Speaking Part 3: Discussion: Question 7
Syllabus S.part3
The examiner moves on to ask broader, more abstract questions about celebrations and traditions.
- Why do you think celebrations and traditions matter to communities?
- How have traditional celebrations changed in most countries over the past few decades?
- Does it matter if younger generations start losing interest in traditional festivals?
- What role does technology play in the way people celebrate today compared with the past?
- Should family traditions be passed down exactly as they are, or should each generation be free to adapt them?
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Worked solution
Examiner notes: why these are band 9 responses
Fluency & Coherence
Each answer opens with a clear stance (“I think…”, “On the whole, I’d say…”, “I do think it matters…”) before developing it, so the listener never has to guess the speaker’s position. Ideas are linked across sentences with natural referencing (“that knowledge”, “circumstances change”) rather than a list of disconnected points, which keeps each extended answer coherent under exam time pressure.
Lexical Resource
Vocabulary is varied and precise (commercialised, collective memory, inclusive, scattered, distracts) and includes natural spoken hedging (“I’d say”, “I suspect”, “I do wonder”) rather than the flatter, more repetitive lexis a band 6 answer would use. Comparative and contrastive language (“that’s not to say”, “having said that”) is used accurately to weigh two sides of an issue.
Grammatical Range & Accuracy
The answers move confidently between tenses to compare past and present (used to be, has become, wasn’t possible) and use conditional structures to speculate (if nobody under thirty knows…). Note that Pronunciation, the fourth IELTS Speaking criterion, cannot be demonstrated in a written transcript and is assessed only in the live test.
Common pitfalls specific to this task
See commonMistakes above: the most damaging is retelling one personal celebration story instead of discussing celebrations and traditions at a societal level, which is exactly what separates Part 3 from the personal long turn in Part 2.