ChatGPT and Gemini have become part of a lot of students' IELTS routines, and for good reason, they're available at 2am, they don't get tired of your questions, and they can generate practice material in seconds. But "useful" and "reliable" aren't the same thing, and knowing where the line sits between them is what separates people who use these tools well from people who walk into the test with a false sense of confidence. This guide covers specific prompts you can copy and adapt, honest notes on what each tool is actually good at, and, just as important, where they fall short.
Getting Real Writing Task 2 Feedback, Not Just "Is This Good?"
The single most common mistake people make when using ChatGPT for Writing practice is pasting an essay and asking "how's this?" You'll get a vague, encouraging answer that isn't tied to how IELTS actually grades writing. Instead, ask for feedback structured around the four official criteria, Task Response, Coherence and Cohesion, Lexical Resource, and Grammatical Range and Accuracy, and ask for specifics, not adjectives.
Try a prompt along these lines: "Act as an IELTS Writing examiner. Assess the following Task 2 essay against the four band descriptors, Task Response, Coherence and Cohesion, Lexical Resource, and Grammatical Range and Accuracy. Give a separate band estimate for each criterion with a one-sentence justification. Quote the exact sentences that are holding the score back, and for each one, show me what a Band 7 rewrite would look like. Essay: [paste your essay]."
This does two things a vague request never will: it forces the model to reason criterion-by-criterion the way an examiner does, and it gives you something actionable, a rewritten sentence, rather than a compliment. You can follow up with "now do the same for my introduction only" or "show me three ways to make my conclusion less repetitive" to drill into specific weak spots.
Building Topic-Specific Vocabulary Lists
IELTS topics repeat, education, technology, the environment, urbanisation, health, work, and having flexible, precise vocabulary for each one is worth far more than memorising generic "band 9 phrases" that examiners hear in every third essay. Both ChatGPT and Gemini are genuinely good at generating this kind of list on demand.
A useful prompt: "Give me 15 topic-specific words and phrases for IELTS Writing and Speaking on the topic of [technology and society]. Group them by function, expressing opinion, describing cause and effect, comparing ideas, and hedging/qualifying a claim. For each one, give a one-line definition and an example sentence at Band 7 level. Leave out overused IELTS filler like 'moreover' and 'nowadays.'" Swap the bracketed topic for whatever's on your list that week, and ask for the words used in a short paragraph afterward so you see them in context, not just in isolation.
Generating Speaking Part 2 Cue Cards on Demand
One real limitation of most IELTS prep material is that you eventually run out of cue cards to practice with. This is somewhere AI genuinely helps, because generating a fresh, realistically formatted cue card takes seconds. Ask for it in the actual test format so the practice transfers: "Generate an IELTS Speaking Part 2 cue card on the topic of [a skill you'd like to learn], in the exact format used in the real test, a main prompt sentence followed by three or four 'you should say' bullet points. Then write two sample answers: one at a Band 6 level and one at a Band 8 level, so I can compare the difference in vocabulary, structure, and detail."
Ask for a new one on a different topic each day and you'll build up a genuinely wide bank of practice cards, something that would take much longer to compile from a book.
Drilling Grammar Patterns
If Grammatical Range and Accuracy is your weak criterion, and for a lot of test takers, it is, targeted drilling works better than general "improve my grammar" requests. Try: "I want to drill relative clauses for IELTS Writing. Give me 10 fill-in-the-blank sentences that require a relative clause to complete, an answer key, and then five original example sentences about [climate change] using relative clauses correctly at an advanced level." Swap in conditionals, passive voice, participle clauses, or whatever your own essays keep getting flagged for.
Informal Speaking Practice with Voice Mode and Gemini Live
ChatGPT's voice mode and Gemini Live both let you have a genuine spoken conversation with the model, which is a step up from typing when it comes to Speaking practice, you get to hear yourself think out loud in English under mild pressure, which is a real and useful skill to build. You can ask either one to play interviewer, throw follow-up questions at you the way a Part 3 discussion would, or just keep a conversation going on a topic for two minutes while you practice speaking without long pauses.
Gemini's advantage here is its integration with the rest of Google's ecosystem, if you're mid-conversation and want to pull in a current example or fact to support a Part 3 opinion, it can reach for that more naturally. ChatGPT's voice mode tends to feel slightly more conversational and better at sustaining a natural back-and-forth rhythm, which suits informal fluency practice.
But be realistic about what this is and isn't. Neither tool replicates the actual test format: there's no examiner reading from a fixed script, no genuine two-minute timed monologue with a countdown you can't see, and no assessment of pronunciation, intonation, or fluency against the real Speaking band descriptors. It's a decent way to get comfortable speaking English on the spot. It is not a simulation of the IELTS Speaking test, and it can't tell you what band your speaking would actually score.
The Important Caveat: AI Chatbots Are Not Reliable Scorers
This is worth stating plainly, because it's easy to miss: when ChatGPT or Gemini tells you "I'd estimate this is Band 7," that number should not be trusted the way you'd trust an actual test result. Real IELTS examiners are trained and certified against a fixed set of band descriptors, and their scoring is checked for consistency against other examiners. A chatbot has no equivalent calibration, it's pattern-matching against text it was trained on, and it can be inconsistent, and often overly generous, especially if you ask it in a way that invites a flattering answer.
In practice this means the same essay pasted twice, worded slightly differently in the prompt, can come back with two different "band scores." That's not a small quirk, it's a sign the number isn't measuring what you think it's measuring. Use AI feedback for what it's genuinely good at: pointing out specific sentence-level issues, suggesting alternative phrasing, and generating practice material. Don't use the band number it gives you as your actual estimate of where you stand.
AI as a Supplement, Not a Substitute
Used this way, ChatGPT and Gemini are genuinely worth having in your prep routine, as a vocabulary generator, an essay-feedback partner, a source of fresh cue cards, and a low-stakes speaking partner. What they can't do is replace a properly timed, properly scored mock test. There's no substitute for sitting down with a 40-minute Reading paper on the clock, or getting a Writing and Speaking assessment scored against a consistent standard, if what you actually want to know is your current band.
That's the gap our own free practice tests are built to fill, full-length, properly timed Listening, Reading, Writing, and Speaking tests with real band-style scoring, so you get an honest baseline that a chatbot conversation can't give you. Use AI to sharpen specific skills between attempts, and use a real timed test to find out where you actually stand.