Speaking Part 2: a band 6 and a band 7.5 answer to the same cue card, side by side

Part 2 gives you a cue card, one minute to prepare, and up to two minutes to talk. Most candidates believe the score depends on how much they say and how impressive the words are. It does not. Below are two answers to the same card, both about the same person, both roughly the same length. One is a 6 and one is a 7.5, and the difference is visible on paper.

The card: Describe a person who has influenced you. You should say: who the person is, how you know them, what they have done, and explain why this person has influenced you.

The band 6 answer

OK, so I want to talk about my uncle. He is my mother's brother and, um, he is about fifty years old. I know him since I was a child because he lived, er, he lives near our house and every weekend we go to visit him. He is a doctor, he work in a hospital in my city, and he is very busy but he always have time for the family.

What he has done… um, he help many people. When there was the, the epidemic, he worked very long hours, sometimes he didn't come home, and he never complain about it. Also he helped me with my studies, for example when I had a difficult exam in biology he explained me everything and I passed.

Why he influenced me… I think because he is very, um, hard-working and he is kind. I want to be like him. When I have a problem I always ask him and he give me a good advice. So, yes, he is a very important person in my life and, um, I think he influenced me a lot to choose my career, because I also want to study medicine. Yes, that's all.

About 200 words, roughly a minute and a half.

The band 7.5 answer

The person I'd like to talk about is my uncle Amir, my mother's younger brother, who's a doctor at the main hospital in my city. I've known him my whole life, obviously, but I only really got to know him as a person when I was about fourteen, when my parents were going through a difficult period and I ended up staying with him for most of a summer.

What struck me then, and still does, is how he treats his work. During the epidemic a few years ago he was on the ward for weeks at a time, and when he came home he never made a drama of it; he'd ask about my exams as if nothing had happened. He's also the reason I got through biology at school. I was on the verge of dropping it, and instead of just explaining the material he showed me how he'd learned it himself, by drawing everything, which turned out to be exactly what I needed.

I suppose he influenced me in two ways. The obvious one is that I'm now applying to study medicine, and I doubt I'd have considered it without him. The less obvious one is about attitude: he taught me that being good at something and making a fuss about it are two separate things, and that you can be completely committed to your work without letting it make you hard on the people around you. That's a balance I'm still trying to get right, but at least I know what it looks like.

About 260 words, roughly a minute and three quarters. Sixty words longer, which is not what makes the difference.

The grades

Fluency and Coherence

The band 6 answer is willing to keep going, which is why it is not a 5, but it is organised by the bullet points on the card ("What he has done… Why he influenced me…") rather than by a thread of its own. Each section is a small list: he works hard, he helped me, he is kind. The hesitations ("um", "er", "the, the epidemic") cluster where the speaker is searching for the next item, not for a word. That pattern, fluent inside a point and stalled between points, is band 6 coherence.

The 7.5 answer has one thread: a summer at fourteen, what the speaker noticed, and what that turned into. Every paragraph refers to the one before it ("What struck me then", "He's also the reason", "I suppose he influenced me in two ways"). The card's four bullets are all covered, but you cannot see the joins. That is the band 8 descriptor in practice: coherent, with topic development, and only the kind of hesitation that comes from thinking about content rather than language — what the fluency and coherence criterion rewards shows the same gap marked on two Part 3 answers.

Lexical Resource

Band 6 vocabulary is enough to be understood and no more. Very appears four times (very busy, very long hours, very hard-working, very important), with a lot doing the same job once more. Help stands in for the more precise verbs the speaker does not reach for: treated, supported, tutored. There is one clear error ("a good advice") and one collocation that a native speaker would not choose ("he influenced me a lot to choose my career"). Adequate, and that is the word in the descriptor.

The 7.5 answer uses ordinary words precisely and a few less common ones naturally: going through a difficult period, on the ward, never made a drama of it, on the verge of dropping it, making a fuss, hard on the people around you. None of these is rare. All of them are the right size for what they describe, and two are idiomatic without being showy. That is band 7: some less common and idiomatic vocabulary, with awareness of style, and the occasional slip.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy

The band 6 answer has a range of structures, and that is what keeps it at 6 rather than 5, but the errors are frequent and they are basic: I know him since (present perfect needed), he work, he always have, he help, he never complain, he give (third-person -s missing five times), explained me (explained to me). None of these stops the listener understanding, which is exactly the band 6 line: mistakes with complex structures that rarely cause comprehension problems.

The 7.5 answer produces long sentences that stay under control: a relative clause inside a time clause ("when my parents were going through a difficult period and I ended up staying with him for most of a summer"), conditionals ("I doubt I'd have considered it without him"), a cleft ("he's also the reason I got through biology"). There is no basic error anywhere in it. That is band 8: a wide range of structures used flexibly, with the majority of sentences error-free.

Pronunciation

A transcript cannot show this, but the descriptor is worth knowing because it is not about accent — what the pronunciation criterion actually measures goes deeper on this. Examiners listen for whether stress and intonation carry meaning (is he stressed when it matters?), whether words are grouped into sensible chunks, and whether individual sounds are clear enough that the listener never has to work. Band 6 is "generally understood, with mispronunciation of some words". Band 7 is "easy to understand throughout", with the features of band 8 present some of the time. Recording yourself and listening for the chunking, not the accent, is the only practice that moves this.

What the higher answer does that the lower one does not

1. It tells one story instead of listing qualities. A person who "is hard-working and kind" is a list. A person who came home from weeks on the ward and asked about your exams is a story, and a story organises itself.
2. It answers the "why" with a mechanism. The band 6 answer's reason is "I want to be like him". The 7.5 answer's reason is a specific thing the uncle taught, stated in a sentence the candidate has clearly thought before: commitment and fuss are separate things.
3. It makes fewer claims and supports each one. Two effects, one obvious, one less obvious. That structure is itself a coherence device, and it costs nothing.
4. Its long sentences are the ones it can control. Range without accuracy is band 6. The 7.5 answer never attempts a structure it then loses.

How to practise

Record yourself answering a card, then transcribe the recording word for word, fillers included. Reading your own transcript is uncomfortable and it is the fastest diagnostic there is: count the verys, circle the missing -s endings, and mark where the hesitations fall. If they fall between points, the fix is preparation (one story, not four bullets). If they fall inside sentences, the fix is grammar. Then answer the same card again a day later and compare the two transcripts.