Home ›IELTS Cue Cards › A rule you think is good
This IELTS Speaking Part 2 cue card asks you to talk about a rule you think is good, covering what the rule is; where the rule applies; what happens if people break it; and explain why you think it is a good rule.. Below is a band 9 sample answer with tips on structuring a two-minute talk.
Describe a rule at your school or workplace that you think is good.
You should say:
You have one minute to prepare and may make notes. Then speak for one to two minutes; the examiner may ask one or two short follow-up questions.
The rule I have come to genuinely admire is the "no-meeting Wednesdays" policy at my workplace. The rule is simple: on Wednesdays, no internal meetings may be scheduled — the calendar is required to stay empty — leaving the entire day for uninterrupted individual work. Client emergencies are the only exception, and anyone who books a routine meeting on a Wednesday receives a polite automated rejection and, for repeat offenders, a gentle conversation with their manager; there is no dramatic punishment, just consistent social enforcement, which has proven remarkably effective. When the policy was introduced, I confess I thought it was a gimmick. I was wrong. Our previous culture allowed meetings to spread across every day, slicing time into fragments too small for real thinking — I often worked evenings simply to do the job my daytime meetings had discussed. Wednesday changed the arithmetic of the entire week. People now save their complex tasks — writing, analysis, design — for that protected day, and there is a distinctive Wednesday atmosphere in the office: headphones on, heads down, a kind of collective concentration that feels almost like a library. Measurably, our team delivers more, and meetings themselves improved, because compressing them into four days forced everyone to ask whether each one deserved to exist. I think the rule works because it does not restrict freedom so much as defend it — it protects employees from a costly habit no individual could refuse alone.
After your talk, the examiner moves to more abstract questions linked to this cue card.
Rules are frozen agreements that spare us from renegotiating everything daily. They coordinate strangers — traffic flows because red means stop for everyone — and they protect the weak from the strong by making power predictable. Without shared rules, every interaction would cost trust-building we cannot afford.
When the rule defeats its own purpose in that situation, and breaking it harms no one — the classic case being crossing an empty road against a signal to help someone injured. Ethically, the test is whether you would defend the exception publicly. Convenience alone never qualifies; conscience occasionally does.
Definitely — and not merely as a courtesy. Employees see the daily reality rules must govern, so their input produces workable policies instead of theoretical ones, and people follow rules they helped write with far less enforcement. Consultation costs management some time and returns legitimacy, which is the cheapest compliance mechanism ever invented.
Band 9 model essays, letters and templates from the Writing library. Browse all 118 in the Learning Hub.
Daily articles on IELTS changes, visa rules and university admissions.
Cue cards, speaking questions and Writing Task 1 questions with band 9 sample answers, plus a free band score calculator.