Describe an achievement outside school or work that you are proud of.
A card about something you accomplished in your own time: restoring something, finishing a long challenge, building something, reaching a sporting or fundraising target. With exams and jobs ruled out, the motivation has to come from you — and a modest achievement told honestly beats an impressive one told vaguely.
The task card
Describe an achievement outside school or work that you are proud of.
You should say:
- what you achieved
- when and where it happened
- what you had to do to achieve it
and explain why you are proud of 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
Choose an achievement with a clear finish line and real effort behind it — a first harvest from an overgrown garden, a long charity walk completed, a piece of furniture restored. Name it in your first sentence and place it in time and space, so the examiner knows exactly what the story is about.
Give the third bullet the most time. 'What you had to do' is the story: the starting point, two or three concrete stages, and one moment when you nearly gave up. Specific numbers — weekends, bags, pages — make effort audible in a way that 'I worked very hard' never does.
For 'why you are proud', go beyond the result. Pride usually comes from what the achievement proved to you: that you can finish things, that you were wrong about your limits, that someone's faith in you was justified. Name that, and you have answered the explain bullet properly.
The common mistake is either boasting or apologising for a small achievement. Keep the tone measured — proud but self-aware — and let the details do the persuading.
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 achievement I'm proudest of is a slightly unusual one: I turned my grandmother's abandoned allotment into a working vegetable garden. It took about fourteen months, starting two springs ago. Some background: she'd rented this plot on the edge of town for nearly thirty years, but after her hip operation she couldn't manage it, and by the time I offered to take it over it was honestly a jungle — brambles taller than me, a collapsed shed, and a letter from the allotment committee saying we'd lose the plot if nothing changed within a season. Mostly, it took Saturdays. I spent the first two months doing nothing but digging out roots — I filled something like forty bags with brambles. Then I rebuilt the raised beds with wood from a skip, found out what actually grows in heavy clay, which is mainly potatoes, and got a lot of free advice from the man on the next plot, who clearly thought I'd give up by June. And there was a point that first autumn, when slugs ate every single lettuce I'd planted, when I very nearly handed the keys back. Part of the pride is the obvious thing — the first proper harvest, carrying a crate of potatoes and beans round to my grandmother's flat and watching her inspect them like an examiner. But more than that, I'd always been someone who starts projects enthusiastically and drops them after three weeks. This was the first big thing I actually saw through, and the slug disaster is part of why it counts. I still go up there every weekend, and the man next door now asks me for advice, which feels like the real certificate.
Why this works: The answer chooses a modest, concrete achievement and spends most of its time on the effort — forty bags of brambles, rebuilt beds, the slug disaster — exactly as the strategy recommends. The near-quitting moment gives the story a turning point, and the 'why proud' bullet is answered on two levels: the visible result and what it proved about the speaker. The neighbour's change of attitude closes the arc with evidence rather than a claim.
Useful vocabulary for this topic
- a sense of accomplishment
The standard collocation for the feeling after finishing something difficult.
- to see something through
To keep going with a task until it is finished; ideal for long projects.
- to put in the hours
Natural, slightly informal way to describe sustained effort.
- a turning point
The moment when a situation changed decisively; gives your story a shape.
- against the odds
Useful when success looked unlikely at the start; use it once at most.
- to prove something to myself
Moves pride away from showing off and towards personal growth.
- it paid off
Simple phrase for effort that produced a result.
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 people often value achievements they worked hard for more than ones that came easily?
- 2Are achievements in people's free time taken as seriously as success at work or in exams?
- 3Why do some people keep their achievements to themselves while others share them widely?
- 4How are achievements in team sports different from individual achievements?
- 5Is it good for parents to praise children for every small achievement?
- 6Will the kinds of achievement that people admire change in the future?
More on how this family of cards is discussed: Activities and habits. Model answers for Part 3: Part 3 questions and answers.