Describe a book you often recommend to other people.
A media card with a built-in trap: the first bullet invites you to retell the plot for two minutes. The candidates who do well summarise in fifteen seconds and spend the rest on who they recommend it to and why.
The task card
Describe a book you often recommend to other people.
You should say:
- what the book is about
- when you first read it
- who you usually recommend it to
and explain why you think other people should read it.
How long you have
- 1 minute
Preparation
The examiner hands you the card, paper and a pencil. Make notes — a few words per cue point, never sentences.
- 1–2 minutes
Your long turn
Speak until the examiner stops you at two minutes. Finishing early is the most common self-inflicted problem in Part 2.
- 1–2 questions
Rounding off
The examiner may ask one or two short follow-up questions, then moves straight into the Part 3 discussion on the same theme.
Part 2 takes three to four minutes in total. The whole Speaking test runs 11 to 14 minutes across three parts, and Part 3 that follows lasts four to five minutes.
How to approach this card
Write your one-line summary during the prep minute and stick to it. Ten to fifteen seconds of content is enough — 'it follows a doctor in a small town over one long summer' — and every extra thirty seconds of plot is thirty seconds you are not being assessed on opinion or argument.
The third bullet is unusual and genuinely useful: who you recommend it to. Answer it with types of people and reasons — 'anyone who has just moved somewhere new', 'friends who say they do not have time to read, because the chapters are three pages long'. That single move makes the answer specific and stops it sounding like a review.
For the last bullet, give one concrete effect rather than a general endorsement. It changed how you think about a job, it made you phone someone, it is the only novel that has ever made you laugh in public. Effects are memorable and they are exactly what 'explain why' is asking for.
Ideas you can actually use
Three angles on this card. Pick the one closest to something real in your own life — invented material is what makes candidates hesitate at ninety seconds.
One-line summaries you can rehearse
- Character plus situation plus tension, in one sentence: 'a caretaker who never says the thing he needs to say'
- Say the shape rather than the events — short chapters, one long day, two timelines
- Where and when you first read it is a cue point; give it a scene, not a date
Who you recommend it to
- People who say they have no time — because it is short, or the chapters are tiny
- People at a particular life stage: about to move, newly a parent, deciding something
- People who claim not to like a genre, because it is the exception
Prove the effect
- Something you did after finishing it — a call, a decision, a change of mind
- How many copies you have bought for other people
- Whether it survives a second reading, and what you noticed the second time
What your one minute of notes should look like
Not sentences — a few words per cue point. This is the level of detail sixty seconds actually buys you, and it is enough to speak from for two minutes.
- WHAT — short novel, caretaker at a boarding school, fails to say one thing
- FIRST READ — hospital waiting room, ~6 yrs ago, someone had left it
- RECOMMEND TO — 'no time to read' people (180pp) + over-careful twentysomethings
- WHY — made me phone my father after 4 months. Not admiration, action.
Model answer
Speak your own answer first. Examiners are trained to spot memorised speeches and mark them down — use this to study structure, pacing and naturalness, never to recite.
Show the model answer
The book I press on people constantly is a short novel about a caretaker at a boarding school who spends the whole book failing to say one thing to one person. That's genuinely the plot. Nothing much happens and it's devastating. I first read it about six years ago, in a hospital waiting room of all places, which I think is partly why it landed. Somebody had left it on a chair. I read half of it that afternoon and bought my own copy on the way home, which isn't something I've ever done before or since. Who do I recommend it to? Two groups, really. The first is people who tell me they don't have time to read, because it's about a hundred and eighty pages with very short chapters and you can genuinely finish it in two sittings. And the second is anyone in their twenties who's being slightly too careful with their life. It's a book about postponement, and it's quite gentle about it right up until the last twenty pages, at which point it isn't gentle at all. Why should people read it? Because it does something I haven't seen another book manage, which is to make you feel the cost of a small silence. It isn't a book with a message exactly — nobody stands up and announces the theme — but I came out of it and phoned my father, who I hadn't spoken to in about four months, and I'm not a person who does that. That's what I mean when I say it works. Not that I admired it. That it made me do something.
Why this works: The plot summary takes fifteen seconds, exactly as it should. The 'when I first read it' section carries a small vivid scene rather than a date, and the third bullet is answered with two clearly defined groups plus reasons, which is far more interesting than naming friends. The final bullet lands on a single concrete effect — a phone call — and the closing contrast between admiring and doing gives the answer a genuine rhetorical finish.
Useful vocabulary for this topic
- it is a slow burn
For a book that builds gradually rather than gripping immediately.
- I could not put it down
Common but genuinely natural; use once, not repeatedly.
- it has stayed with me
For a book that keeps returning to you afterwards.
- it is not for everyone
A hedge that makes your recommendation sound considered.
- a page-turner
Precise term for a compulsively readable book.
- it rewards a second reading
Evaluative collocation that shows real familiarity.
- I press it on people
Idiomatic, slightly self-mocking phrase for recommending insistently.
The same phrases in a full sentence
A phrase list is only useful if you know how the words sit around it. Say each of these aloud once before you attempt the card.
- it is a slow burn
- “It is a slow burn, and about half the people I lend it to give up in the first fifty pages.”
- I press it on people
- “I press it on people constantly, to the point where friends have started avoiding the subject.”
- it has stayed with me
- “It has stayed with me for six years, which almost nothing else I have read has done.”
- it rewards a second reading
- “It genuinely rewards a second reading — the first fifty pages mean something different afterwards.”
Part 3 discussion
After your long turn the examiner moves into a four to five minute discussion on the same theme, working from two related discussion topics with about three questions each. The first stays close to your own experience; the second widens out. Answer with reasons and examples, not one-line replies.
Reading habits
Example questions
- 1What kinds of books are most popular in your country?
- 2How important is it for children to read for pleasure?
- 3Do you think people read less than they did twenty years ago?
Books and other media
Example questions
- 1What is lost when a book is made into a film or a series?
- 2Can you suggest why some people prefer audiobooks to printed books?
- 3How have libraries had to change to stay useful?
More on how this family of cards is discussed: Media, technology and culture.