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Describe a book you recently read.: IELTS Speaking Cue Card

You should say

  • What is it called?
  • When did you read it? What was it about?
  • Explain how you felt about it.
Show all 44 answers

Cue 1:What is it called?

  • Start by clearly stating the title of the book and the author.
  • You can also mention the genre of the book to give context.

Example

The book I recently read is called 'The Alchemist' by Paulo Coelho. It is a philosophical novel that falls under the adventure and self-discovery genre.

Cue 2:When did you read it? What was it about?

  • Mention when you read the book and the circumstances that led you to choose it.
  • Summarize the main plot or themes of the book in a few sentences.

Example

I read 'The Alchemist' last month during my vacation. The story follows a young shepherd named Santiago who dreams of finding treasure in Egypt. It beautifully explores themes of destiny and personal legend.

Cue 3:Explain how you felt about it.

  • Share your personal feelings and thoughts about the book.
  • You can discuss what you learned from it or how it impacted you.

Example

I felt incredibly inspired after reading this book. It encouraged me to pursue my own dreams and reminded me that the journey is just as important as the destination. I found myself reflecting on my own life choices and aspirations.

Conclusion

  • Summarize your overall impression of the book.
  • You can recommend it to others and explain why.

Example

In conclusion, 'The Alchemist' is a remarkable book that I would highly recommend to anyone seeking motivation and guidance in their life. Its powerful message about following one's dreams resonates deeply with me.

Following this structure will ensure you cover all the essential points while providing a clear and engaging response to the cue card topic.

Tips to answer this Cue Card

1: Vague Book Descriptions

Avoid being too vague when describing the book. General statements can make your answer less engaging and informative.

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Tip

Provide specific details about the plot, characters, and themes to give a clearer picture of the book.

2: Ignoring Emotional Response

Neglecting to explain how you felt about the book can make your response less personal and relatable.

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Tip

Share your emotions and thoughts about the book, discussing what resonated with you and why it mattered.

Rushing Through the Timeline

Rushing through when you read the book can lead to a lack of context and depth in your answer.

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Tip

Take a moment to explain when you read it and how that timing influenced your experience or understanding of the book.

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IELTS Cue Cards asked last week

Reported by Leap students who gave IELTS

Describe your favourite food at a traditional festival or a special event in your country
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Reported by

Anonymous student Band 7.5

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Pitampura Test Centre, New Delhi

Answer

I like to taste different types of cuisine. Here I would like to talk about my favorite dish at my traditional festival of Onam which is Sadya. Sadya is popular in my city. We are experimenting these cuisines on Onam festival day. Onam is a famous festival in my city. All family members get together in my home and we make a delicious Sadya. There are many ingredients includes that Sadya. Moreover, we make a big feast that day as well as we create a lot of memories together and we wear that day the traditional dress called Sari and men wear the Dhotis. That festival is really important to us because the whole day we are conducting different kinds of games at our homes and all the family members came together. It's a memorable day in my life. This is the festival. We are making the Sambar and Aviyal. These all the kinds of foods are making with the vegetables.
Talk about a toy you liked in your childhood
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Reported by

Anonymous student Band 8

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Sector 34 Test Centre, Chandigarh

Answer

The toy which I liked in my childhood was a panda doll, which makes me pleasant and makes me more blush. The pandas are the most beautiful creatures of the world, which looks gigantic and has pooshy cheeks and they are like stars in the clouds and they dream in me. Furthermore, these have been given by my father. My father is a very very beautiful artistic person, who makes me think of that. Every day you will face every difficulties and make you suffer and move forward. Pandas are always seen in Japanese countries. It is my lifelong dream to visit a Japanese country and click a photo with the original pandas, which makes sounds better.
Describe a time you were in a place where you didn't know the local language
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Reported by

Anonymous student Band 6.5

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Whitefield Test Center, Bengaluru

