Describe a piece of good advice that you gave to someone: IELTS Speaking Cue Card

You should say

Who did you advice?
What was the advice?
Why did you give the advice?
How was it helpful, and how did he/she feel about it?

199 unique answers with expert feedback

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Cue 1:Who did you advise?

Begin by introducing the person you gave advice to, including your relationship with them.
Mention any relevant background information that helps to understand the context.

Example

I advised my younger sister, who is currently in her final year of college. She was feeling overwhelmed with her studies and unsure about her future career path.

Cue 2:What was the advice?

Clearly state the advice you gave, ensuring it is specific and actionable.
Explain any reasoning behind your advice to provide context.

Example

I told her to take a step back and focus on her strengths and interests. I suggested that she explore internships related to her field of study to gain practical experience and clarity on what she truly enjoys.

Cue 3:Why did you give the advice?

Share your motivation for giving this advice, including any personal experiences that influenced your decision.
Discuss the importance of the situation to emphasize why your advice was necessary.

Example

I gave this advice because I had faced similar challenges during my college years. I remember feeling lost and stressed about my future, and I wanted to help her avoid that anxiety by guiding her towards practical experiences.

Cue 4:How was it helpful, and how did he/she feel about it?

Describe the outcome of your advice and how it positively impacted the person.
Share their feelings or reactions to your advice to illustrate its effectiveness.

Example

After following my advice, my sister secured an internship at a local marketing firm. She felt much more confident and excited about her future. She expressed gratitude for my support and mentioned that it helped her gain clarity about her career goals.

Conclusion

Example

In conclusion, giving advice to my sister not only strengthened our bond but also helped her navigate a crucial phase in her life. It was rewarding to see her grow and find direction, and it reminded me of the importance of sharing experiences and supporting loved ones.

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

Avoid giving vague or general answers that lack detail. This can make your response less engaging and informative, leading to a lower score.

Tip

Provide specific examples and details about the advice you gave, including the context and the person's situation.

2: Neglecting Emotional Impact

Failing to discuss how the advice affected the person emotionally can weaken your response. It's important to show the significance of your advice.

Tip

Include how the person felt after receiving your advice and the positive changes it brought to their life.

Ignoring the 'Why'

Not explaining why you gave the advice can leave your answer incomplete. This is crucial for understanding your thought process.

Tip

Clearly articulate your reasons for giving the advice, linking it to the person's needs or situation.

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

Reported by

Anonymous student Band 7.5

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

Reported by

Anonymous student Band 8

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

Reported by

Anonymous student Band 6.5

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

Reported by

Anonymous student Band 7

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

Reported by

Anonymous student Band 7.5

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

So, the topic given to me was, the advice I gave was to Rahul, one of my fellow colleagues in my office. So, the advice I gave was, in the corporate world is somewhere a manager can scold you one day and the next day he won't be holding the same grudges and would be working like a normal new day. So, this is something I learnt from my corporate life and wanted to share it with my junior who is Rahul. So, he was very demotivated in the office scenario where he was being scolded, he wasn't performing well. So, he came up to me for the advice. So, for the same reason I gave him what I said before. So, after hearing this, he felt the thing, he introspected what I said and he was very happy about it and he got improvement in his performance and the managers and all the staffs were happy with his work. Because he started forgetting the scoldings and keeping grudges to the managers. Instead, he took the scoldings or the feedbacks he was getting from the managers and started improving himself for the same. So, that's what I feel, I have been part of someone's life by giving an advice and he becoming improved within his work. So, that's all I have to say.

Band 6

I gave the advice to an intern who used to work at the firm I used to work in so the advice was I told him to focus more on the learning part of his college life than the degree that he'll be getting after completing the five years of the law course. I personally gave him that experience because when I look back and see what I had done over the course of the five years I see that I did not much participate in uh activities which which could have helped me grow as a person and develop my personal interpersonal skills my communication skills I still till date feel that I'm an introvert so I just gave him an advice to focus more on the learning part as an advocate as a lawyer to help him grow in that particular field because that is a field that requires perseverance and good oratory skills so uh I really don't know what he has so far done with that advice because he's still in his law school and I hope that he completes his education with much more clarity than I did.

