Speaking Part 2 · ExperiencesIn the Sep–Dec 2026 reported set
Describe an Experience You Had as a Member of a Team
In short
“Describe an Experience You Had as a Member of a Team” 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 an Experience You Had as a Member of a Team. You should say:
- •What the team was
- •What you were trying to do
- •What your role was
- •And explain what you learned from the experience
Band 9 model answer
The experience I'll describe is a group project in my final year of university — four of us, one report, one shared mark, which is an arrangement specifically designed to test whether people can behave reasonably under pressure.
What we were trying to do was produce a feasibility study for a small local charity that wanted to open a second site. It was a real client rather than a made-up brief, which meant it actually mattered to someone, and we had about ten weeks.
My role started as data and finished as something else entirely. I'd been assigned the financial modelling, which suited me. But about four weeks in it became obvious that we had a genuine problem: one member of the group had done essentially nothing and was extremely pleasant about it every time anyone asked. Nobody wanted to be the person who made it a confrontation, so we all just absorbed a bit more work and got quietly resentful, which is the standard and completely useless response.
In the end I was the one who raised it, and I did it badly the first time — over a message, at eleven at night, with a tone I regretted immediately. That achieved nothing except making the next meeting extremely uncomfortable. What eventually worked was far less satisfying: sitting down with him in person, asking what was going on rather than accusing him of anything, and discovering he was significantly out of his depth on the analysis and had been avoiding it out of embarrassment rather than laziness. We gave him the interview write-ups instead, which he did well, and the last three weeks were fine.
What I learned has two parts. The obvious one is that the problem was visible for four weeks before anybody named it, and every week of silence made it harder to raise. The less comfortable lesson is that I'd decided what kind of person he was without ever asking, and I was wrong, and my first attempt at addressing it was built entirely on that assumption.
We got a decent mark, and the charity used about half of what we recommended. But the thing I still think about is the four weeks, not the report.
Make it your own: three angles
A group project that went wrong and was rescued
Far stronger than a success story, because the fourth bullet has something real to say. Conflict handled well is the best material this card offers.
A sports team or performance group
Good for describing roles and interdependence, and easy to make vivid. Say what YOU contributed, since candidates often describe the team and forget themselves.
A work project with a deadline
Professional context and useful vocabulary. Keep the business detail light and the human dynamics in focus.
What the examiner is listening for
Candidates describe the team and forget the third bullet — the examiner needs to know what YOU did. Use 'I' more than 'we'. And choose an experience with friction in it: a project where everything went smoothly gives you nothing for the fourth bullet, while a difficulty you handled imperfectly lets you show self-awareness, which reads as maturity rather than weakness.
Part 1 warm-up questions
- Do you prefer working alone or with others?
- Have you ever worked on a group project?
- Are you good at organising other people?
- Do you find it easy to share responsibility?
Part 3 follow-up questions & answers
What makes a team work well together?
Clear roles more than anything — most dysfunction comes from ambiguity about who owns what, so work is either duplicated or dropped. Beyond that, the ability to raise a problem early without it becoming personal, which is really a question of whether people feel safe doing so. Shared goals matter too, though I'd say they're necessary rather than sufficient; plenty of teams agree on the goal and still fail.
Is it better to work alone or in a team?
It depends on the task. Anything requiring deep concentration or a single coherent vision is usually better done alone — committees are famously poor at producing coherent things. Teams win where the problem is too large for one person or genuinely needs different expertise. The mistake organisations make is treating collaboration as automatically virtuous, which produces meetings rather than work.
How should disagreements in a team be handled?
Early, directly, and about the work rather than the person. What went wrong in my own case was delay — a small problem raised in week two is a conversation, and the same problem in week six is a confrontation. I'd also say asking before concluding is the single most useful habit, because people's reasons are usually different from what you assumed.
Should schools do more group work?
More group work with better design, I'd say. At the moment the shared mark punishes conscientious students for other people's behaviour, and the actual skill — negotiating, allocating, handling someone who isn't delivering — is never taught, just assumed. If you're going to set it, you should teach it, and mark contribution as well as output.
Do leaders always improve a team’s performance?
Not automatically. A good leader resolves ambiguity and makes decisions the group would otherwise avoid, which is genuinely valuable. A bad one adds a bottleneck and suppresses disagreement, and a team with a poor leader often performs worse than one with none. What matters is whether the leadership is about coordination or about status.
Has remote working changed how teams operate?
Considerably. Coordination has become more deliberate — things that used to happen by overhearing now require a meeting — which is more organised but slower. The bigger loss is the informal contact that builds enough trust for someone to say they're struggling. Remote teams tend to be efficient at tasks and worse at noticing when a person is quietly in trouble.
Useful vocabulary
| Word / phrase | Meaning |
|---|---|
| to pull your weight | to do your fair share of work |
| to delegate | to give tasks to other people |
| to be out of your depth | to face something beyond your ability |
| a deadline | the time by which something must be finished |
| to divide up the work | to share tasks among people |
| common ground | things people agree on |
| to pitch in | to help with a shared task |
| a bottleneck | a point that slows everything down |
| to take the lead | to start directing the work |
| to clear the air | to resolve a tension by talking |
More cue cards
Describe a Person You Would Like to Work With
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