Answer

As India is a very large country full of diversity, so there are many places which have their own language and speak their native language. The place which I visited and I didn't know about their language was Leladakh, which is about 300 km away from my hometown and it is a very good place as it consists of different kind of trees, animals and have many scenic views and I visited over there last year in summers as it was the best time to visit because it has many, it was cold over there and we had summers in our area so it was the best time to visit over there and I went over there with my whole family.
Describe a time when your friend damaged something you owned
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Reported by

Anonymous student Band 7

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Begumpet Test Centre, Hyderabad

Answer

When I was a kid, I had a little pencil box which had these four buttons which gave the pencil box an operative use. When you press the button, the box would open up. When you press the second button, a little part of it would slide out. Basically it was just a little electronical and a fun thing to have and I owned it when I was in 6th. One day after break, I was standing and talking there with one of my friends and another friend of mine was running through the hallway and accidentally she pushed my shoulder and my pencil box hit the ground and it broke into multiple pieces to the point that it was not functional anymore.
Describe a book you recently read
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Reported by

Anonymous student Band 7.5

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CBD Belapur Test Centre, Navi Mumbai

Answer

It Ends With Us is a book I read recently. It's by the author Colleen Hoare. It's mainly a story about two teenagers, Atlas and Lily, and how they just handle their life going through high school, adolescence, and just domestic violence at home. Both of them come from very, very different families. However, they have one common determining factor between them, which is domestic violence. The abuse that they've seen their moms go through is just insane, and they connect through that on a different level. They're actually in the same high school, but they never speak to each other until Atlas actually crashes into an empty house next to Lily's villa. When Atlas is homeless and he doesn't have anywhere to go, he just comes and breaks into the house next to Lily's, and Lily helps him with all the daily necessities like clothes and food, medicines and stuff. Furthermore, their friendship blossoms into love, but it doesn't really fructify as Atlas has to leave. This book really gave me a lot of knowledge about domestic abuse and how to deal with it.

All Answers

Here are all the answers by real-users practicing speaking for IELTS Cue Cards on our IELTS Prep App.

Band 6-7

The recent book that I have read was actually a book called Nowhere, which was actually written by an autobiographist, which was John Abraham. I read it yesterday while I was doing something. I got tired and I thought that to relax my mind I should read something and I got this book out of nowhere. It was actually an autobiography about him in which he told different things and the different things that happened in his life along with what he did in difficult situations and how he overcame his difficulties. Overall, I thought that it was a very good book. We get to learn from other person's mistakes and other person's perspective even though we may have different kind of ideas of how to deal with the same exact problem. We may know that if we were put into that situation particularly we would have done it differently but we get the idea of how other people would have done it and how he did it.

Band 6-7

Recently, I have a red book that is called as The Art of Thinking Clearly. It is written by Rafael Jobly. It's amazing. When I start telling about the book, it described and it is actually trained me to how to be mentally strong and how to make my self very mentally strong and prepared for everything and face things with a strong headed and how to get that mental support and how to balance things between mental and emotional support. It is an extraordinary book and immensely helped me in the way I can speak and it changed the way I think about things. An amazing book and my personal opinion upon the book is, I think everybody has to read that book when especially people are suffering through the mental, when people need the mental support, it will give you a great guidance about how to handle and how to take care of your mental peace and your self control about what you think and how you react to things and having a control over how do you think is possible by reading that book. The Art of Thinking Clearly and it will show the things with a clean lens, I would call that as in that simpler way and the book is very interesting. It described many situations, there are different 45 topics and each topic talks about different things and daily experiences of people and it will make how you should face those experiences with what kind of mental stability and how you should think, how you should change that.

Band 6-7

Here I would like to talk about a book I have recently read. It's about a fictional book and the book name is called It Ends With Us. The book is about the three characters, Ryle, Atlas and Lily. Lily was a really good character in this book. The book is about love and a kind of friendship. I read this book when I got free time. I had nothing to do so I decided to read this book.

