IELTS Speaking Part 2: using the prompts

An IELTS teacher asked me the following questions:

Is it compulsory for candidates to address all of the prompts on the cue card? What happens if candidates ignore the prompts but speak well about the topic anyway? And what happens if the candidate misunderstands the question and speaks about a different topic?

Here are the answers that I gave the teacher:

I tell my students to use the prompts because they help you to structure your answer. However, it is still possible to get a very high score even if you don't address all of the points e.g. if you speak well about the topic but miss the last point or two. I don't recommend ignoring the points completely, because there's a danger that you'll go off task if you do that.

If you misunderstand the question and give an unrelated answer, I'm afraid you'll get a very low score. The reason is that candidates could memorise a perfect answer if off-topic answers were allowed.

Comments

[sjm]

The prompts are written to be the most obvious things you would say about a topic. For example, if the the topic is about something you bought, the first prompt would be 'What was it?'. It is almost impossible to talk for two minutes about a topic in a relevant way and not cover at least two of the prompts.

The prompts are there to help students (usually the weakest ones) by giving them specific things to talk about. The prompts are also there to give the examiner a way to 'push' the candidate to reach two minutes by asking, 'Can you tell me more about...?'.

No examiner uses the prompts directly when they assess a candidate. However, because they are the most obvious details, if you don't answer some of them then you are likely leaving out vital information that helps the examiner understand what you are saying, and therefore you could be incoherent (which falls under your fluency score).

[hArPrEeT Singh]

Thanks sir
For such information

[Mehrdad]

Hi simon,
Can i repeat the prompts in my part 2 speaking?
For example say "In response to the first point of who the person was i can say that blah blah blah"
Is this structure acceptable or will i lose points for this?