Part 2 cue cards: what to write in the one-minute prep

You get one minute, a pencil, and a card with a topic and three or four bullets. Then you must speak for one to two minutes. Candidates who try to write full sentences waste the minute and dry up at forty seconds.

Write prompts, not sentences

• What / who / where — one noun
• When — a year or a season
• What happened — three verbs in order
• Why it mattered — one feeling or result

Those four lines are enough to talk for ninety seconds if you expand each one. A script is not. If you lose the next written sentence you stop. If you lose a prompt you still have the story.

Cover the bullets, then add a close

The bullets are a floor, not a cage. Hit each one so the examiner hears a complete task, then add how you feel about it now or what you would do differently. That last beat is often the difference between a 6 and a 7 on fluency and coherence.

If you finish early, do not apologise

Add one more detail from the same story. Apologising (“that is all I can say”) tells the examiner you have run out of language. Another sentence about the same afternoon does not.

Train the minute itself

Most people only practise the speaking. Practise the silent minute too. Here the microphone is off while you jot notes, then the examiner asks you to start. Repeat that loop until the pencil work feels automatic.