Speaking Part 2 · PlacesIn the Sep–Dec 2026 reported set
Describe a Noisy Place You Have Been To
In short
“Describe a Noisy Place You Have Been To” 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 Noisy Place You Have Been To. You should say:
- •Where this place is
- •Why you went there
- •What made it so noisy
- •And explain how you felt about the noise
Band 9 model answer
The noisiest place I've ever been is a fish market I went to in Busan, in South Korea, at about six in the morning — and I say that having been to concerts and football matches, which are loud in a much more predictable way.
I went because I was travelling with a friend who had been before and who insisted, over my fairly strong objections, that it had to be early. We got there just before six, which turned out to be roughly the peak of the wholesale trading.
What made it so noisy was that there were about six separate sources going at once and none of them related to each other. There was the auctioneering, which was a man shouting numbers at a speed I couldn't follow in a language I don't speak, amplified badly. There was water everywhere — hoses running constantly, tanks bubbling, ice being poured out of crates by the tonne, which is a sound I hadn't anticipated and which is genuinely enormous. There were small trucks and trolleys on wet concrete. And underneath all of it several hundred people conducting business at considerable volume, because they had to be heard over everything else, which of course made everything else louder. It had a hard roof and concrete floors, so nothing absorbed any of it.
How I felt went through a fairly sharp reversal. For the first ten minutes I found it genuinely overwhelming — I couldn't hear my friend at a distance of one metre, and I had a real urge to leave. I'm not especially sensitive to noise and this was beyond anything I had a category for.
Then something shifted, and I stopped trying to filter it. Once I gave up on following any single thread, the whole thing became weirdly enjoyable, almost like standing inside an engine. And it was clearly not chaos to anyone who worked there — buyers were reading the auctioneer perfectly, people were moving around each other without collisions, the noise was carrying information I simply couldn't decode.
We stayed about an hour and I was quite tired afterwards in a way I hadn't expected. But I'd go again. It's the only place I've been where the noise was the thing worth experiencing rather than a cost of being there.
Make it your own: three angles
A market, station or festival
The best material, because you can break the noise into distinct sources — which is what fills the third bullet and produces varied vocabulary.
Somewhere you did not choose to be (building site, waiting room, plane)
Good if you want a negative answer. The fourth bullet then becomes about endurance, which is honest and easy to develop.
A concert or sporting event
Perfectly valid but the most common choice, so be specific about the kind of noise rather than just saying it was loud.
What the examiner is listening for
The third bullet is doing the heavy lifting: break the noise into separate SOURCES rather than repeating that it was loud. That gives you varied vocabulary without effort. The fourth bullet works best if the feeling moves — the model goes from wanting to leave to finding it enjoyable, which fills time and shows range far better than a steady complaint.
Part 1 warm-up questions
- Is it noisy where you live?
- Do you mind noise when you are working?
- Do you prefer silence or background sound?
- Is noise a problem in cities in your country?
Part 3 follow-up questions & answers
How does noise affect people’s health?
More than most people realise. Sustained exposure is linked with raised stress hormones, disturbed sleep and, in the longer term, cardiovascular effects — and crucially the body responds even when you've stopped consciously noticing it. That's why people living near a busy road often report sleeping badly while insisting the traffic doesn't bother them.
Are cities noisier than they used to be?
In some ways yes and in others no. There are more vehicles and more construction, but individual sources have got quieter — engines, aircraft and machinery are all substantially better than they were. What has changed most is that noise is more constant; cities used to have genuinely quiet hours, and now there's a background hum that never fully stops.
Should governments do more to control noise?
There's a decent case, because noise is one of the few forms of pollution people are still expected to simply tolerate. Practical measures exist — quiet road surfaces, restricted construction hours, barriers along motorways — and they work. The difficulty is that noise complaints are treated as a nuisance issue rather than a health one, so they compete for attention at the bottom of the list.
Do some people work better with background noise?
Apparently so, and the research suggests a moderate level of ambient sound helps some people concentrate, which is why cafés work for a lot of them. The distinction seems to be between meaningless noise, which the brain filters, and speech you can understand, which it can't stop processing. That's why an open-plan office is far more disruptive than a busy street.
Is it becoming harder to find quiet places?
Genuinely so. Truly quiet places — where there's no mechanical sound at all — have become rare even in the countryside, because air traffic and distant roads carry a long way. There's a body of work tracking this, and the number of places in developed countries with no human-made noise for more than fifteen minutes is remarkably small.
Why do some people enjoy noisy environments?
Partly because noise usually means people, and a crowded, loud place signals life and activity in a way silence doesn't. For some, background noise also quietens internal noise — it gives the mind something undemanding to hold onto. And there's a social element: in a loud room nobody can overhear you, which paradoxically makes conversation easier.
Useful vocabulary
| Word / phrase | Meaning |
|---|---|
| deafening | extremely loud |
| a racket | a loud, unpleasant noise |
| to drown something out | to be so loud it cannot be heard |
| a hum | a continuous low sound |
| to make yourself heard | to speak loudly enough to be understood |
| background noise | sound you are not paying attention to |
| to echo | to repeat as sound bounces off surfaces |
| overwhelming | too intense to cope with |
| noise pollution | harmful levels of unwanted sound |
| a din | a loud, continuous confused noise |
More cue cards
Describe a Quiet Place You Like to Go
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