IELTS Speaking Part 3: Goals
4 Part 3 discussion questions on goals, with developed sample answers of the kind Part 3 expects.
Why do people set goals?
Most of us set goals because, without one, everyday decisions have nothing to measure themselves against. A goal turns a vague wish like getting fitter into a filter: once you've committed to running a half marathon in April, whether you head out on a cold Tuesday evening is already decided, because the training plan dictates it rather than your mood. That's really what a goal buys you, since it strips the negotiation out of hundreds of small choices. The second thing goals accomplish is making progress tangible, and tangible progress is what sustains motivation. Effort with no scoreboard feels endless, whereas a student preparing for IELTS who watches a practice score climb from six to six-and-a-half has concrete proof the work is paying off. That kind of feedback drives people in a way vague self-improvement never can, which is precisely why those who write their goals down tend to follow through.
Why is it important for teenagers to set goals?
Adolescence is the stage where distractions multiply exponentially, so a goal mainly functions as an anchor. A sixteen-year-old with no particular target drifts aimlessly from one thing to another and looks back on an entire year with nothing to show for it, whereas one who's decided to get into a medical faculty structures her evenings, weekends and even her friendships around that ambition. The discipline itself is arguably worth more than the goal, because the habit of working towards something carries over into everything she does afterwards. Goals also push teenagers to discover what they genuinely want while the choices are still reversible. If a student sets out to become an architect, spends a summer sketching and realises she can't stand it, that's a cheap lesson at seventeen and a hugely costly one at twenty-five, midway through a degree. Testing ambitions early is how young people avoid committing to a life somebody else chose for them.
Why should parents encourage children to have ambitions?
A child's sense of what's realistic is largely inherited from the adults around them, so parental encouragement does something quite fundamental. If a boy grows up hearing that people like him become engineers or run companies, he treats those paths as perfectly ordinary and prepares accordingly, whereas a child constantly urged to be sensible narrows his own horizons long before anybody else gets the chance to. Ambition, in that sense, is mostly permission granted early. What ambition also instils in children is a healthy relationship with failure, which is hard to teach any other way. A girl who tries out for the school basketball team and doesn't make the cut learns to practise harder, come back and cope with disappointment on a small, safe scale. Those are exactly the skills she'll draw on at university and at work, and children never encouraged to reach for anything simply never get that practice. Encouraging ambition costs nothing, while refusing to do so quietly limits a child for decades.
When do young children start setting goals for themselves?
Far earlier than we usually give them credit for, although the goals don't resemble goals to an adult eye. A four-year-old determined to ride a bike without stabilisers, climbing back on after every fall, is doing everything a goal involves: choosing an outcome, tolerating setbacks and repeating the effort. The difference is that these targets are immediate and physical, driven by sheer frustration or a desire to keep pace with an older sibling. Deliberate, longer-term goal-setting really emerges around ten or eleven, when children develop a proper sense of the future. That's the age when you hear a child announce she wants to become a vet and start devouring books about animals, or save her pocket money for months towards something specific. Before that age they can want things intensely, but they can't yet plan backwards from a distant outcome, and that part genuinely has to be taught.
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.