Describe a useful skill you have learned.
A strong long turn names the subject in the first sentence, spends most of the two minutes on the last bullet — the why — and arrives at a prepared final line rather than trailing off.
The question, as the examiner gives it
Describe a useful skill you have learned.
You should say
- what the skill is
- when you learned it
- how you learned it
- and explain how it has been useful
60 seconds to prepare, up to 2 minutes to speak
A band 7 to 8 answer
About 192 words at a natural pace — roughly what 120 seconds holds.
Answer it yourself first
Record your own answer first. A model you have read three times comes out with a flattened rhythm, and examiners are trained to hear exactly that. Read it afterwards for the vocabulary and the shape, not to memorise the sentences.The most useful thing I have ever learned is touch typing, which I taught myself over about six weeks when I was nineteen and which was excruciating for the first fortnight. I had been typing with four fingers at a reasonable speed for years, and the whole point of learning properly is that you have to become much worse before you become better. How I learned it was extremely boring. A free program, twenty minutes a day, and a rule that I would not look down even when it would have been faster to. For the first ten days my output roughly halved and I very nearly abandoned it. How it has been useful is difficult to overstate, because it applies to essentially everything I do. I write perhaps four thousand words a day between messages, documents and notes, and the difference is not only speed. It is that the typing is no longer a thing I am doing, so the sentence arrives whole. I have tried to persuade about ten people to do it and none of them have, because the six weeks of being worse is a genuinely unattractive offer.
The words that earn marks
Each one links to how it is pronounced.
- excruciating
five syllables with the stress on the second
- fortnight
a British time noun few candidates use
- properly
British adverb, and the crux of the story
- halved
a verb with a silent l worth practising
- abandoned
three syllables with the stress on the second
- overstate
a compact verb, better than say how much
- output
compound noun, precise about productivity
How a strong answer is built
- 1Name the skill, when and how long it took.
- 2Explain the counter-intuitive difficulty.
- 3Describe the method, honestly boring.
- 4Say how it has been useful, beyond the obvious measure.
Sounds to watch
The ones this answer leans on most.
Straight answers
How long should my answer to “Describe a useful skill you have learned.” be?
You get 60 seconds to make notes and then speak for up to two minutes without interruption. Aim to still be talking at ninety seconds: finishing at forty is the commonest way to lose marks on this part.
Should I memorise the model answer?
No. Record your own version first, then read the model for the shape and the vocabulary. A memorised answer changes rhythm and pace noticeably, and examiners are trained to hear it — it usually costs more than the better wording gains.
Does sayit score this answer?
It scores what a microphone can observe: an estimate from fluency and pronunciation only — not an official band, and not a mark for vocabulary or grammar.
What the band on your result means
An estimate from fluency and pronunciation only — not an official band, and not a mark for vocabulary or grammar.One question a day until your test
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