Part 2 — Long turn

Describe a plan you had to change

IELTS Speaking practice questions in the real exam format and timing.

Questions

Question 160s to prepare · 120s to speak

Describe a time when you had to change a plan. You should say: • what the original plan was • why you had to change it • what you did instead and explain how you felt about the change.

Model answer

Written by 8020 teachers. Do not memorise it — take the structure and the way ideas are developed, then speak about your own life.

I'll describe a time when I'd planned to study for a professional exam but had to abandon that plan at about two weeks' notice. The original plan was quite solid. I'd booked two weeks off work specifically for intensive revision, had a schedule worked out topic by topic, and had told friends and family I'd be unavailable. The idea was to emerge from that fortnight with the exam essentially done and a reasonable margin of preparation to spare. What happened was that a colleague was taken ill unexpectedly, and the project they'd been managing needed someone to step in immediately. The company asked me because I knew the technical side well enough — nobody else did — and I couldn't reasonably say no. The alternative was a significant project failing, which would have affected the whole team. And so my two weeks of study time disappeared entirely into work. What I did instead was compress everything. I studied in the evenings after long working days, dropped the lower-priority topics from my revision list, and pushed the exam back by three weeks. I sat it in worse shape than I'd planned, passed, but not by the margin I'd wanted. How I felt about it was complicated. I was frustrated at the time, genuinely quite resentful about it for a few days. But looking back, what I took from the experience was that I was more adaptable than I'd thought — that demanding conditions don't always produce worse outcomes than ideal ones.

Vocabulary you can use today

at two weeks' notice
chỉ báo trước hai tuần — thành ngữ chuyên dụng về thời gian ngắn
fortnight
hai tuần — từ Anh-Anh tự nhiên, tránh dùng 'two-week period'
step in
vào thế chỗ khi ai đó vắng — tự nhiên và ngắn gọn
compress something into
nén, dồn vào — mô tả điều chỉnh kế hoạch súc tích
not by the margin I'd hoped for
không đạt biên độ như kỳ vọng — tự nhiên, không khoa trương
more adaptable than I'd assumed
linh hoạt hơn tôi tưởng — kết bài reflection ghi điểm

Common traps for Vietnamese speakers

Bám đúng 4 gạch: kế hoạch ban đầu → lý do thay đổi → cách xử lý → cảm nhận. Phần "cảm nhận" ở cuối là cơ hội reflection — đừng bỏ, đây là chỗ giám khảo thấy khả năng tư duy. Kể chuyện theo thứ tự thời gian: đặt kế hoạch → vấn đề xảy ra → điều chỉnh → kết quả. Thứ tự đó tự nhiên và giúp giám khảo theo dõi dễ dàng. Thì quá khứ hoàn thành ("I'd planned", "I'd booked") ở đầu bài tạo chiều sâu thời gian và ghi điểm ngữ pháp ngay từ những câu đầu.

/plæn/ và /pleɪn/ — không nhầm plan với planeâm cuối /d/ trong planned, booked, worked/θ/ trong thought, three, throughtrọng âm techNIcal, alTERnative

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