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Describe A Difficult Decision That You Made And Had A Good Result: IELTS Speaking Cue Card

You should say

  • What was the decision?
  • When did you make the decision?
  • How long did it take you to make the decision?
  • Explain why it was a difficult decision to make.
Show all 77 answers

Cue 1:What was the decision?

  • Clearly state the decision you made, providing context about the situation.
  • Mention the potential outcomes of the decision to highlight its significance.

Example

The difficult decision I made was to leave my stable job in a multinational company to pursue my passion for photography. I had been working there for over three years, and while it provided financial security, I felt unfulfilled.

Cue 2:When did you make the decision?

  • Specify the time frame when you made this decision, such as a particular month or year.
  • Share any relevant events that led up to this decision to give it more context.

Example

I made this decision in early 2022, after attending a photography workshop that reignited my passion. The workshop made me realize that I wanted to turn my hobby into a career.

Cue 3:How long did it take you to make the decision?

  • Discuss the duration it took you to arrive at this decision, emphasizing any internal conflict.
  • Mention any discussions you had with friends or family that influenced your decision-making process.

Example

It took me about two months to make this decision. I spent countless nights weighing the pros and cons, and I also spoke to my family and friends, who encouraged me to follow my dreams.

Cue 4:Explain why it was a difficult decision to make.

  • Describe the fears or concerns you had about making this decision.
  • Explain how the fear of failure or uncertainty contributed to the difficulty of the decision.

Example

This was a difficult decision because I was afraid of financial instability and the fear of failing in a competitive field. Leaving a secure job felt risky, and I worried about what others would think of my choice.

Conclusion

    Example

    In the end, I took the leap and started my own photography business. It was challenging at first, but I am now thriving and feel more fulfilled than ever. This decision taught me the importance of following my passion and believing in myself.

    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 Responses

    Providing vague or unclear answers can make it difficult for the examiner to understand your experience. Specific details help create a clearer picture of your decision-making process.

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    Tip

    Use specific examples and details when describing your decision to make your response more engaging and informative.

    2: Rushing Through the Explanation

    Rushing through your explanation can lead to missing important points. It may also make your answer sound unstructured and less convincing.

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    Tip

    Take your time to explain each cue clearly, ensuring you cover all aspects of the decision-making process.

    Neglecting Emotional Impact

    Ignoring the emotional aspects of your decision can make your response less relatable. Emotions often play a significant role in difficult decisions.

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    Tip

    Include how you felt during the decision-making process to add depth and connect with the examiner.

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    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.
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    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 >7

    One of the most difficult decisions I made was switching my career focus from traditional engineering to AI and machine learning in IOT. This happened about a year ago when I realized that AI is transforming industries and I wanted to be a part of that change. However, it was a tough decision because I had no prior experience in AI or ML and I knew it would require a lot of effort to learn new skills and transition into a different field. I spent several months researching, taking online courses, and working on projects to gain hands-on experience. There were moments of doubt because I wasn't sure if I could succeed in a completely new domain. However, I stayed persistent and eventually I started working on real-world AI or ML projects related to IOT security and optimization. The result was incredibly rewarding. Not only did I gain valuable knowledge, but I also got the opportunity to contribute to innovating solutions in AI and IOT. Looking back, I am glad I took the risk because it opened up better career opportunities and allowed me to work on something I truly passionate about.

    Band 7

    If I want to talk about, there was a football match which was happening in our school, it was a tournament between the under 17 teams of Valsad. And I remember that the tournament was going really well for us, we had won three matches and now we were about to go in the final. But before the final match, in the second last match, I got a really bad injury on my right foot. And the question was that will I be able to play or not in the final. I was a very good player of my team, so my coach had given me two options. One was to actually go and play in the match with all the pain or either take rest and let my foot recover. It was a very quick decision to take as we needed to make the starting 11 team. So I took the decision to actually play in the game with all the pain as it was the last match and I had to give all in and I was ready for it. The match ended with us winning, I actually didn't score a goal but I did give a winning assist in the match. And in that match I felt like if I would have not decided to go and play, the game's result would have been affected because of me. And I think that was one good and difficult decision that I had to make in my life which resulted in a good ending.

    Band 7

    The difficult decision I took was moving out of my home, because as I come from a conservative background, in my entire family they never allow women to work. I came out of my home for my work and it took a really emotional rollercoaster for me because I was in no contact with my parents for more than a year because they never allowed me to go to another city for work. So I fought with them and I moved out. I am not going to regret that decision because now they understand the importance of women working in this generation.

    Band 7

    In 2023, when I was working in a horticultural company, it was probably a dream job. But before joining that position, I wanted to study master's on food science. So the master's that I wanted to study was completely different from what I was working on. So it was a pretty difficult decision because I wanted a personal growth, and I also wanted to get more exposure. However, my sister helped me to make that decision, to stand with that decision. Because one day she told me that even though this is a dream job, you don't want to be in the same place stuck for your whole life or maybe the 10-20 years. So I think it is the best age that you should go out and explore more things. Maybe you will find more things. Maybe you will find another dream job. So I think from that day onwards, I thought that, okay, whatever decision I make, I don't know if it's going to be wrong or right. But if I stick to it and make it work, it will probably turn out to be a good decision. And I went ahead and got my degree on food science. And I think it was one of the best things I did for my personal development, for my career, because now I have expertise in both food and agriculture. So if I see the market right now, it's really vulnerable. So if I have experience in both these degrees, I probably will find a job.

