IELTS Speaking Part 3: Tall buildings
4 Part 3 discussion questions on tall buildings, with developed sample answers of the kind Part 3 expects.
What do you think buildings will be like in the future?
My guess is that energy will become the defining feature, because buildings currently devour a huge share of a city's power, and that's growing politically impossible to ignore. I'd expect facades that generate electricity rather than merely keeping the weather out, systems that recycle their own water, and greenery woven into the structure to cut the cooling load in hot cities. Some of that already exists in places like Singapore, where towers are wrapped in planting that measurably lowers the temperature inside. The other change I'd bet on is that buildings will stop serving a single fixed purpose. Recent years exposed how quickly an office block can become redundant, so architects are moving towards flexible floors and mixed-use towers where flats, workspaces, clinics and shops share one structure. That effectively turns a building into a small vertical neighbourhood, which suits cities where land has simply run dry.
Which do most people prefer, living in a bungalow or in a tall building?
If you asked people what they'd choose in an ideal world, most would opt for a bungalow, because a house on the ground offers things a flat structurally can't. You get a garden, you share no walls with anyone, and children can be sent outside without someone supervising a lift or a stairwell. Older people in particular dread depending on a lift that might break down for a week. In reality, though, most end up in tall buildings and are reasonably content, because the trade-offs run the other way once money and location enter the equation. A flat near the metro costs a fraction of a house with the same commute, and it comes bundled with security, heating and maintenance that somebody else worries about. Almost everyone I know in Baku lives in an apartment block, not because they dreamed of it, but because the alternative means an hour's drive every morning.
Why are taller and taller building being constructed nowadays?
The driving force is simply the price of land in thriving cities. When a square metre in the centre costs a fortune, the only way to make a project pay is to multiply the floor space stacked on that footprint, so developers build upwards until engineering or planning rules bring them to a halt. It also concentrates people near transport and offices, which is why cities keep approving towers instead of letting the suburbs sprawl further outward. Beyond the arithmetic, though, height has become a way for a city to announce itself. A skyline is the cheapest possible advertisement, and governments across the Gulf and Asia have used landmark towers to signal that a place is modern and open for investment. The Flame Towers weren't built because Baku had run short of land; they were built because a recognisable silhouette draws attention and money. Economics sets the floor for how high a building has to be, and civic ambition is what pushes it well beyond that.
What are the disadvantages of living in a very tall building?
The most practical problem is how entirely you depend on systems you don't control. If the lift is out of service on the thirtieth floor, an ordinary errand turns into a twenty-minute climb, and a power cut can leave water pressure and ventilation failing simultaneously. Fire safety worries people for the same reason, since evacuating from such height is slow no matter how carefully the building has been designed. The subtler cost is the distance a tower places between you and ordinary street life. When you're twenty floors up, you don't casually step outside, you don't bump into neighbours, and children can't play within sight of a window, so families end up scheduling outdoor time instead of simply having it. Elderly residents can go days without speaking to anyone, a real issue in blocks where nobody knows who lives next door. In the end, height buys you a view and a short commute while quietly stripping the ground away from underneath you.
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.