Speaking
Describe a skill you would like to learn is one of the most frequently used Part 2 cards, and the same material will answer a card about something you failed to finish, something you would do with more free time, or a plan for the future. The model below works because it treats the question as one about why the skill has not been learned yet.
Describe a skill you would like to learn
You should say:
and explain why you would like to learn it.
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.
The skill I keep coming back to is playing the piano, which I have wanted to do since I was about fourteen and have somehow never got round to.
I would learn it properly rather than through an app, which I say partly from experience. I tried one of those for a few months and I could play three pieces badly and read no music at all, which is not really the same thing. So it would have to be a teacher, probably weekly, and an actual instrument rather than a keyboard, although I suspect I would start with a keyboard because of the cost.
I think it would be far harder than people admit. Adults are worse at this than children, not because of the brain exactly, but because we hate being bad at things in front of somebody. I can imagine giving up in the third month, when it stops being new and you are still playing something a nine-year-old could manage. That is where I have failed before with other things.
The reason I want it, if I am honest, is that almost everything I do produces nothing. I work, I answer messages, I read things I forget. Being able to sit down and play something for twenty minutes seems like the opposite of that. And there is a slightly less noble reason, which is that my grandmother played and I would like to have said I could too.
Why has this not happened yet? is more interesting than what is the skill?, and answering it gives the speaker two minutes of material without inventing anything.
The abandoned app is a specific, checkable detail. It also justifies the preference for a teacher, so the second bullet is answered without sounding like a list.
I can imagine giving up in the third month. Naming when rather than whether is a more confident answer and it produces a future-in-the-past structure naturally.
The grandmother arrives in the last sentence and is not explained further. Ending on a small detail rather than a summary is how a strong Part 2 answer usually finishes.
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 something you learned that was difficult.
and explain how you felt about it.
Describe something you would do with more free time.
and say why you would choose it.
Describe a person who taught you something.
and explain why you remember it.
Describe a plan you have for the future.
and explain why it matters to you.
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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