    Band 6-7

    In my life I had different difficult situations and in those situations I had to take very difficult decisions but eventually they gave me a good result. I still remember one decision which I took during my 11th grade in my school. When I was 11 when I was in 11th grade I had two choices one was to study in the school itself or the second was to study and also prepare for the National Engineering exam. It was a difficult decision because it would be very hectic schedule after that if I had chosen to prepare for an engineering exam along with my studies but I chose that. I was enrolled into one of the institutions in our city. It was a good Institute. Eventually my schedule was very tight. I had to go to school in the morning and after doing the classes in the school I had to go back to the coaching classes at that Institute and those classes were held till late night and after coming back I was really burnt out and but I always had a smile on my face because I was pretty much sure that I'm preparing for a good course and it would lead to a good decision. After doing this for around one year I gave my final engineering exam and I was passed at that time I was over the moon and because I was selected into one of the most premier institution of the country.

    Band 6-7

    One of the difficult decisions that I had to take, I would say was choosing between whether to pursue a degree, my bachelor's in medical or whether to pursue in engineering. The reason that it was very difficult for me was that my father was willing, wanted me to take up engineering as my higher studies. But my mother was very much interested and very much wanted me to take up medical. In the end, I decided to go with engineering and I would say that it turned out really good as in my later years, in my fourth year when pursuing electronics engineering, I started with a project that was implementation of SNN on FPGA. In this project, I had incorporated biomedical signals into my model and that allowed me to open up a new line for my master's that would be in biomedical engineering and this allowed me to somewhat be in between of both medical and engineering branches. In that project, I remember we faced a lot of problems. One of the biggest problem that we faced was of not having enough GPU, we were running our code on Kaggle, but there was a runtime limitation of 12 hours on it. So we had to buy a pro version of Google Colab and that was also very difficult because in India, the Google Colab version was not available.

    Band 6-7

    Hi, so beginning with this incident happened back in 2022 when I was in the final year of my bachelors. After the completion of COVID, I had one year left of my bachelor course to study and get distinction. Apparently, two semesters were left over. I tried my best to get good grades. Furthermore, I along with my friends decided that we will focus on having a group study. Collectiveness and group study will always help us. But a major issue for me at that time was traveling to far off place and leaving at a totally different location just for reading. Also as COVID had passed recently because of the pandemic, it was fearful to stay out of home leaving at an unknown place and studying. But I and one of my friends, we decided to sacrifice few of this comfort of home and work hard, study and get good marks. All praise and thanks to our curator who helped a lot in getting good results. I almost lived for more than 20 days out of my home and worked at a different location and it was a totally unknown place to me. Thereby, I along with my friends studied hard and when the results came, I and all my family members all were happy that I got distinction in my bachelor's.

    Band 6-7

    Okay, so one of the most difficult decision which I took in a recent past would be to start exercising. Now, it's a good thing that I started working out more but I would rather say it was a very difficult decision because I am someone who is inherently lazy. I like to sit on bed, rot on the couch the entire day, sit on a desk, do my work on the computer and not move an inch. I would even ask people to bring things to me instead of moving or going there. So yeah, it was indeed a very challenging task for me to decide that I have to move around a much and I have to start exercising. It took me quite a while and a lot of pushing from my friends, from my family but finally one day I chose to like, no, it's no more, I would start working out tomorrow. And ever since I have been doing, I feel more free, I feel less fatigued at times and it gives me a better, it helps me be in a better mood throughout the day. Along with, ever since I started working out, I have started being, I have been more engaged in outdoor activities. I go on hiking, I go on trekking with my friends, I go swimming, bicycling around and yeah, it gives me a lot more, brings a lot more activeness in my life which was previously missing and yeah, certainly brings a lot of health benefits associated with it. If I have, thinking back, if the decision now does not feel as difficult as it was but the time I made it and the situations were like that or the environmental pressures were such that it was really a tough decision for me to make.

    Band 6-7

    term fun Friday so after so every every month there is a lot and two names of analysts are drawn from that which will be potential candidates to host the event so last month I got my name drawn at the lot and I was given the choice if I want to host the event being an introvert it was it is very difficult for me to interact with such huge number of people and in the event I will be hosting around I was supposed to host around 100 to 150 people and it was quite a daunting task for me however I took a leap of faith and I decided that I need to face my fears and personally develop myself so I agreed to the terms and I agreed to host the event for at starting I was very nervous like in how to organize the event and of that scale I was very scared but I took some steps I began practicing practicing hosting for two to three weeks prior and every day I would ask my seniors and and for their feedback if my presentation or hosting skills are good I took knowledge from various articles and YouTube videos and in the fateful day I decided to test myself and I performed quite well I even received

    Band 6-7

    personality growth in my life I took decision to make people cut off from my life who don't respect me value me and fake people especially I don't make friends now I only make friends when I will trust them fully if they are trustworthy I tried them first if they can become my friends in reality or they will become fake friends so I try to maintain some distance from people I said colleagues is colleagues and relatives are relatives and I now I don't trust people easily this really helps me to grow in my life personally and I really see growth in my personality this decision has changed my life totally now I am a different person
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