Band 6

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Band 6

The advice I gave to my junior, he is my junior from second year, I gave the advice to participate in any of the sport which he likes or he can do better in that sport. The advice I give you just because for the self-development and personality development. In my college journey, I feel like if I had participated in any of the sport, I can build my personality better than what I have today. So I gave the advice to the junior and outcome is that the junior participated in athletics and got a bronze medal in national level. So at last month, he messaged me, sir, I got the bronze medal and that's because of you that just I follow your advice and I got this. So it's really impressive that he follows my advice and got something. What mistake I did in my past are improvised in the life of my junior.

Band 6

நான் வரது சையு அணு. கோலாகி. கோலࡾகி. So, I am not a person who gives advice to people very often, but I will tell you about a recent incident where I had to give an advice to one of my colleagues. So, this colleague is a person with judgmental character. So, one day when my another colleague who was a girl has to complete the task, the colleague that I gave what advice to was judging her and was saying just because she is a girl, she won't be able to complete the task and she will be diverted and he was actually making fun of her for going and having fun like any other person. So, I told him it is not good to judge people based on their gender where they come from or color. So, I think it was a good advice. He actually thanked me after that and in future I hope I can be a good influence to people and point out any wrong things when I see one. So, in my opinion personally I don't condemn to anyone being racist or being sad phobic against others. So, I would say we can't judge a book by seeing its cover. So, that's one advice that came into my mind, but I will tell you about another incident that I usually don't like or take advice from other people very often.

Band 6

So I have given the advice to my friend to spend the time wisely in his 20s and to build a skill which would be helpful in his late 30s and late 40s. So by spending the time properly he would be able to invest. So the reason being to give those advice to him as he was graduating from the engineering college, he would be getting his engineering degree as he was in the final year so he was seeking the advice from me so I personally advised him the same because he was lacking some skills so therefore I advised him and he was a big procrastinator so I observed

Band 6.5

One of the BlaBlaCar owners dropped the parcel which was given to him by my mother to my city. He came to know that I am professionally doctor and so he asked me what advice will I give to his daughter who is currently preparing for the NEET UG exam to get admission into MBBS. So I advised him that the most important thing in such examinations is to learn the art of solving questions. Knowledge is important but it is not sufficient enough to qualify such competitive exams. One has to inculcate the task of learning how to solve questions effectively in given time period. This advice was given to his daughter by me because I felt that over the years this is one important core thing which nobody told me and so I felt that if I could give this advice to somebody then it could make their lives better. The person was very happy and delighted to hear such advice from me and also asked me if he could reach out to me anytime if needed for his daughter to which I responded with affirmation and even I felt very glad to help him out with the advice. I hope this advice helps his daughter excel.

Band 6.5

I would like to share a view when I gave an advice to my close friend named Nanshekh few years back. He ended up eating a lot of junk food and developed unhealthy sleeping habits and irregular living life cycle. My opinion was to give him a good diet schedule and recommending him to join gym classes which will help him to keep out his sluggishness and develop his mental and physical health. He took my advice and started applying it to his daily routine. Slowly and steadily he developed a proper morning routine with some fresh breakfast and morning workout schedule which helps him to boost his mood and make his mind relax. Also, I recommended him some supplements, multivitamins and calcium tablets. This plays a vital role in covering the micronutrients, not only micronutrients but also it contributes in the overall well-being of his body. After 21 days he found it very helpful and his life changed totally. He says me that now I am more active and I can complete my tasks without any hesitation or sluggishness.

Band 6.5

As I am a teacher, giving advice is quite a pleasure for me. I remember during my class, I was taking class in the third year of BSc and a few of the students arrived late in the class for which I didn't allow them to enter into the room. And once the class got over, I called all of them inside and I told them that getting late to the college is not a good thing. So I told them that being punctual is very necessary when you are a student. Being punctual in the school life will not help you in your studies but also will help you to nourish your employment in the future. So they started feeling it and they expressed that they were sorry for that. And I felt good that at least they could recognize that they did not the right thing. Then I also told them that if you wanted to succeed in their life, the first thing they need to do is to be disciplined. And punctuality is a part of discipline. And if they could maintain it, even without putting hard work in their studies, they can master the future. Because when they enter into the future, it's not about that they have to study, but they are going to work on it.

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