Onterra TutorDescribe a tradition or festival in your country
An IELTS Speaking Part 2 cue card, with the structure examiners reward. You get 1 minute to prepare and up to 2 minutes to speak.
The cue card
Describe a tradition or festival in your country.
You should say:
- what it is
- when it happens
- what people do
- and explain why it is important to people.
Your 2-minute structure
- Open with a direct answer (10 seconds). Name your choice immediately: one sentence that answers "describe a tradition or festival in your country". Do not waste your first 20 seconds on "that's an interesting question".
- What it is (about 25 seconds). Give the fact, then add one detail and one feeling. A specific memory always beats a general statement.
- When it happens (about 25 seconds). This is where a past-tense story earns grammar marks. Set the scene in one sentence, then say what happened.
- What people do (about 25 seconds). Slow down and be concrete: a name, a place, a number. Details are what make an answer sound fluent rather than memorised.
- And explain why it is important to people (about 25 seconds). Link back to your opening sentence with a connector like 'which is exactly why' so the whole answer feels planned.
- Close with why it matters (15 seconds). End on how it affected you or what it taught you. A natural closing line signals confidence to the examiner.
Sample band 8+ answer
About 90 seconds when spoken at a natural pace. Notice how specific the details are; that specificity is what you should copy, not the story itself.
I'd like to describe the New Yam Festival, which is celebrated in many communities in the east of my country around August or September, when the first yams are harvested. Traditionally, nobody eats the new yam until the festival, so the day itself feels like a permission slip for the whole community. People travel home from the cities, the town fills up, and there's a sequence to the day: thanksgiving prayers, the symbolic cutting of the first yam by the oldest titled man, then masquerades, drumming and an amount of food that defies description. My favourite part as a child was watching the masquerades chase teenagers who got too bold. It matters to people for reasons deeper than entertainment: it marks gratitude for survival through the farming year, it pulls scattered families back to one table, and it hands the culture to children in the most enjoyable possible packaging. Even relatives who claim to be too modern for tradition somehow never miss it.
Why this answer works
- The answer teaches the examiner something, which naturally produces organised, flowing speech.
- 'A permission slip for the whole community' is original phrasing, not textbook language.
- It covers what, when, what people do and why it matters in a clean sequence.
What the examiner listens for
Fluency (can you keep going for 2 minutes without long pauses), vocabulary range (topic words, not just "good" and "nice"), and grammar variety (past tenses and linking words like "which is why" and "even though"). Hesitation is normal; stopping is what costs bands. If you lose your thread, say "what I mean is..." and keep moving.