Describe a market or food shop that you enjoy visiting.
A card about a place where you buy food: a farmers' market, a bakery, a fishmonger's or a spice shop. Sensory detail is what lifts this answer.
The task card
Describe a market or food shop that you enjoy visiting.
You should say:
- where it is
- what it sells
- when you usually go there
and explain what makes the place enjoyable.
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
Fix the place quickly: its name or rough location, and how long you have been going there. Then move to what it sells, and be specific — 'a stall that only sells mushrooms' is far easier to talk about than 'fresh food'.
For 'when you usually go', connect the visit to a routine: Saturday mornings before the crowds, or on the way home when the bread comes out of the oven. A strong answer covers the atmosphere too — smells, sounds, the way sellers talk to customers — because that is what 'enjoyable' means in practice.
The common mistake is listing products for two minutes without any personal angle. Choose one or two vivid details, such as a seller who sets aside your favourite cheese, and build the enjoyment around them instead of cataloguing the whole shop.
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.
Sensory detail that fills thirty seconds
- Sound: the shout of prices, plastic crates dragged across concrete, a coffee grinder
- Smell: coriander, wet fish and ice, bread, the drain smell you politely ignore
- Sight: the specific colours of one stall — chillies, mangoes, a tray of unsold sardines
The people, not just the produce
- One trader you know by name and what they always say to you
- The negotiation ritual — whether haggling is expected and what happens if you do not
- Who shops there at what time: chefs early, pensioners mid-morning, bargains at closing
Why you go there rather than a supermarket
- Things you simply cannot get elsewhere, named specifically
- It is cheaper at the end of the day, and you have learned the timing
- It is social — supermarket shopping is a task, market shopping is an hour out
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.
- WHERE — Sat morning market, under the railway arches
- WHAT SELL — veg, fish, one spice stall (Hassan)
- HOW OFTEN — most Sats, ~9am before the crowd
- WHY ENJOY — noise/smell + he tells me how to cook it
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
There's a covered market about ten minutes' walk from my flat — the old fruit and vegetable market — and it's genuinely one of my favourite places in the city. It's a big iron-roofed hall from maybe a hundred years ago, with about forty stalls inside: mostly produce, but also a cheese counter, two butchers, a man who sells only olives and pickles, and a tiny bakery stall at the back that sells out by ten in the morning. I usually go on Saturdays, early, partly for the bread and partly because I like the place before it gets crowded — the stallholders shouting prices to each other, crates being stacked, that whole theatre of it. What I enjoy most, I think, is that shopping there is a series of small conversations. The woman at the vegetable stall tells me what's actually good this week rather than what she needs to shift, and after a couple of years she knows I'll take the odd-shaped tomatoes because they're for sauce anyway. You don't get that from a supermarket shelf. So why do I keep going back? The food is better and often cheaper, but honestly, it's the feeling of being a regular somewhere. In a big city, having a place where people recognise you and argue with you about apricots — that's worth a ten-minute walk in the rain.
Why this works: Specific sensory scene-setting (the iron roof, the olive man, bread gone by ten) does the descriptive work, and the answer finds an idea — 'shopping as a series of small conversations' — that lifts it beyond a list of stalls. The closing sentence answers 'why' with feeling rather than repetition.
Useful vocabulary for this topic
- a farmers' market
A market where producers sell directly to the public.
- locally sourced
Describes food produced near where it is sold.
- seasonal produce
Fruit and vegetables available at a particular time of year.
- to browse the stalls
Natural verb for walking around a market without hurry.
- good value for money
Standard collocation when prices feel fair for the quality.
- a regular customer
Someone who shops in the same place often; useful for the relationship angle.
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.
- fresh produce
- “The fresh produce is better than anything in the supermarket and about half the price.”
- to haggle over the price
- “You are expected to haggle over the price a little, but only a little.”
- it gets packed by ten
- “It gets absolutely packed by ten, so I go early or not at all.”
- a family-run stall
- “It is a family-run stall — the son does the weighing and the mother does the talking.”
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.
Buying food
Example questions
- 1Where do most people in your country buy their food?
- 2How have shopping habits changed in the last twenty years?
- 3Do you think markets will survive alongside supermarkets?
Food and local business
Example questions
- 1What are the advantages of buying food produced locally?
- 2Can you suggest why small shops find it hard to compete?
- 3Should governments do more to support small food producers?
More on how this family of cards is discussed: Activities and habits. Model answers for Part 3: Part 3 questions and answers.