Part 2 — Long turn

Describe a useful website or app

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

Questions

Question 160s to prepare · 120s to speak

Describe a website or app you find very useful. You should say: • what it is • how often you use it • what you use it for and explain why you find it so useful.

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.

The app I find most useful on a daily basis is one called Anki — a flashcard programme that uses a spaced-repetition algorithm to decide when to show you each card again. I've been using it for about three years, primarily for language learning but also for remembering professional terminology. I use it for maybe twenty minutes a day, usually in the morning before anything else. What makes it genuinely useful, as opposed to just another study tool, is the underlying algorithm. The idea is that reviewing something at the exact moment you're about to forget it is more efficient than reviewing it on a fixed schedule. So items you know well appear less frequently; things you keep getting wrong appear more often. Over time, it means you're spending your study time only where it's actually needed. The reason I keep coming back to it, though, isn't really the algorithm — it's the habit structure it creates. Because the daily review only takes a fixed amount of time once your deck is established, it feels manageable even when other things are busy. I've maintained a consistent streak of over six hundred days at this point, which I don't say to brag but rather because I find it genuinely surprising — consistency has never been my strong point. The one downside is that it requires you to create the cards yourself, which takes time upfront. But I've found the act of making cards itself reinforces the material, so it's not entirely wasted effort.

Vocabulary you can use today

spaced repetition
lặp lại ngắt quãng — kỹ thuật học dựa trên tâm lý học ghi nhớ
underlying algorithm
thuật toán nền tảng — từ kỹ thuật dùng tự nhiên trong ngữ cảnh
as opposed to
thay vì, khác với — cấu trúc so sánh trang trọng
upfront
ngay từ đầu, trả trước (về thời gian/công sức) — dùng được ở nhiều chủ đề
genuinely surprising
thực sự đáng ngạc nhiên — 'genuinely' mạnh hơn 'really/very'
consistency has never been my strong point
sự kiên định không phải điểm mạnh của tôi — tự nhận thức trung thực

Common traps for Vietnamese speakers

Bám đúng 4 gạch: website/app gì → dùng bao lâu, bao nhiêu → dùng làm gì → vì sao thấy hữu ích. Phần "vì sao hữu ích" phải giải thích cơ chế hoặc lý do cụ thể, không phải chỉ nói "very helpful for me." Chọn tool bạn thật sự dùng và hiểu cách hoạt động. Bài mẫu về Anki hay vì có thể giải thích spaced repetition một cách tự nhiên. Nếu bạn chọn Google Maps, bạn sẽ không có gì thú vị để nói. Đừng dùng quá nhiều tính từ khen (amazing, fantastic, incredible). Mô tả cơ chế hoạt động đã đủ để thuyết phục.

/æ/ trong algorithm, actually, habit, flashcardâm cuối /z/ trong uses, requires, reviews/θ/ trong thing, throughout, thoughttrọng âm alGOrithm, efFIcient, termiNOlogy

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