IELTS Speaking Part 3: Animals
8 Part 3 discussion questions on animals, with developed sample answers of the kind Part 3 expects.
Why do stories and movies for children always feature animals?
Partly it's because an animal hands a writer an instant shortcut to character. A fox is cunning, an owl is wise, a bear is slow and kind, and a five-year-old absorbs that instantly without needing the pages of description a human character would demand. That's why a fable like The Tortoise and the Hare resonates with children who couldn't yet follow a story about two athletes. The second thing is that animals let writers tackle uncomfortable subjects at a safe distance. Loss, jealousy, being the outsider in a group, these are far easier to sit through when they happen to a lion cub or a duckling than to a child who resembles the reader. Bambi deals with a parent dying, and generations of children have coped with it precisely because of that layer of separation. Both reasons boil down to the same thing: animals make complicated ideas manageable for a very young mind.
Why do people like to keep pets?
For most people it comes down to companionship that carries no strings attached. A dog is thrilled to see you whether you've had a triumphant day or a thoroughly humiliating one, and there's no conversation to navigate and nothing whatsoever to explain. That matters enormously to people living alone, and my neighbour, who's retired and widowed, will tell you her cat is the reason the flat never feels silent. The other pull is that looking after something gives the day a shape. You have to get up, feed the animal, walk it and take it to the vet, and that small set of obligations can be surprisingly steadying when the rest of life feels shapeless. I've noticed that friends who work from home say the dog is the only thing that forces them outside at all. So it's affection and structure bundled together, and that combination is quite hard to find anywhere else.
What are the advantages of keeping a pet?
The clearest benefit is what it does for your physical and mental wellbeing. Dog owners rack up several kilometres a week without ever once calling it exercise, and there's decent evidence that simply stroking an animal lowers your heart rate and eases stress levels. My uncle was told to be more active after a health scare, and getting a retriever did far more for him than any gym membership ever had. The benefit I'd rank alongside that is what a pet teaches children. When a child is genuinely responsible for feeding a rabbit and cleaning its cage, they learn that a living creature depends on them and that you can't postpone it just because you're tired. That's a lesson in empathy and consistency which is very hard to deliver through a lecture. Both of those are things you acquire by living alongside an animal rather than by being told about them.
Do you think children love animals more than old people do?
I'd say it's different rather than greater. Children's affection is loud and immediate, they want to touch every dog in the street, fascinated because an animal is still a novelty to them. But it's often quite shallow, and my nephew begged for a hamster for months on end then lost interest entirely within three weeks of getting one. Older people tend to feel something a good deal steadier, because the relationship is quietly doing far more work for them emotionally. They also know exactly what they're taking on, so they don't romanticise it the way a child does. For someone retired whose children have moved abroad, a cat isn't entertainment, it's daily company and a reason to maintain a routine, and that attachment survives the vet bills and the early mornings. So by sheer enthusiasm the children win easily, but by commitment I'd back the older generation every time.
Do you like to take care of animals?
I genuinely do, though I'd admit I'm better at borrowing animals than at owning them outright. What I enjoy is how uncomplicated it is, feeding a cat and coaxing it to settle on your lap is about the only part of my day that has nothing to do with a screen or a deadline. When friends of mine travel I look after their cat for a week, and by the third evening I've stopped checking my phone nearly as often. Where I hesitate is the commitment, because caring for an animal properly is a ten-year decision rather than a pleasant weekend. Vet appointments, arranging cover whenever you're away, the fact that you can't spontaneously decide to stay out late, I've watched friends badly underestimate every part of it. So I take care of animals happily, but I'd rather do it well for somebody else than badly for myself.
How are pets now different from those in the past?
The biggest shift is in what a pet is actually for. My grandparents kept a dog in the village, and it lived in the yard, guarded the house and ate whatever came off the table, nobody would ever have described it as a member of the family. Now the same animal sleeps indoors, has a name on a tag, a vet with proper records and food formulated for its age, and people talk about it the way they'd talk about a child. Living space has reshaped pets too. Because most of us are in apartments rather than houses with land, the popular animals are small ones like cats, little breeds and birds, whereas a working household would once have kept something large and useful. You can see it in the whole industry that's sprung up around it, with grooming salons and pet hotels in Baku that simply didn't exist twenty years ago.
What problems will keeping pets bring?
The problem that worries me most is what happens when people take on an animal impulsively. A puppy bought because it looked appealing in a photograph becomes a large, demanding dog within a year, and a proportion of those animals end up abandoned, which is a good part of why our cities have a stray population at all. Shelters here fill up predictably after the holidays, and the animals themselves pay for a decision they had no part in making. The other issue is the friction pets generate in dense housing. In an apartment block one dog barking at night affects thirty households, waste isn't always cleared up, and neighbours with allergies or a genuine fear of dogs have nowhere else to go. None of that is an argument against pets, but it does mean ownership is a public matter as much as a private one.
Is it safe for animals to live in cities?
For strays, honestly, no. A city exposes them to traffic, poisoned bait, no shelter in winter and scraps scavenged from bins, so the average street cat here lives a fraction of the life an indoor one enjoys. You only have to notice how many animals are struck by vehicles around Baku in a single year to grasp how hostile that environment truly is for them. Animals in homes, though, are arguably safer in a city than they'd be anywhere else in the country. They're vaccinated, they can see a vet within twenty minutes if something goes wrong, they aren't exposed to predators or disease from livestock, and city dogs often outlive their village counterparts by years. So the city is perilous for the animals nobody owns and unusually protective towards the ones somebody does, which really says more about us than about cities themselves.
Reading a model answer is not the same as saying one. The sample above shows what a strong Part 3 answer sounds like. What it cannot tell you is how yours sounds — whether you hesitate, repeat the question back, or run out of things to say at forty seconds.
You can record an answer to this exact question and get it marked on fluency and coherence, lexical resource, grammatical range and pronunciation — the same four criteria the examiner uses.
Common questions
How is Part 3 different from Part 1?
Part 1 is about you; Part 3 is about people in general. The questions move to society, causes and consequences, and the answers are expected to be longer and more developed — an opinion plus a reason plus an example, rather than two sentences.
What if I have no opinion on the question?
You are not marked on the opinion, so pick one and support it. Saying you have never thought about it and stopping there leaves the examiner nothing to assess.
How long does Part 3 last?
Four to five minutes. The topics develop out of your Part 2 card, so the discussion is usually connected to what you just described.
Model answers written and reviewed by The English All-in-One IELTS team. They are teaching models showing what each band looks like, not real candidate scripts.