GESE Grade 5 Topic Ideas (and How to Pick One)

The single best decision you'll make for your Trinity GESE Grade 5 exam is your topic. In the topic phase, you lead the conversation about a subject you prepared in advance — so the right topic makes the whole exam easier. This post covers how to choose one, topic ideas to spark yours, and the five points to plan.

If you're not sure where this exam fits in your application, start with our B1 English test for ILR guide.

What makes a good topic

A strong Grade 5 topic ticks three boxes:

1. You genuinely know and care about it. Real interest gives you more to say and keeps you calm under pressure. A topic you're bored by will run dry in thirty seconds.
2. It has a timeline. The best topics let you naturally talk about the past (how you got into it), the present (what you do now), and the future (your plans). That makes the grammar Grade 5 listens for — past narration, future forms, comparisons — easy to use without forcing it.
3. It invites questions. Choose something with enough depth that an examiner can keep asking follow-ups, but specific enough that you can give real detail.

Avoid topics that are too narrow (you'll run out of things to say) or too broad and abstract (you'll struggle to be specific and personal).

Topic ideas to spark yours

These are starting points — the goal is to make whichever you pick personal to you:

• A hobby or sport you do regularly — how you started, your routine, a memorable moment, your goals
• Your job or studies — what you do, what you like and dislike, how you'd like to progress
• A place that matters to you — your hometown, a country you've lived in, somewhere you'd love to visit
• Cooking or a favourite food — a dish you make, where you learned it, how you'd change it
• Music or films you love — what you listen to or watch, how your taste has changed, a recommendation
• A person who influenced you — who they are, what they taught you, how that shows in your life today
• A goal or plan — learning something new, a trip you're planning, where you want to be in a few years

The strongest topics are often the everyday ones you'd happily talk about with a friend.

Plan your five points

Once you've chosen a topic, plan around five clear points you want to make about it. Each point should be:

• specific to you — not a generic fact anyone could say
• something you can develop — a sentence or two, with a reason or example
• a natural lead-in to a question — so you can keep the conversation going

For a hobby like hiking, your five points might be: how you started, your favourite route, who you go with, a plan for a bigger walk next year, and what hiking gives you. Notice how those naturally cover past, present, and future.

Don't forget your question

Grade 5 expects you to ask the examiner a question, usually in the topic phase — and it's the most commonly forgotten requirement. Plan it in advance so it fits your topic naturally. For a cooking topic: "Do you enjoy cooking yourself?" For a travel topic: "Have you been anywhere like this?"

Rehearse out loud

A topic only helps if you've practised speaking it. Say your five points aloud, imagine the follow-up questions, and answer those too. Practising out loud — ideally with someone playing the examiner — is what turns a good topic into a confident performance.

Where this fits

The Trinity GESE Grade 5 is one way to meet the B1 English requirement for settlement. It's separate from the Life in the UK Test — see Life in the UK Test vs English test for how the two requirements work together, and our complete Life in the UK Test guide for the knowledge test. If you're weighing your options, IELTS Life Skills vs Trinity GESE compares the two B1 exams.

We're an independent study aid and not affiliated with Trinity College London. Confirm current exam details with Trinity and on GOV.UK.