Speaking Part 1: Interview: Question 4
Syllabus S.part1
IELTS Speaking Part 1, the examiner asks about food and cooking. Below are typical questions.
- What kind of food do you enjoy eating?
- Do you cook often?
- Did anyone teach you how to cook?
- Is food an important part of celebrations in your country?
- Do you think people's eating habits have changed much in recent years?
- Do you enjoy trying food from other cultures?
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Worked solution
Examiner notes: why this is a band 9 response
Fluency & Coherence
The set sustains extended, connected speech well beyond Part 1 minimums: question 5 in particular builds a two-sided point (“people seem to be ordering takeaways far more… on the flip side, though…”) rather than a single flat observation, and the specific grandmother anecdote in question 3 is told with a clear beginning, development and a slightly poignant close. Spoken discourse markers (“having said that”, “funnily enough”, “on the flip side”) organise these longer turns without ever sounding like written connectives.
Lexical Resource
The answers reach for precise, less predictable vocabulary rather than the first available word: “a soft spot for”, “meal-prepping”, “the flip side”, “a mixed picture”, “revolve around”. Collocations are used accurately and idiomatically throughout (“make your eyes water”, “talked-about”), and no single intensifier is repeated across all six answers.
Grammatical Range & Accuracy
A wide range of structures is controlled accurately: used to + infinitive and past narrative for the grandmother story (“I used to help her… she never used a recipe book”), present perfect for a change still relevant now (“I’ve had to sort of reconstruct”, “I’ve also noticed”), and comparative structures for the change over time in question 5 (“far more than they used to”). All forms are error-free and well matched to what each question requires.
Pronunciation, the fourth Speaking criterion, cannot be assessed from a written transcript. It is scored only in a live or recorded response.
Common pitfalls specific to this task
See commonMistakes above. At a higher difficulty level, the most damaging error is staying at the level of generic, textbook statements about “food and culture” rather than anchoring the answer in one specific, personal memory (a specific wedding, a specific grandmother, a specific dish) which is exactly what separates a band 9 turn from a band 6 one on a familiar topic like this.