IELTS Speaking cue cards › Cooking Skills
Describe a cooking skill or technique you have developed
Describe a cooking skill or technique you have developed. You should say: - what the skill or technique is and how you learned it - how regularly you use it when preparing food - any mistakes you made while you were learning it and explain why developing this skill has been satisfying or beneficial for you.
How to approach it
Open with the skill and a brief story of how you learned it, then move through frequency of use and honest mistakes before finishing strongly on why it has been rewarding — this natural arc keeps the answer flowing for the full two minutes. Examiners reward coherence, so use clear signposting between the bullet points rather than listing facts mechanically. Personal feeling and reflection in the final section are what push a response into the higher bands.
1-minute preparation notes
- Skill: knife skills / julienne
- Learned: YouTube + practice
- Frequency: almost every meal
- Mistakes: uneven cuts, cut finger
- Benefit: speed, confidence, healthier cooking
Band 8+ sample answer (Part 2)
Show the sample answer (try speaking first)
The skill I'd like to talk about is knife technique — specifically the ability to chop and slice efficiently and safely. I actually picked this up a few years ago when I was trying to cook more at home and kept getting frustrated by how long prep took me. I started watching short tutorial videos online, and one chef kept emphasising the importance of a proper grip and a rocking motion with the blade. I practised almost every evening for a couple of weeks, just chopping onions and carrots until it started to feel natural.
Nowadays I use this technique pretty much every time I cook, which is at least four or five times a week. Whether I'm making a stir-fry, a curry or just a simple salad, good knife work is at the heart of it. It genuinely cuts my prep time in half.
In terms of mistakes — I made plenty. Early on my cuts were all over the place, so vegetables cooked unevenly and the presentation looked a bit of a mess. More embarrassingly, I nicked my finger a couple of times because I hadn't quite got the hang of tucking my fingertips in. That actually forced me to slow down and focus on form rather than speed, which was probably the most valuable lesson.
As for why it's been so satisfying — I think it's the fact that this one skill unlocked my confidence in the kitchen generally. I stopped seeing cooking as a chore and started genuinely enjoying it. There's something quietly rewarding about mastering a fundamental technique, because everything you make afterwards feels that little bit more intentional.
Written for StudyChat as an example of a band 8+ answer. 271 words, about 2 minutes spoken.
Part 3 discussion questions
How important is it for young people to learn basic cooking skills before leaving home?
I think it's genuinely essential. Being able to cook basic meals means young people can manage their budget, eat more healthily, and look after themselves independently. In some countries, cooking is woven into school curricula from an early age, and you can see the difference in how confidently young adults handle food. Without these foundations, people tend to rely on convenience food by default, which has obvious consequences for both finances and health.
Do you think cooking programmes and food-related media have changed the way people approach food in everyday life?
Yes, quite significantly I'd say. Cooking competitions and social media accounts dedicated to food have made people far more curious about ingredients and techniques they'd never have encountered otherwise. The downside is that some of this content is more about entertainment than practical guidance, so it can feel aspirational rather than useful. That said, short tutorial videos have genuinely democratised cooking knowledge — anyone with a phone can now learn a professional technique for free.
In what ways might a growing reliance on takeaway and convenience food affect public health in the long term?
The risks are fairly well-documented — higher levels of salt, sugar and saturated fat in processed food contribute directly to obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular disease. What concerns me more is the generational effect: if parents aren't cooking at home, children grow up without any cooking reference points at all. Some countries are already seeing this pattern, where cooking skills are declining across generations, which makes it increasingly difficult to reverse the trend.
How do traditional family recipes and cooking methods get passed down, and why might this process be at risk today?
Traditionally it happened organically — children watched parents and grandparents cook and absorbed techniques without formal instruction. That process depends on shared time in the kitchen, which is increasingly rare given busier lifestyles and smaller living arrangements. There's also a risk that globalisation homogenises food culture, making local or family-specific recipes seem less relevant. Some communities are pushing back by documenting recipes digitally or running cultural cooking workshops, which I think is a really valuable response.
Useful language
- chop with confidence – Describes fluent, assured knife work — sounds more natural than 'chop well'.
- prep time – Short for preparation time; very natural in informal spoken answers about cooking.
- get the hang of something – Useful idiom meaning to gradually learn how to do something correctly.
- at the heart of it – Means something is central or fundamental — good for explaining why a skill matters.
- cut my prep time in half – A vivid, idiomatic way to describe improved efficiency in the kitchen.
- all over the place – Means inconsistent or disorganised — useful for describing early mistakes honestly.
- master a technique – A strong collocation; 'master' conveys a higher level of achievement than 'learn'.
- woven into – Means naturally integrated — useful in Part 3 when discussing education or culture.
Common mistakes on this card
- Covering only the first two bullet points in detail and then rushing the 'why it was satisfying' section — examiners want that reflective final part to be as developed as the rest.
- Describing the skill in abstract or vague terms ('I got better at cooking') without naming a specific technique, which reduces lexical resource and makes the answer sound generic.
- Inventing mistakes that sound too dramatic or too trivial — the mistakes section should be specific and honest-sounding; vague answers like 'I sometimes made errors' score poorly for coherence.
Record your answer and get a band score
Answer this card out loud, then the Part 3 questions. You get a band estimate on all four criteria, with pace, pauses and fillers measured from your recording.
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