Band 6-7

I'm a type of person who really like to listen while studying. I don't usually read books because it takes so much time and if I have to learn something then I can learn from YouTube videos and from listening to those videos but from few days I've been studying books for few of my own reasons. One of them is I want to reduce my screen time. So I have started a new hobby which is reading books. I have been reading several books but if I have to choose one then I would choose Secret of Leadership by Prakash Iyer. Now I have studied other books but I have chosen this book because of particular reason. I would say I have learned a lot of things from it. First and foremost I have learned the quality of leadership and I think he told me that everyone can be a good leader on their own. If you don't even have any leadership position in the organization then he can be a leader of his own life and apart from that I think he has mentioned few stories which motivates me to have more leadership skills and overall I think I've been reading this book.

Band 6-7

I was suffering from depression for a very long time, the book helped me recover from it. The book describes how everything is written and we should work towards our dream plan. Not thinking about the consequences. The book gave me a motivation to do things, to start preparing for my goals to achieve them. The book was very helpful for me in a way that completely changed me as a person. It gave me a different outlook towards life. Thank you for watching!

Band 6-7

The book I recently read was Mortals of the Loha by Amish Tripathi. I read it recently in the last month in November. And I feel it had me engaged my whole soul and body into it. It was a mix of Hindu mythology with imaginations. So it was an imaginative book but mythical. The main characters were Lord Shiva, Maa Parvati as Mata Sati, her best friend Ganesha, Maa Kali and Lord Ganesha. It was a whole plot of how Lord Shiva met Sati and how the whole thing worked together. The journey was regarding finding out Naga's birth, how Lord Shiva fell in love with Mata Sati and how the war began. It had me engaged as if, I felt as if I was in the character. I was the director of the book. I was a part of it. I could imagine the scenes being around me. I could imagine the conversations happening in front of my eyes. It was really the best book of my life yet. This is how mythical book images work in life. Here is one of the characters in the book moving through the scenes. Have a look at it. Did you mention this?

Band 6-7

I read a lot of books because I am an avid reader. However, one book which particularly piqued my interest and which I can't stop talking about is a book called My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrant. It is a book about complex female friendships and how a friendship comes into being until it's very deep and intense. Like how you see a relationship evolve. It was very interesting because you do not generally come across ideas which seem conflicting but also comforting. It was a very intriguing read for me because I did not like the protagonist per se but the story made a huge impact on me. It made me realize why the people are the way they are and what goes into making them like that. Their experiences, their trauma is something which you really think deeply about after you put yourself in a place like the protagonist. So yes, it was definitely worth a read and I would recommend it to all of my friends. I even bought it for my best friend because I wanted her to read it as well. Apart from that, the book is set in Italy and I also got to read a lot about the architecture of Naples and the streets and the town and it was really interesting for me to know about that. I want to visit Italy because of it.

Band 6-7

Recently, I came across this book titled The Woman in the Window at the airport, so I do travel a lot and this is one of the new things that I have picked up, you know, just pick a book and finish it while I am flying back home or flying wherever I am going to. So this was a book that was basically a thriller.

Band 6-7

So, the book which I have recently read is called as Les Miserables. It's a book written by Victor Hugo. This book is about a man named as Jean Valjean, who was falsely accused of a crime and was sentenced to jail for around 28 years. So, he have spent most of his life in jail. And then this book revolves around this person's life after he was released from jail. So, we could see a man who was filled with revenge and losing hope and who had a lose of hope in humanity. But as the story progresses on, we could see how he transformed into a new human being with great moral values. And it was all because of the compassion which was provided due to the people who were around him and how that care and love and support helped him become a better person in life. And there is one specific sentence which defines that complete book. And I quote it like...

Band 6-7

I read a book around two months back named Chanakya by Rita Agarwal. The book was about an ancient priest named Chanakya who was the priest for the Mauryan empire. The book is about his ideologies and the way he taught the king Ashoka to tackle his kingdom. I really like the book because it has instances which can be related with modern life as well. I find the book very relatable not only because of the instances but because of the history and culture that it depicts. Since I also belong to India, a country with an extremely rich culture, I feel that the book is a dive into my traditions. The book is not only an example of how things should be done in life but rather a motivation of how we can improvise on what we are doing.
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