This Part 2 and Part 3 IELTS speaking test is all about food and diets. It asks you to discuss unusual foods, common foods and the vegetarian diet.
IELTS Speaking Part 2: An Unusual Meal
Talk about a time you had an unusual meal. You should say:
- when it was
- who was there with you
- what you did
- and explain why that meal was unusual.
Part 2 Possible Answers:
When it was:
I’m quite a fussy eater, so I don’t go out of my way to try new things usually. The last really unusual meal I had was over 30 years ago. I still remember it though because it was really weird!
Who was with you:
I was going on a trek in the hills in the North of Thailand. I was on a motorbike with my girlfriend at the time, and we were with a Thai guide and his wife on another bike.
What you did:
Just the four of us going up a jungle track on motorbikes, heading towards some of the hill tribe villages that northern Thailand is famous for. We were going to spend a few days with some remote villagers and do some trekking though the jungle. Staying in bamboo hits and eating with the locals.
And explain why that meal was unusual:
So as we were riding up this steep jungle track, our guide on the motorbike in front suddenly stopped, jumped off his bike and dived heard first into the bushes at the side of the track.
After a few moments he emerged with a snake! A snake that was alive and about 4 feet long. He held it by its tail and swung it around his head and then beating its hard on the ground until it was dead. Then he put it over the handlebars of his bike, turned and laughed and then drove off with a dead snake hanging off his bike.
We carried on riding for another few hours until we got to a remote village in the jungle. By this time it was nearly dark and we were all very hungry. Before we knew it the snake had been skinned and was chopped up and thrown in a pot to cook over an open fire.
That nigh we dined on freshly caught snake stew. It was awful, but we ate it. It tasted like eating a chewy rubber band. I hope I don’t have an unusual meal like that again!
IELTS Speaking Part 3: Food and Diets
If you answered Part 2 well, the examiner will skip the ‘describe’ question in Part 3, that is reserved for the weaker speakers.
Here I’m going to give you some ideas about how to answer each part.
Part 3 Possible Answers:
Do people in your country still eat the same food as in the past, or has it changed? In what way?
- Food has become more globalised, so international food is more available.
- Food chains have also become global changing people’s diets.
- Transportation and refrigerated transportation has changed which foods are available and when. Food is less seasonal than it once was.
- Fusion food now blends cuisines from all over the world.
- Diet crazes and fitness fads have also changed the way some people eat.
- Processed foods that are quick and easy to prepare have become popular for many working families.
Are there many vegetarians in your country?
- Most people are omnivorous, meat is an important part of the diet.
- Many people live off the land and maybe can not be too fussy about what they eat.
- Vegetarian diets and vegan diets are growing in popularity, mostly with tourists rather then locals.
- As a result you see many more vegetarian restaurants and vega options on menus than there used to be.
Are there benefits to eating a vegetarian diet? What are they?
- That depends who you ask!
- Paleo diet and low carb diets proponents would say that you can’t get enough nutrients or protein from vegetables alone.
- Vegan diets require supplements to maintain health.
- Animal rights people would say eating meat is unecssary and cruel.
- Environmentalists would say that animal farming produces a lot of greenhouse gases and is therefore bad for the planet.
- Some medical studies say that we should eat more vegeatbles for better health, but some say the opposite.
- It depends on which lobby group you listen to probably!
Are there disadvantages to the vegetarian diet? What are they?
- Paleo diet and low carb diets proponents would say that you can’t get enough nutrients or protein from vegetables alone.
- Vegan diets require supplements to maintain health.
- Vegetarian diets may result in greater transportation costs and worse soil use. The popularity of avocados, for example, puts strain on water resources and increases the amount of fuel used in transporting them worldwide all year round.
Hope these ideas for Part 3 have given you something to think about. Practice with a teacher, or friend, or just a video camera and see if you can fluently answer the questions above with your own ideas.
Learn more:
Each week we pick out a series of recent IELTS speaking questions and give you some ideas on how you could answer them. We also show which of these questions relates to the ‘Themes’ in Mastering IELTS: A Theme Based Approach.
The Mastering IELTS module on Travel would be great to improve your score on questions like this.
