Speaking Part 2 · ExperiencesIn the Sep–Dec 2026 reported set
Describe a Course That Impressed You a Lot
In short
“Describe a Course That Impressed You a Lot” is a common IELTS Speaking Part 2 cue card. You get 1 minute to prepare and should speak for 1–2 minutes, covering all four points below. This page gives you a Band 9 model answer, an idea map so you can make it your own, the Part 3 follow-up questions with answers, and the vocabulary examiners reward.
The task card
Describe a Course That Impressed You a Lot. You should say:
- •What the course was
- •Where you took it
- •What you learned
- •And explain why it impressed you
Band 9 model answer
The course I'll describe was a short evening class in basic car mechanics that I took about three years ago — six sessions, three hours each, run out of an actual garage rather than a classroom.
I signed up for entirely defensive reasons. My car had developed a noise, I'd been quoted an amount of money that seemed implausible, and I had absolutely no way of knowing whether I was being cheated. It was run by a local college but held at a working garage on an industrial estate, which meant we were standing around real cars in the cold rather than looking at diagrams.
What I learned was more limited than it sounds and more useful than I expected. I can now change a tyre properly, check and top up the fluids, read the dashboard warnings without guessing, change a bulb, and — the genuinely valuable part — hold a conversation with a mechanic in which I understand roughly half of what is being said. I cannot repair an engine and the course never pretended I would.
What impressed me was the teaching, and specifically that the instructor never once made anybody feel stupid. There were about twelve of us, mostly people who'd arrived for the same reason I had, and the questions were extremely basic. He answered every one of them completely straight. He also had a habit that I've thought about a great deal since: he'd ask us what we thought was wrong before telling us, and he'd let us be wrong for a while, and then walk us back through our own reasoning to find where it broke. I've never had a teacher do that so deliberately.
The other thing was the honesty. In the last session someone asked how to tell when a mechanic is overcharging, and instead of a vague answer he gave us three specific questions to ask and explained exactly what a straight answer to each should sound like. That's a man teaching people how to spend less money in his own industry, which I found genuinely impressive.
And the effect has outlasted the content. I've forgotten some of the detail, but I came out of it much less intimidated by things I don't understand — the sense that a car is a sealed box only experts may open turned out to be completely false, and I've since assumed the same about a few other things.
Make it your own: three angles
A short practical course (cooking, first aid, mechanics, coding)
Easier to make specific than a degree, and the "what you learned" bullet has concrete answers rather than abstractions.
A module or subject within your studies
Works well if one particular teacher or approach changed how you think. Focus on the change, not the syllabus.
An online course you completed
Fine, and it leads naturally into the Part 3 questions about online learning — but say why you actually finished it, since most people do not.
What the examiner is listening for
Two traps here. The first is describing the syllabus — the examiner does not need the module list, and it produces flat, list-like language. The second is answering the fourth bullet with 'because I learned a lot'. Impressed by WHAT: the teaching, an attitude, a moment? The model picks the instructor's method and gives a concrete example of it, which is the difference between a 6.5 and an 8.
Part 1 warm-up questions
- Are you studying anything at the moment?
- Do you prefer learning in a class or on your own?
- Have you ever taken an online course?
- What subject did you enjoy most at school?
Part 3 follow-up questions & answers
What makes a good teacher?
The ability to remember not knowing, which sounds simple and is genuinely rare — most experts have forgotten what was confusing about their subject. Beyond that, a good teacher makes it safe to be wrong, because nobody learns while trying to look competent. Knowledge matters far less than people assume; plenty of extremely knowledgeable people teach badly.
Is online learning as effective as classroom learning?
For information, it's arguably better — you can pause, rewind and go at your own pace. Where it falls down is on everything else: the accountability of turning up, the questions other people ask that you wouldn't have thought of, and anything requiring hands-on correction. Completion rates for online courses are famously terrible, and that's not a content problem, it's a motivation one.
Should practical skills be taught in schools?
I'd say more of them should. Basic finance, cooking, some repair skills and first aid are things almost everyone needs and very few are taught, and the assumption that families will pass them on clearly doesn't hold any more. The usual objection is that the curriculum is full, which is true, though it's worth asking which of the current contents are actually used.
Why do adults return to study?
Career reasons dominate — retraining, qualifications, or a field that has moved on. But a lot of it is genuinely for its own sake, especially later in life, and I think that's underrated. Adults also tend to study far better than they did as teenagers, because they've chosen it and can see the point, which is exactly what school learning usually lacks.
Is it ever too late to learn something new?
Not in principle. Some things get harder — languages and anything needing fine motor skills are genuinely easier young — but the bigger obstacle by far is the belief that it's too late, which becomes self-fulfilling. Adults also underestimate how much faster they learn when they can connect new material to things they already know.
Should education focus on employment or on personal development?
Presenting them as opposites is where the argument usually goes wrong. The skills that make someone employable over a long career — reasoning clearly, writing, working with people, learning new things — are exactly the ones a broad education develops. Training narrowly for a specific job is the riskier strategy, because jobs change faster than people can retrain.
Useful vocabulary
| Word / phrase | Meaning |
|---|---|
| to sign up for | to enrol in something |
| hands-on | involving doing rather than watching |
| to get to grips with | to begin to understand or manage |
| a steep learning curve | a lot to learn quickly |
| to demystify | to make something less confusing |
| to walk someone through something | to explain it step by step |
| to put theory into practice | to apply what you have learned |
| intimidated by | made to feel nervous or inadequate by |
| a light-bulb moment | a sudden moment of understanding |
| to stand you in good stead | to be useful to you later |
More cue cards
Describe a Person Who Taught You Something
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