Goals, Success and the Future
Practise talking about your plans, decisions and idea of a good day, describe a personal goal you hope to achieve, and debate how society defines success and ambition.
Hard
Part 1 · Interview
4–5 minShort questions about you and your daily life. Pick a question to see the strategy and a sample answer.
Do you have any plans for this weekend?
How to answer
Use 'I'm going to' or the present continuous for arrangements, and give two concrete plans rather than one vague one.
Sample answer
I do, actually — I'm meeting a friend for breakfast on Saturday, and then we're planning to cycle out to a lake just outside the city. Sunday's deliberately empty, though. I've learnt that if I schedule both days, I start the week feeling like I never had a weekend at all.
Part 2 · Cue card
3–4 minCue card
Describe a personal goal you hope to achieve in the future.
You should say:
What this goal is
When you first started thinking about it
What you will need to do to achieve it
And explain why achieving this goal matters so much to you
Strategy
Choose one specific goal and name it in your first sentence, so the examiner can follow the whole story without guessing.
Show a range of future forms — 'I'm hoping to', 'I'll need to', 'by the time I'm thirty' — rather than repeating 'I will' throughout.
Treat the 'when you started thinking about it' bullet as a short past-tense story; one vivid remembered moment beats a vague timeline.
For the final bullet, give two different reasons it matters — one practical, one emotional — to extend naturally towards the two-minute mark.
Model answer
The goal I've set my heart on is retraining as a physiotherapist, which is quite a leap, because I've spent the last six years working in office administration. I first started thinking about it seriously about two years ago, when my grandmother had a hip replacement. I watched her physio coax her from barely standing to walking round the market again in a few months, and something just clicked — I remember thinking, that's work that visibly matters. To get there, there's honestly a mountain to climb. I'll need to pass a science entrance exam, because my school background was mostly in humanities, and then complete a four-year degree, ideally part-time so I can keep earning. I've already started chipping away at it — I'm doing an evening biology course, I'm putting aside a little money each month, and I've arranged to shadow a physiotherapist at a local clinic next spring, so I can be absolutely sure before I commit. As for why it matters so much — partly it's about meaning. In my current job, if I do everything perfectly, the reward is basically that nothing goes wrong, and that's started to feel hollow. But it's also about proving something to myself, I suppose. I was always told I wasn't a science person, and part of me wants to find out whether that's actually true or just a story I accepted too early. Even if it takes me until my late thirties, I'm fairly certain future me will be glad I tried.
Part 3 · Discussion
4–5 minDeeper follow-up questions on the part 2 themes.
How do societies generally decide whether a person is successful?
How to answer
Open with the general trend, then complicate it with 'having said that' to show you can see beyond the obvious answer.
Sample answer
I think most societies still default to the visible markers — income, job title, property, perhaps the achievements of someone's children. They're easy to compare, which is probably why they persist. Having said that, I'd argue the definition is quietly broadening. People increasingly admire those who've built balanced lives or contributed to their communities, even modestly. Social media complicates things, though — it rewards the appearance of success rather than the substance, so in some ways we may be drifting back towards judging people by whatever can be displayed.
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