IELTS Speaking Part 3 · role models

How does a person come to be respected in a community?

A strong Part 3 answer takes a position in the first clause, supports it with one reason and one concrete case, and then names where it stops being true. Around a minute.

The question, as the examiner gives it

IELTS Speaking Part 3

How does a person come to be respected in a community?

no preparation, about 1 minute to speak

A band 7 to 8 answer

About 124 words at a natural pace — roughly what 60 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.
A band 7 to 8 answer

Mostly through repetition rather than through any single act. The people who are genuinely respected where I live are the ones who have been reliably doing something small for a long time, the doctor who has been there thirty years, the woman who runs the library. Nobody decided to respect them. It accumulated. What accelerates it, I think, is being useful to somebody at a bad moment, because that gets repeated afterwards and travels much further than anything you say about yourself. Money is interesting here, because it buys a kind of deference that people are quite good at distinguishing from respect. And it can be lost extremely quickly, usually not by failing at something but by being seen to treat somebody without dignity.

The words that earn marks

Each one links to how it is pronounced.

  • repetition

    four syllables with the stress on the third

  • reliably

    four syllables with the stress on the second

  • accumulated

    five syllables with the stress on the second

  • accelerates

    four syllables with the stress on the second

  • deference

    a precise noun distinguished from respect

  • distinguishing

    four syllables with a clean ng ending

  • dignity

    three syllables with the stress on the first

How a strong answer is built

  1. 1Name the main mechanism in one clause.
  2. 2Support it with concrete local examples.
  3. 3Add what speeds the process up.
  4. 4Introduce a complication and how respect is lost.

Sounds to watch

The ones this answer leans on most.

Straight answers

How long should my answer to “How does a person come to be respected in a community?” be?

About 60 seconds. Long enough for the answer plus a reason or an example, short enough that the examiner can get through the rest of the set.

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.
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