How to Extend Your Answers in IELTS Speaking: 5 Smart Tips to Speak Naturally and Effectively

🌟 In IELTS you are supposed to extend your answers, and not answer in a word or two.

📌 While your answers should not go on for so long that they become irrelevant and off-topic, they should not be too short either. You have to focus on showing your English language skills, and you cannot do that without forming at least 3–4 sentence answers.

💡 This post will cover tips and tricks that you can use to extend your answer.

🔍 Table of Contents

1. Talk About Your Past Experiences

2. Talk About Your Future Plans

3. Talk About a Hypothetical Future

4. Have a Scapegoat

5. “Some People Say… Other People Say…”

🔄 1. Talk about your past experiences

If the question asks you about your current experiences, like:
🗣 What is better, living in a house or a flat?

How are you supposed to answer that? Do you even like a particular type of house?
You can simply answer whether you like a house or flat, but one way to add more to it is to tell the examiner about your past experiences.

💬 Let’s say you have lived in a flat your whole life; you can draw from these experiences:

I have always loved living in a flat. I have always lived in a flat. I remember living in a house for a few days when our flat was getting renovated, but I did not enjoy it that much.

🔮 2. Talk about your future plans

Let us again answer this question by talking about the future:

I have always lived in a flat. However, maybe one day, when I am able to own my own house, I would like to live in a house. I am currently saving money up for that, so let’s hope that I get there.

🗣 Do you take many photographs when you travel?

Well, I do not travel that often. I am planning to tour the northern side of Pakistan this summer vacation with my friend. He has an iPhone, so I am looking forward to finally taking many pictures in valleys and amazing backgrounds.

💭 3. Talk about hypothetical future

Even if you do not have any future plans to own a flat or a home, you can simply say:

I have always lived in a flat. However, if I ever get a chance to own my personal accommodation, I would definitely choose it to be a house.

🗣 Do you like to take photographs?

I do not like taking photographs, but if I had to, I would mostly just take selfies, as I do not want anybody else to take my photos. My friends are horrible at that anyway.

👥 4. Have a scapegoat

💡 One of the best ways I have been able to save my time thinking in that one minute in the IELTS Speaking Part 2 is to always have somebody or something I can talk about without thinking, and then make things up.

🎯 The person I always mention is my friend, Jasia.
💻 The thing I always mention is a laptop.

🗣 Cue card: Describe someone who had an important influence on your life.

It is true that Jasia had influence on my life, but not to mention many other people, my parents and of course many of my teachers.
But, the truth does not matter in the IELTS test—what matters is how well you can describe the person.

Because whenever I practice speaking, I talk about Jasia, here we would do the same thing, and maybe add something to make it believable.

The person who has influenced my life the most is my friend Jasia. We met in the English department in one class, and since then she has been a great friend of mine……… Her trust in me has allowed me to choose a career in IELTS.

🗣 Cue card: Describe a person who you think is interesting.

The person I find really interesting is Jasia. She is my friend, and we met in the English department……. She is a great artist, making her quite interesting to me.

🗣 Cue card: Describe a person who has taught you something important.

Now she is my teacher…

🗣 Cue card: Describe a time when somebody apologized to you.

Now apparently she is apologizing to me for something she has done.

📌 So why do that?

1. It allows you to save up some time on thinking about a person you need to talk about.

2. You can easily talk about the person you have talked about hundreds of times in practice.

🚫 I am not saying you need to memorize some sentences—examiners know when you are regurgitating memorized answers, so don’t do that.
✅ But talking about the person you have talked about before makes things easier.

🎁 Same is the case for an object.
🗣 Cue card: Describe something that was given as a gift to you.

Rather than thinking of any gift that I have ever received, I will simply talk about my laptop.
As I think I can describe it the best way. My hobbies and my work are connected to that device, so I can easily talk about it.

🤷‍♂️ So did I receive the laptop as a gift?

I did not obviously. Who will give me such an expensive gift? Do you know how expensive laptops are?

Anyway, if this cue card comes, I will talk about the laptop. Simple as that.

📚 Same goes for books, movies, food items—I have chosen some things as always a placeholder for any type of topic. Again, I have not memorized anything, I just feel like I am good at describing these people and things.

🗣 5. Some people say this, others say that...

💬 The easy way to expand any answer is to put yourself in somebody’s shoes.

🗣 Do you think it is better to rent or buy a place to live in?

It is always better to live in your home.

That is a fine answer, but you are not getting band 7+ for that. So, how do you extend this answer? Have a look:

Well, it depends. For people who do not make enough money, rent is obviously the only option. And for some reason, the people who make too much money in the country also like to live in rented houses. For people who belong to the middle or upper class, they usually have their family homes, and I believe it is always better to live in your own home.

Also, Learn common mistakes made by IELTS candidates, and ways to avoid them.

📌 Want to know what examiners are looking for in your Speaking test?
👉 Check this post on IELTS Speaking Band Descriptors & Marking Criteria