.
That is not memorising. The sentences are new every time and only the raw material is reused, which is what fluent speakers do anyway: reach for the closest thing they actually know.
#Part 3 is a different skill wearing the same theme
Take the hardest question in the Skills and Learning set: "Some people say that natural talent is more important than hard work. Do you agree?"
Band 6 shape: "I think hard work is more important. If you work hard you can learn anything. Talent is also important but not so much."
It answers, then stops. Band 6 Fluency and Coherence describes a speaker who "is willing to speak at length". This one is not even at length.
Band 7 plus shape: "I would lean towards hard work, though I think it depends on the level you are talking about. For everyday skills, cooking, driving, playing an instrument well enough to enjoy it, practice does almost all of the work, and talent just decides how quickly you get there. At the very top it might be different. Among professional athletes everyone trains extremely hard, so whatever separates them is probably something they were born with. So my honest answer would be that hard work decides whether you are competent, and talent decides whether you are exceptional."
The shape is position, reason, concession, then a summary that joins the two halves. No rare vocabulary. What there is:
- A qualified position. "I would lean towards" and "it depends on the level" open room to develop.
- A concession that is genuinely argued. Conceding a point and then explaining it is the clearest single signal of Part 3 competence.
- Hedging that fits the question. Certainty would be the wrong register on a speculative question.
- A closing line that resolves the tension. Competent versus exceptional. That is what makes it sound finished rather than abandoned.
None of it depends on the topic. Learn the shape and it works across all 15 Part 3 theme sets in our bank, from Media and Information to Art and Public Funding.
#The theme sheet: preparation that survives any rotation
Merge the Part 1 and Part 3 theme sets and you get twelve study areas: home and neighbourhood; work and study; family, friends and community; free time and sport; food and cooking; travel and culture; technology and the internet; money and shopping; health, sleep and exercise; education and skills; environment and cities; media, art and entertainment.
Write one page per theme, about twenty minutes each. Five things on it, and no full sentences anywhere:
- Four of your own specifics. A real place with its real name, a real person, an age or a date, a number. This is raw material for all three parts and it is the thing candidates never prepare.
- One story from your life that belongs to the theme, in five keywords. Not written out.
- Six words or phrases you would not normally reach for, each written with its collocation attached. Not "convenient" alone but "far more convenient than it used to be". A word without its partners will not come out under pressure.
- One opinion, one reason, and the strongest objection to it. The objection is what makes Part 3 possible.
- One honest "I have not thought about this much, but" sentence. You will need it, and having one ready beats freezing.
Then rehearse the ladder rather than the card. Pick a theme and, in one sitting, answer two Part 1 questions, one Part 2 card and two Part 3 questions from that same theme, recorded, back to back. That is roughly eight minutes of speaking and it trains the exact escalation the real test uses.
#When the topic is one you know nothing about
It happens. "Describe a piece of music that means a lot to you", and you do not really listen to music.
The instinct is to panic about content. Do not. The examiner is marking your English, not your taste, and there is no rule that the story must be true. Stop describing the object and describe a moment instead. You do not need to care about music to remember a song playing at a wedding, or what your father used to put on in the car. The last bullet on every card is some version of "and explain why", which is a question about you, not about the topic.
Two rules. Never say "I do not have one", because there is no score for honesty here and the descriptors have nothing to reward. And do not spend your prep minute hunting for the perfect example: take the second thing you think of and start writing keywords.
#How to practise this properly
Speaking is the one module you cannot improve by studying, because the gap between what you think you said and what came out is enormous and you cannot hear it in your own head. Two things make practice work: a recording, and timed pressure, because a cue card is easy with three minutes and hard with one.
The free speaking practice here runs on the same bank the examples above came from, 81 speaking practices in total, spanning Part 1 questions, Part 2 cue cards and Part 3 discussion. You record an answer and get a band for fluency, vocabulary, grammar and pronunciation, plus your own words written out, which is usually the uncomfortable part.
For the rest of the method: using the one minute of preparation, handling Part 3 discussion questions, what to say instead of um, and what the pronunciation criterion actually measures. If you are stuck at a band, the 6.0 to 7.5 guide is the one to read next.
#What this article will not tell you
- We do not know the current question rotation. Nobody outside the exam board does. Everything above is theme structure taken from our own bank, not a leak.
- The questions quoted here are ours. They are written to sit at the level and in the style of the real test. They are not real exam questions and we will not present them as recovered exam content.
- Our published accuracy figure covers Writing only. The method and the weekly numbers are on the quality page. There is no published accuracy figure for Speaking, because there is nothing solid to measure it against yet, and an unmeasured claim about Speaking would be the same kind of thing as a confirmed topic list.
The forecast lists will be back in a few months with a new date. The themes will be the same ones. Prepare those and it will not matter which card you draw.
Ready to hear yourself? Record one answer in free speaking practice and see how it scores.