Describe a friendship that has survived a big change in your lives.
A card about a friend who stayed in your life through a move, a new job, a marriage or very different paths. The contrast between before and after gives you a ready-made structure and a natural reason to move between past and present tenses.
The task card
Describe a friendship that has survived a big change in your lives.
You should say:
- who the friend is and what your lives were like when you met
- what changed, and when
- how the friendship adapted to the change
and explain what this has taught you about friendship.
Now say it yourself
Record your own two minutes on this card and have it transcribed and marked against the Speaking criteria. Practising is free; the band estimate is part of Pro.
Record my answerHow 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
Open with how you met, told as a tiny story — sitting next to each other on the first day, an argument over a bicycle that turned into a friendship. Give your ages, because the distance between then and now is what the card is about.
For 'what changed', name one change and date it: a move, a new career, a marriage, a long illness. Then switch tenses clearly for how the friendship adapted: voice notes instead of daily meetings, an annual visit, a shared joke that has survived for twenty years.
The final bullet asks for a lesson, not just a feeling. Friendships survive for reasons: you never needed to impress each other, one of you made the effort during a difficult year, you deliberately kept a ritual. Turn the reason into one sentence about friendship in general, then back it with one piece of evidence.
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 friend I want to talk about is Kabir, who I met on my first day of primary school, when we were both six. Apparently I was crying in the queue for the school bus, and he solved the problem by offering me half of his banana. I don't remember that part, but his mum tells the story at every opportunity. As kids we were inseparable. We lived on the same street, so we'd cycle to school together, and in the summer holidays we ran what we called a museum in his garage — basically a shelf of interesting stones, bottle caps and one bird's nest — and we charged our parents a coin each to visit. We took it extremely seriously. Then, at eighteen, he moved four hours away to study agriculture, and everyone assumed that was the end of it. Our lives now couldn't be more different: he advises farmers in a small town, and I work in an office in the city. So the friendship changed shape. Instead of daily bike rides, we swap long voice notes — he records them while he's driving between farms, and I listen on the train. We also have one fixed rule: every year, on the first weekend of the winter holidays, we meet at the same café near our old school and order exactly the same thing. We haven't missed one in eleven years. What has it taught me? That a friendship doesn't need constant contact; it needs someone to turn up when it matters. When my father was in hospital a few years ago, Kabir drove four hours just to sit with me in the corridor for an afternoon, then drove straight back for work. We'd barely spoken that month. It didn't matter at all.
Why this works: The answer moves from 'used to' and 'would' for childhood, through the move at eighteen, into present habits, which is the tense control this card invites. Specific rituals — the garage museum, the voice notes, the yearly café — make the friendship tangible, and the hospital visit turns the final bullet into a lesson backed by evidence rather than a feeling.
Useful vocabulary for this topic
- we go back a long way
Natural phrase meaning you have known each other for many years.
- inseparable
Always together; ideal for describing childhood friends.
- to keep in touch
Standard collocation for staying in contact.
- to drift apart
To slowly become less close; useful for contrasting with your own friendship.
- to pick up where we left off
To continue a friendship easily after time apart.
- to make the effort
To deliberately work at something, such as staying in contact.
- our lives couldn't be more different
Honest contrast that makes the final bullet more interesting.
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.
- 1What makes it hard to stay friends with someone whose life has gone in a different direction?
- 2Should parents try to influence which friends their children make?
- 3Do friends need to share the same interests to stay close?
- 4Why do people sometimes lose touch with friends after a big life event, such as marriage?
- 5Why do some friendships survive long periods without contact while others do not?
More on how this family of cards is discussed: People and relationships. Model answers for Part 3: Part 3 questions and answers.