IELTS Speaking Part 2: Describing a Person for the Full Two Minutes

A person card is the one that empties out fastest. IELTS Speaking Part 2 cue cards give you a topic, a few points to cover and one minute to prepare, and it is easy to spend that minute writing adjectives. Two minutes later you are still circling the same three sentences.

This guide answers one question: what do you actually say for two minutes when the card asks you to describe a person? Everything below is practice material written for this article. The card and the two answers are original examples, not official IELTS questions, not recalled questions and not predictions. Neither answer has been assessed, and neither carries a band score.

Why Person Cue Cards Run Out of Material

A person card invites labels. Kind, friendly, hard-working and funny all arrive before any memory does, and a label takes about three seconds to say. An answer built from labels then has to be extended with more labels, and there are only so many ways to say that somebody is nice.

The published IELTS Speaking format describes what the card is really for: a topic, a list of points to include and one aspect you are asked to explain, with a pencil and paper during a one-minute preparation, followed by a long turn of up to two minutes. A description built from events, routines and reasons can be extended sentence by sentence. A description built from verdicts cannot, because there is nothing underneath it to explain.

• You describe the person in three sentences and then repeat them with different adjectives.
• Your notes are a column of character words with no scene, place or date attached.
• You stop at about forty-five seconds and wait for the examiner to move things along.

The Four-Block Plan for a Person Card

The plan below turns one person into four blocks. Each block answers a different part of the card, and each asks for something you can picture: a relationship, a meeting, a routine and a change. Work through them in order and you have a route through the whole two minutes.

Block	What you decide	Detail you can add	Rough share of the turn
1. Who the person is	One person, one relationship	A name or a family label, an age group, where they live	About 20 seconds
2. How you know them	One real meeting story	A place, a season, your first impression, how the contact continued	About 40 seconds
3. What they do	One habit you have seen yourself	What they do, how often, and one concrete scene	About 40 seconds
4. Why they matter to you	One thing that changed because of them	Before and now, how you felt, what you do differently	About 20 seconds

One Minute of Notes, Block by Block

The examiner gives you a pencil and paper for the preparation minute. Write prompts, not sentences: you can talk from a prompt, while a written sentence is something you read back and then have to replace.

1. Block 1: the person’s name and one word for the relationship.
2. Block 2: a place and a season, for example the office, last winter.
3. Block 3: one routine in three words, for example papers every Sunday.
4. Block 4: a before and after, for example quiet then, hosts now.

Two Ways to Expand a Thin Sentence

When a sentence runs out, do not repeat it more loudly. Add one of these instead:

• A time marker: when it started, how often it happens now.
• A small scene: where you were, what was on the table, what somebody said.
• A comparison: what you or the other person were like before.
• A consequence: what you do differently because of them.

Two Two-Minute Answers to the Same Cue Card

Answer this original card aloud before you read the examples: Describe a person you enjoy spending time with. Say who the person is, how you know them, what you do together, and why you enjoy their company. The card is an exercise written for this article. It is not an official IELTS question and not a recently used exam card.

Both answers below run for roughly two minutes at a normal speaking pace, around 250 to 280 words. The first keeps the four blocks in their plainest form. The second keeps the same four blocks and fills each one with a specific detail. Read them as illustrations of detail, not as scripts to memorise and not as assessed performances.

Answer 1: Four Blocks, Plain Form

I want to talk about my neighbour, Mrs Aisha Rahman. She lives two doors from my family, and I have known her since I was a child. She is a kind and friendly woman, and she is very hard-working as well. I usually meet her outside her house in the evening, and we talk about small things, like the weather, the road, or her garden. She likes talking to people and she always has something to say. I enjoy spending time with her because she is a warm person and she helps everybody in our street. Sometimes she gives us food that she has cooked, and my mother does the same for her. I think she is a good neighbour and a good person. When I am with her, I feel comfortable and happy. That is why I like spending time with her.

Answer 1 covers every block, so nothing on the card is left unanswered. It also shows the limit of the plain version: the details stay general. You learn that this is a neighbour the family has known for years and that she helps people, but you never quite see her.

Answer 2: The Same Four Blocks With Specific Detail

The person I would like to describe is Mrs Aisha Rahman, who lives two doors from my family on our street in Dhaka. I have known her since I was about nine, because her son and I walked to the same primary school. The first thing I noticed about her was how she stood at her gate every morning with a plastic bag of bread for the children walking past. She still does it now, twelve years later, except that the bag is bigger because there are more children on the street. What she actually does all day is look after her household and half the neighbourhood: she keeps a spare umbrella and two pairs of slippers by her door for anyone who gets caught in the rain, and she opens her gate at seven every morning so that other families can fill their water bottles when the supply is weak. Before I knew her properly, I thought she was simply a tidy, well-organised neighbour, because she is always sweeping the step. Now I understand that the sweeping is part of something larger: she keeps watch over the whole street. I like spending time with her because when a family here is ill, or has lost work, or has an argument, the first person they talk to is her, and she listens in the same ordinary way she talks about the garden. She has changed what I expect from a neighbour. Ten years ago I thought a good neighbour was someone who did not make noise. Now I think a good neighbour is someone like Mrs Rahman, who notices what is happening on the street before anyone asks her to.

