Updated July 2, 2009
If The Current Part 1 Questions Are Not For You
If you have no idea what Part 1 topics and questions you might be asked, what study strategy should you use?
First, I recommend that you find out when the new set of Part 1 topics will come into use and, as much as possible, try to avoid doing the first (or the second and third) test with the new questions. If you do the test on the first day of the new questions, you will be putting yourself at a disadvantage because, for any other date, you will be able to get information about what the topics and questions are. This information will normally be on this website but, if I don't have time to write them soon after the first day of the new questions, you should still be able to find the information on the internet bulletin boards, especially 51ielts.com and 3GBBS.com. The Part 1 topics and questions change every 4 months.
It seems that new Part 1 questions come into use at the first test of January, May and September each year.
Second, there are some topics and questions that are highly likely in every test and you can prepare for them. The topic of 'Your Work or Your Studies' is a 50% possibility in almost every test and the following questions are almost always used: "Do you work or are you a student?"; "What subject are you studying?" or "What work do you do?"; and, "Why did you choose that?" Another frequent questions is, "Do you like it?" Of course, there might be slight changes to the actual wording of these questions but they should have the same meaning as these questions.
Third, you should look at many past questions for the topic of 'Your Work or Your Studies' and study these, in order to get an idea of the types of questions that are asked. Sometimes, variations of these questions are repeated in later tests although it is not common that exactly the same questions are repeated just a few months later. If you prepare for several different questions on this topic, you will be better prepared to make answers for different questions on the same topic. Some past questions can be found in the section of this website called 'Old Part 1 Questions'. You can also find good examples of questions for this topic in IELTS textbooks.
Next, you should do the same for the second most likely Part 1 topic, 'Your Home'. This topic could be one of several variations: 'Your Hometown'; 'Your Accommodation' (= your dormitory /house/apartment) or even 'Your Home Country', 'Your Home Province', or 'Your Home Street'. Of these, 'Your Hometown' is the most frequently used, and 'Your Accommodation' is the next most common. Therefore, at the very least, prepare to describe your hometown and the house/apartment/dormitory where you live.
After that, the topic of 'Your Hobbies and Interests' is the next most common. Look for past questions on this and prepare answers for these questions. As a minimum, prepare to describe your hobbies and interests, be able to answer the question, "How did you become interested in that?" and be able to describe what you do in your free time and when you have holidays (vacations).
Then you should read through and familiarize yourself with all the Part 1 topics and questions from past tests in order to get an idea of the range of topics and the style of questions that are used.
If you have no choice and have to do the first test with new questions, and if you have time, it is a good idea to prepare answers for many of these old questions and other questions from IELTS textbooks. But some topics, such as 'Birds', which was used in 2006, are unusual and almost certainly won't be repeated very often.
On the other hand, if you plan not to do the first test with new Part 1 questions, I suggest you just familiarize yourself with past topics and questions but not spend a lot of time preparing answers for them. Your time would be much better used preparing for the known Part 2/3 topics and questions. Then, when you do find out the new Part 1 topics and questions, you will be able to concentrate on them because you would have already done a lot of preparation for the Part 2/3 questions.
Another good reason to concentrate on the known Part 2/3 questions is that sometimes these same (or similar) questions appear as Part 1 questions.
Since 2007 in China, the Speaking test seems to have been using three sets of Part 1 questions, with 10 topics per set. Each set has a "Work/Studies" topic and either a Hometown" topic or a "Home (Accommodation)" topic. This produces a total of about 27 different topics for Part 1. (It is possible that sometimes the same topic, such as "Music" is in two different sets at the same time, with mostly different questions in each set.) When the test topics change, it looks like the oldest 5 (more or less) topics are retired and replaced with 5 new topics. And when the topics change, there are always a few new questions for Work/Studies, Home and Hometown topics. That is, in total, about 20% to 25% of the Part 1 questions are new after each change time. But these "new" topics might not be completely new – sometimes there are topics with questions exactly the same as used 1 or 2 years previously and sometimes they are topics that have been used before but with some new questions that have never been used before.
So, if you are going to do the test after a topic change in the future, you should prepare for the current Part 1 topics, minus the oldest 5 topics. The following pages will help you work out the most likely topics and questions that will be retired: Previous Part 1 Topics, Index of Previous Part 1 Topics, and All Part 1 Questions.
If you do the test outside Mainland China, you can reasonably expect to get the same Part 1 questions that are either currently in use in China or old Part 1 questions that were previously used in China in the recent past.
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