Describe a language or accent you find interesting.
Works for a foreign language, a regional accent of your own language, or even a grandparent's dialect. The examiner wants curiosity, not linguistics.
The task card
Describe a language or accent you find interesting.
You should say:
- what it is and where it is spoken
- how you first noticed it
- what you find interesting about it
and explain whether you would like to learn or imitate it.
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
Root it in a person or a moment: the neighbour whose dialect you half-understood, the film that made the accent attractive. Curiosity needs an origin story.
For what interests you, give one concrete feature you can actually demonstrate or describe — a sound, a word with no translation, the speed, the melody.
Be honest on the final point: wanting to understand it is as good an answer as wanting to speak it, if you say why.
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.
Be specific about which one
- A regional accent within your own country is often richer than a foreign language
- A language with a feature you can actually describe — tones, clicks, cases, no verb 'to be'
- A dialect a family member speaks that you only half understand
Describe the sound, not the grammar
- Melody and rhythm: where the pitch rises, whether questions go up or down
- One sound that does not exist in your language, described physically
- Speed and the way words run into each other
What it tells you beyond sound
- A word or idea it has that yours does not
- What people assume about a speaker because of it, and whether that is fair
- Whether it is disappearing, and what that means
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 — Geordie / Newcastle accent, north-east England
- NOTICED — a colleague, first week; had to ask twice, then loved it
- INTERESTING — questions rise at the end; kept old words (bairn, canny)
- IMITATE — no. Would learn to understand, not to copy — it sounds fake
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 accent I find most interesting is the Geordie accent, from Newcastle in the north-east of England. I should say at the start that I'm not from there and have never lived there, so I'm admiring it from the outside. I first noticed it properly about six years ago when a colleague joined our team from Newcastle. For the first two weeks I had to ask him to repeat things, which was mortifying, because we were both speaking English and I couldn't reliably follow him. And then something switched — I stopped hearing it as difficult and started hearing it as, honestly, much better than my own accent. What I find interesting about it's really two things. The first is the melody. The pitch rises at the end of sentences that aren't questions, so there's a lift at the end of almost everything, and it makes ordinary statements sound warm and slightly open-ended. My own accent falls at the end of every sentence, which by comparison sounds quite closed and a bit final. The second is the vocabulary, which has kept words that have vanished almost everywhere else — 'bairn' for a child, 'canny' meaning pleasant rather than shrewd, 'howay' as an all-purpose instruction. Those are old words. They have survived in that one corner while everywhere else quietly dropped them, and I find that genuinely remarkable. Would I want to imitate it? Absolutely not, and I feel quite strongly about that. An accent that isn't yours sounds false within about four words, and there's something slightly disrespectful in performing it. What I'd like is to understand it completely — to sit in a pub in Newcastle and follow every word of a fast conversation between two people who aren't slowing down for me. That seems to me a much better ambition than being able to do the voice.
Why this works: The sound is described in genuinely technical but accessible terms — rising pitch on statements, contrasted directly with the speaker's own accent — which is far more precise than saying it sounds nice. Three dialect words are given with meanings, which supplies real content for the 'what you find interesting' bullet. The final bullet takes a clear position and justifies it, distinguishing understanding from imitation, which gives the answer an argumentative edge most candidates never reach on this card.
Useful vocabulary for this topic
- I could listen to it all day
Warm, natural enthusiasm.
- a word that has no real translation
Concrete and always interesting.
- it carries a whole way of life
For dialects tied to a place or trade.
- my ear has slowly tuned into it
Nice progression verb for comprehension.
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.
- a broad accent
- “He has quite a broad accent, and for the first fortnight I understood about half of it.”
- it has a musical quality
- “It has a real musical quality — the pitch rises at the end of almost every sentence.”
- to pick up an accent
- “You do pick up an accent without noticing if you live somewhere long enough.”
- it is dying out
- “Some of the older vocabulary is dying out, which I think is a genuine loss.”
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.
Languages and accents
Example questions
- 1How many different accents are there in your country?
- 2Do people judge others by the way they speak?
- 3Why do you think some accents are seen as more attractive than others?
Learning languages
Example questions
- 1At what age should children start learning a second language?
- 2Can you suggest why some people find languages easier than others?
- 3Should governments do more to protect minority languages?
More on how this family of cards is discussed: Media, technology and culture. Model answers for Part 3: Part 3 questions and answers.