Answer 2 says the same kind of thing, except that every block now holds one thing you could photograph or date: a street, a child walking to school, an umbrella by a door, a change from ten years ago. That is what keeps a long turn moving, because each detail suggests the next one.

A preparation page in four blocks: the person, the meeting, the routine, the reason.

What Changed, Line by Line

Line	Answer 1	Answer 2	Why it helps the turn
Opening	Names the person and the relationship.	Names the person, the street and how the contact began.	The listener can place the person immediately.
Meeting story	Says when the friendship started, in general terms.	Gives an age, a school route and one morning at the gate.	A scene can be described step by step; an opinion cannot.
What she does	Lists qualities, then says she helps the street.	Describes one routine with a time and a frequency.	A routine gives the answer a middle, not just a start and a stop.
Why she matters	Says she is a good person and a good neighbour.	Compares what the speaker expected ten years ago with now.	A comparison gives the reason room to breathe.
Ending	Stops when the ideas run out.	Returns to the last point on the card and closes it.	A planned ending removes the urge to trail off.

The comparison is about detail, not about style. Answer 2 is not more complicated English; it is the same four blocks carrying more of the speaker’s own information. That is also why a memorised answer is risky: if the examiner gives you a different card, the general sentences travel and the specific detail does not.

Personality Vocabulary That Sounds Specific

Descriptive adjectives are useful, but they are somebody else’s words until you attach them to something you have seen. The table takes five common character words and replaces each with a sentence only that speaker could have said.

Borrowed adjective	The same idea as something seen
kind	She keeps a spare umbrella by the door for anyone who walks in wet.
hard-working	He opens the shop at six and finishes the accounts after eight.
funny	She retells the same failed holiday story every year and still gets the timing right.
patient	He let me record the same two sentences eleven times without looking at his phone.
generous	She brings two extra lunches on Fridays because the new staff forget theirs.

Test the sentences you plan to use against two questions: can you say when you saw it, and would a listener understand why you mention it? If the answer to either question is no, the adjective is doing the work and the evidence is missing. One evidence sentence per block is enough; three in a row turns the answer back into a list.

Specific detail is what a listener can follow: a gesture, a table, a story being told.

The Part 3 Follow-ups These Answers Invite

Part 2 does not always end when you stop talking. The published format says the examiner may then ask one or two questions on the same topic, and Part 3 moves that topic into a more general and abstract discussion. A person card that mentions a neighbourhood, a family business or a long friendship tends to invite questions like these:

• How important is it to know your neighbours?
• Should a family business stay in the family?
• What makes a friendship last for years?

Treat a follow-up as a small Part 3 answer. Give a direct answer first, add a reason, support the reason with one example you actually know, and finish with a limit such as a case where your answer would be different. Four sentences is plenty. What matters is that the listener can follow the move from claim to explanation.

A Timed Recording Drill with a Self-Check

Use the published timings to rehearse the real thing: one minute to prepare with notes, then up to two minutes of speaking. The examiner stops you when the time is up, so a recording made against a timer is the honest measure of where your answer runs out.

1. Choose a person you know well enough to describe without inventing anything.
2. Give yourself sixty seconds of preparation and write the four prompts.
3. Record a full answer with a visible timer. Do not stop early.
4. Play the recording back once without reading your notes and note where the answer stalls.
5. Re-record the same card once, adding one specific detail to whichever block stalled.

Self-check	A useful answer	What to change
First 20 seconds	Names one person and one relationship.	Drop the second person; keep the one you can describe.
First detail	Contains a place or a season.	Add a date before you add another adjective.
Middle	Describes a routine with a frequency.	Say how often, and where you saw it happen.
Before the end	Explains the reason with a comparison.	Use before and now instead of saying that it is important.
Last sentence	Closes the final point on the card.	Plan an ending so the answer does not trail off.

A recording shows whether you kept going and stayed understandable, which are the fluency and coherence features the public band descriptors describe for a long turn. It cannot give you a band score: the descriptors are applied by certificated examiners to a live, recorded performance, and a written or self-recorded practice answer is not an assessment.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why do person cue cards run out of material?

Because the answer is built from labels instead of events. A label such as kind or friendly takes a few seconds to say and adds nothing that can be developed, so the turn has to be filled with more labels. When the same description is built from a relationship, a meeting, a routine and a change, every block carries a detail that can be explained and extended.

How can I fill two minutes when I describe a person?

Work through the four blocks in order and give each one a rough share of the turn: about twenty seconds for who the person is, about forty for how you know them, about forty for what they do and about twenty for why they matter. If a block finishes early, add a detail you can date or picture instead of repeating the same sentence in different words, and finish by returning to the last point on the card.

Official sample questions and preparation material are published by the IELTS Partners at IELTS preparation resources. The Hibay listing on the App Store describes an IELTS mode with practice questions for Parts 1 to 3, sample answers and feedback. Check what the current listing says, and keep practice feedback and an official IELTS result as two separate things.