IELTS Speaking Part 3 · consumerism

What effect does cheap, fast fashion have?

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

What effect does cheap, fast fashion have?

no preparation, about 1 minute to speak

A band 7 to 8 answer

About 123 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

The environmental cost is the one everybody cites, and it is real. Enormous volumes of water, synthetic fibres that do not break down, and a quantity of clothing being discarded that is genuinely difficult to picture. But I think the labour question is the more uncomfortable one, because the low price depends on wages paid somewhere the buyer will never visit. What complicates all of this is that cheap clothing has also been democratising. My grandmother owned perhaps six outfits, not by choice. I am wary of an argument that concludes poorer people should go back to that while wealthier ones continue buying whatever they like. The fix probably has to be regulation of the producers rather than moral pressure on individual shoppers.

The words that earn marks

Each one links to how it is pronounced.

  • environmental

    five syllables with the stress on the fourth

  • synthetic

    three syllables with the stress on the second

  • discarded

    three syllables with the stress on the second

  • labour

    British spelling, the economic sense

  • democratising

    five syllables, a high-register verb

  • wary

    the precise adjective for cautious disagreement

  • regulation

    four syllables with the stress on the third

How a strong answer is built

  1. 1Give the obvious effect and grant it.
  2. 2Name the effect you think matters more.
  3. 3Complicate the argument honestly.
  4. 4State where you think the remedy belongs.

Sounds to watch

The ones this answer leans on most.

Straight answers

How long should my answer to “What effect does cheap, fast fashion have?” 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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