Speaking
Describe a business you would like to start is a hypothetical card, which changes the grammar before it changes anything else. Nothing here has happened, so the answer runs on would from the first sentence to the last, and that is exactly what makes it useful practice. The model below is deliberately modest about the idea and specific about the detail.
Describe a business you would like to start
You should say:
and explain why you would like to start this business.
Before you read any further, do the task properly. One minute of notes, two minutes of speaking, recorded. A model answer is far more useful once you have produced your own and can hear the difference.
Read this aloud once you have recorded your own attempt, ideally recording the model as well. Listen back to both and compare your pace and your intonation rather than your vocabulary. The gap is usually smaller than candidates expect on words and larger than they expect on delivery.
If I could start anything at all, it would be a small café with a second-hand bookshop attached to it. Not a bookshop with a coffee machine in the corner, which is what most places of that kind actually are, but somewhere the two halves are equally serious.
I would want it in a neighbourhood rather than in the middle of town. Somewhere near a university or a park, where there is enough passing trade to keep it alive but not so much that people are queuing at the door and being turned over every twenty minutes. I have been in cafes where the staff start clearing your table while you are still holding the cup, and I would rather run something slower than that even if it made less money.
The customers would mostly be people with an afternoon to fill. Students working, people meeting a friend, anyone who wants to sit somewhere for two hours without being made to feel guilty about it. I imagine there would be a group of regulars fairly quickly, and honestly that is the part I would enjoy most — knowing what somebody drinks before they ask for it.
As for why, I think it comes down to the fact that the places I like best are disappearing. Everything is designed for speed now, and the economics probably demand it. I am not naive about that, and I am fairly sure a business like this would be difficult to sustain. But if I were going to spend ten years running something, I would rather it were something I would want to sit in myself.
A hypothetical card is a grammar opportunity. It would be, I would want, if I were going to — the answer never slips into the present, which is the commonest failure on this type of card.
Not a bookshop with a coffee machine in the corner, which is what most places of that kind actually are. Saying what something is not is a fast way to be specific, and it produces a relative clause without any effort.
Staff clearing the table while you are still holding the cup. That kind of detail is worth far more than a sentence about market positioning, and it is easier to produce under pressure.
I am not naive about that, and I am fairly sure a business like this would be difficult to sustain. Meeting the objection before the examiner can raise it shows control, and it sets up the final sentence.
Take the structures, not the content. An answer copied wholesale is audible within a sentence, and examiners hear memorised material constantly. These patterns can be attached to anything.
Describe a job you would like to do in the future.
and explain why it appeals to you.
Describe a shop or restaurant you like.
and explain why you like it.
Describe a skill you would like to learn.
and say why you want to learn it.
Describe a change you would like to make to your city.
and explain why it is needed.