IELTS Speaking Part 2 — Cue Cards, Tips and Sample Answers

The person I want to talk about is my undergraduate literature professor — I’ll call him Dr Siddiqui — who taught at my university in Karachi. I met him in my second year, which was the point in my degree when I was starting to lose interest in the subject.

What he did that influenced me was quite specific. He never told us what to think about a text — he would ask questions and then wait, sometimes in uncomfortable silence, until someone said something genuine rather than something they thought he wanted to hear. At first I found it frustrating. Eventually I realised he was teaching us to trust our own reading.

The reason his influence has been so lasting is that I carry that habit into almost everything now — I am much slower to accept an interpretation just because it comes from an authority. I ask more questions. I am more comfortable with uncertainty. Those are not small things. I think he changed how I think, not just about literature, but in general.

The place I want to describe is Lahore’s Walled City — specifically the area around the Delhi Gate and the old bazaars inside. I visited it about two years ago on a trip with some university friends, and I had been there briefly as a child but had no memory of it.

What struck me most was the density of everything — the sounds, the smells, the buildings pressed so close together that the sky almost disappears. We spent most of the day just walking. We went through the cloth market, stopped at a dhaba for breakfast, and ended up at the Wazir Khan Mosque, which is quite simply one of the most beautiful buildings I have ever seen. The tilework inside is extraordinary.

The reason it made such a strong impression is that it felt genuinely ancient in a way that most places in Pakistan no longer do. There was no attempt to make it look modern or to package it for tourists — it was just a living city that happened to be five hundred years old. I found that quite moving, actually. It made me feel connected to something much longer than my own lifetime.

The object I want to describe is a notebook — a fairly ordinary hardcover notebook that my father gave me when I started university. He told me to write in it every day. I did not take that advice seriously at the time.

I have had it for about six years now. I did not actually start writing in it consistently until my third year, when I was going through a difficult period personally. At that point I picked it up almost by accident, and I have used it almost daily since then. It is not a diary exactly — more a place where I work through problems and record things I want to remember.

The reason it is important to me goes beyond the practical. The notebook is associated with my father’s advice — advice I ignored and then arrived at independently. There is something in that I find worth holding onto. It is also full of a version of myself that I can look back at, which is sometimes uncomfortable and sometimes reassuring. I think I would keep it even if I stopped writing in it.

I want to talk about the first time I had to present a research paper at a departmental seminar. This was during my postgraduate studies, and presenting formally in front of faculty members and fellow students was something I had successfully avoided up to that point.

It was outside my comfort zone because I am not naturally comfortable speaking in front of groups — particularly groups that know more about the subject than I do. The fear was not really about forgetting what to say. It was about being exposed as less capable than people assumed I was. I think many people will recognise that feeling.

On the day, it went better than I expected — not because I was suddenly confident, but because I had prepared very specifically. I had rehearsed every transition and every point I was likely to be questioned on. When the questions came, I was ready for most of them, and I was honest about the ones I could not answer fully.

What I learned was that preparation is a form of courage. The fear did not go away, but I went ahead anyway — and that, I think, is what matters.

I want to talk about a novel called “Exit West” by Mohsin Hamid. I read it about three years ago — I picked it up partly because Hamid is Pakistani, and I was curious to read something by a Pakistani author that had received serious international attention.

The novel follows two young people in an unnamed city that is gradually descending into conflict. What makes it unusual is that the author uses magical doors — doors that open onto different countries — as a way of exploring migration. You do not read about the journey; you read about the before and after. The effect is that the novel focuses entirely on what displacement actually does to people and to relationships.

The impact it had on me was to change how I think about migration as a subject. I had always understood it as a political or economic question. The novel forced me to understand it as an intimate one — about grief, about identity, about what it means to be somewhere entirely new without the person you were when you left. I thought about it for weeks afterwards. I still think about it now.