Describe a time you received good news.
A card about one moment — an exam result, a job offer, a visa grant, a birth in the family. The scene of receiving it is the answer; the news itself is just the label.
The task card
Describe a time you received good news.
You should say:
- what the news was
- how you received it
- who you told first and why
and explain why this news mattered to you.
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
Anchor the answer in the physical scene: where you were standing, what the phone showed, who was in the room. Two sentences of scene give the examiner more language than two minutes of summary.
The 'who you told first' point is a gift — it lets you talk about a relationship. Say why that person: they had helped, they had worried, they had predicted it.
Keep the timeline tight. One moment, told slowly, beats the whole year retold quickly.
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.
News with a build-up
- Exam results, a job offer, a visa, a birth, a recovery, an acceptance
- News about somebody else that mattered as much as your own
- The best version is news you had stopped expecting
The mechanics of receiving it
- The medium: a phone call, an email, a letter, someone telling you in person
- Where you physically were and what you were doing — this is the vivid detail
- The delay between reading it and understanding it, which is very real and rarely mentioned
Who you told and why
- The person you told first is usually more revealing than the news itself
- Whether you told anyone straight away, or sat with it for an hour
- Someone you could not tell, or someone who should have been told and was not there
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.
- NEWS — my sister's results after 2 failed attempts
- HOW — voice note at 7:40am, she was crying, couldn't tell which way
- TOLD — my mother, but waited so my sister could tell her first
- WHY MATTERED — 3 yrs of it; not the result, the relief in her voice
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 good news I'd talk about wasn't actually mine, which I think is why it stands out. It was my sister passing her professional exams, on her third attempt, after nearly three years. I found out at about twenty to eight in the morning, from a voice note. I was standing in the kitchen waiting for the kettle and my phone buzzed, and it was her, and she was crying so hard that for about the first four seconds I genuinely couldn't tell which way it had gone. That's a strange four seconds. Then she said the word 'passed' and I sat down on the kitchen floor, which isn't a thing I've ever done before or since. Who did I tell first? Nobody, and that was deliberate. My immediate instinct was to ring my mother, and then I thought — no, that isn't mine to give away. So I did nothing for about an hour and a half, which was agonising, until my sister told her herself. My mother rang me twenty minutes later and pretended she was telling me something I didn't know, and I let her. Why did it matter so much? Not really because of the qualification. It mattered because of what the previous two years had looked like. She had failed twice, and the second time was much worse than the first, because after the second you start believing the problem is you rather than the exam. She had talked about giving up in a way that didn't sound dramatic, which is when it worries you. So what I remember isn't the result. It's that the person in that voice note sounded like my sister again, which she hadn't for about eighteen months.
Why this works: Choosing someone else's news is a strong and unusual decision that immediately differentiates the answer. The receiving section is a precise scene — the kettle, the four ambiguous seconds, the kitchen floor. The 'who you told first' bullet is answered with a restraint that reveals character, and the final section reframes the significance away from the achievement and towards the sound of a voice, which is a genuinely high-band close.
Useful vocabulary for this topic
- I had to read it twice
Natural disbelief; instantly believable.
- the first person I thought of was
Moves the answer from event to relationship.
- a weight lifted
Idiomatic relief without cliché overload.
- it changed the shape of that whole year
Strong closing move.
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 came out of the blue
- “It came completely out of the blue — we had been told to expect a decision in March.”
- it took a second to sink in
- “I read it twice, and it took a good few seconds to sink in.”
- I was over the moon
- “I was over the moon, although the first thing I actually felt was relief.”
- a huge weight off
- “It was a huge weight off, not just for her but for the whole family.”
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.
Sharing news
Example questions
- 1How do people usually share good news in your country?
- 2Who do people tend to tell first, and why?
- 3Do you think social media has changed how news is shared?
Success and support
Example questions
- 1How important is family support when someone is trying to succeed?
- 2Can you suggest why some people find it hard to celebrate their own success?
- 3Should people be encouraged to try again after failing?
More on how this family of cards is discussed: Events and experiences. Model answers for Part 3: Part 3 questions and answers.