Three parts.One band.
An interview with a certified examiner, face to face or on a video call. Part 1 is not small talk; the cue card is not a speech; Part 3 is a seminar. Accent is not the problem. Being understood is the measure, and memorised answers are scored as what they are.
Answer. Case.
Effect.
A — Answer. The direct answer in one sentence. Never one word. "Do you like your hometown?" → "Mostly, yes, though it has changed a lot."
C — Case. One concrete example: a place, a person, a moment. "When I was in school there were fields behind our house; now there are three apartment blocks."
E — Effect. What it means or how you feel. "So I like the people and miss the space."
Three moves, twenty seconds, done. Part 2 is ACE with the example repeated and stretched. Part 3 is ACE plus one counter-turn: "However, some people would say…, and to some extent that is fair."
The four anchors
Almost every Part 1 and Part 3 topic can be answered from four areas of your own life, so prepare those four and never prepare a topic list: Technology (what you use, what changed), Family (who, where, how often), Entertainment (what you watch, read, play), Routine (mornings, commute, weekends).
A question about weather becomes a question about routine. A question about shopping becomes a question about technology or family. You are never without a case.
Running out at fifty seconds
Go back to the card: pick a bullet you rushed and add the effect. Or loop the E: "And that is really why it mattered, because…". Silence is fine. "Um" is counted.
Not small talk.
The cue card
system.
Write five words, not a script: who, where, when, what happened, why it mattered. Talk from the words. Every card below opens in the booth, which times you, transcribes you, and estimates the band.
Sound like
an adult.
Part 3 lifts the topic off your life and onto society. Pick a side seventy percent, concede thirty. "It is good and also bad" is a 5.5.