Speaking
Describe a place you would love to visit is one of the few Part 2 cue cards that is entirely hypothetical, which is what makes it valuable. Because you have not been to the place, the whole answer sits in conditional and future forms, and that is a straightforward way to demonstrate grammatical range without having to engineer it.
Describe a place you would love to visit
You should say:
and explain why you would like to go there more than anywhere else.
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.
I love travelling, so there are a great many places I would like to get to, but the one I would choose above all of them is the South Island. I have been in New Zealand for nearly two years now and I still have not been down there, which is faintly embarrassing. The only realistic opportunity I had was last Christmas, and everything is considerably more expensive at that time of year.
As for what you can do there, the list is more or less endless. There are the Sounds — Milford Sound, Marlborough Sound — and you can take a boat tour through several of them. Then there is the whole adventure tourism side of it. I believe the South Island is where commercial bungy jumping started, which tells you something about the local attitude to risk.
Ideally I would hire a car and simply drive, stopping wherever looked worth stopping and trying some of those things on the way. I would far rather drive than take buses, because you can decide for yourself where to stay and how long to stay there, and the whole point of a trip like that is not being on somebody else's schedule.
As for what makes it special, anybody who has seen the films shot down there already knows the answer: the landscape. It must be one of the last genuinely unspoilt places left, and I hope it stays that way, though I am not particularly confident about that.
I suppose that is exactly why it is the place I would choose over anywhere else. Somewhere that empty is unlikely to stay empty indefinitely. Taking a tent and some food, driving until it got dark and camping wherever I had ended up — that sounds close to perfect to me.
I would choose, I would hire, I would far rather, it must be. An imagined trip forces this grammar naturally, which is why this card is worth practising even if you rarely get it.
Confessing that two years have passed without making the trip is more engaging than a straightforward wish, and it produces a present perfect in the first ten seconds.
The final paragraph explains the preference through scarcity rather than beauty. Reaching for a slightly less obvious justification is what separates an answer that sounds thought about from one that sounds prepared.
Rather than restating the card, the last sentence gives a concrete picture. Summarising in Part 2 wastes seconds and adds nothing the examiner has not already heard.
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 country you would like to work in.
and explain why it appeals to you.
Describe a journey you would like to make.
and say why you have not made it yet.
Describe a city you have heard a lot about.
and say whether you expect to visit.
Describe somewhere you would like to live.
and explain why you would move.
Quick question, 10 seconds
Where do you want to study or move to?
When are you planning to go?
How far along are you?
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