Describe a holiday when you stayed somewhere unusual.
A card about a farm stay, a houseboat, a tent, a mountain hut or a guesthouse with a story. The accommodation is the heart of the answer, so let it shape everything else you say.
The task card
Describe a holiday when you stayed somewhere unusual.
You should say:
- where you went
- what kind of place you stayed in
- what you did during the holiday
and explain why staying there made the holiday memorable.
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
Set the scene in two sentences: where you went, when, and who with. Then move quickly to the place you stayed — that is what makes this card different from a general holiday card, and it should take up most of your time.
Describe the accommodation through what living in it was like: what you could hear at night, how you got hot water, who else was there, what you had to get used to. Comparisons with a normal hotel ('there was no reception, just a bell by the door') make the unusual details clear.
For 'what you did', connect the activities to the place wherever you can — swimming at sunrise because the hut was by a lake, helping with the nets because the guesthouse belonged to a fishing family. That keeps the answer coherent instead of turning it into a list of sights.
In the final bullet, explain what the unusual stay gave you that a hotel would not have: contact with the people who lived there, a slower routine, a small adventure. The common mistake is saying 'it was unique' without explaining how.
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
I'd like to talk about a holiday I took with two university friends about a year ago, when we spent five days on an apple farm in the hills, roughly six hours north of my city by bus. It wasn't a hotel in any sense. It was a family's actual home, an old two-storey wooden house in the middle of the orchards, and they rented out two small rooms upstairs to guests. Everything was basic but comfortable: thick blankets, a wood stove, and hot water only if you remembered to switch the heater on an hour beforehand. There wasn't a menu, either; you ate whatever the family was eating, at their table, at exactly eight o'clock. We'd gone at harvest time without really thinking about it, and on the second morning the grandfather, who spoke only the local dialect, simply handed each of us a basket. So that's mostly what we did. We picked apples in the mornings, sorted them into crates in the afternoons, and in the evenings sat round the stove while the family's teenage son translated his grandfather's stories about winters when the road was cut off for weeks. We did have one proper tourist day, to a temple further up the valley, and it was easily the least memorable part. What made the holiday memorable was the house itself. In a hotel you're a customer, whereas there we were more like temporary members of the household. We mucked in, we got things wrong — I dropped a whole crate on day three — and they laughed with us rather than at us. I've stayed in much nicer places since, but I couldn't tell you much about any of them. That farmhouse I could describe room by room.
Why this works: The accommodation dominates the answer, as it should, and quiet comparisons with a hotel ('there wasn't a menu, either') make each unusual detail clear. The activities grow out of the place — harvest baskets, stories by the stove — and the contrast between being 'a customer' and 'temporary members of the household' answers the final bullet with a real idea instead of 'it was unique'.
Useful vocabulary for this topic
- a working farm
A farm that still produces food, not just a tourist attraction.
- basic but comfortable
Balanced description of simple accommodation.
- our hosts
The people who welcome and look after guests; avoids repeating 'the family'.
- to get used to
To become familiar with something that felt strange at first.
- to muck in
Informal British phrase for joining in with shared work.
- a world away from
Useful for contrasting the stay with your normal life: 'a world away from my flat'.
- to unwind
To relax after a period of work or stress.
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.
- 1Why do many travellers now prefer unusual accommodation to ordinary hotels?
- 2How does tourism affect the people who live in popular holiday areas?
- 3Should local residents be able to limit holiday rentals in their area?
- 4Why do some people go back to the same holiday place every year?
- 5Why do some people prefer to take holidays in their own country?
- 6How might holidays change as more people are able to work remotely?
More on how this family of cards is discussed: Places. Model answers for Part 3: Part 3 questions and answers.