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Describe a rule you did not like in school.: IELTS Speaking Cue Card

You should say

  • What was it?
  • How did other feel about this rule?
  • Did you ever violate this rule?
Show all 33 answers

Cue 1:What was it?

  • Clearly state the rule you disliked and provide context about it.
  • Explain why you found this rule unreasonable or difficult to follow.

Example

One rule I really disliked in school was the strict dress code. We were required to wear uniforms that were not only uncomfortable but also didn’t allow for any personal expression. I felt it stifled our individuality and made us all look the same.

Cue 2:How did others feel about this rule?

  • Mention the general sentiment among your classmates regarding the rule.
  • Share any specific instances or discussions that highlight their feelings.

Example

Most of my classmates shared my sentiments about the dress code. We often talked about it during lunch breaks, and many felt that it was outdated. Some even organized a petition to allow more freedom in our clothing choices, but it didn’t gain much traction.

Cue 3:Did you ever violate this rule?

  • Discuss any instances where you or your peers broke this rule.
  • Explain the consequences you faced or the reactions from teachers.

Example

Yes, I did violate this rule a couple of times. Once, I wore a colorful T-shirt under my uniform shirt. I was called out by a teacher and had to change into my uniform. It felt embarrassing, but I was willing to take that risk to express myself a little.

Conclusion

  • Summarize your feelings about the rule and its impact on your school experience.
  • Reflect on how this experience shaped your views on rules and regulations.

Example

In conclusion, while I understand the need for rules in school, I believe that some, like the dress code, can be overly restrictive. This experience taught me the importance of balancing discipline with personal expression, which is something I value even today.

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 Descriptions

Avoid being too vague when describing the rule. General statements can make your answer less engaging and informative, leading to a lower score.

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Tip

Provide specific details about the rule, including what it was and why it was unpopular among students.

2: Ignoring Others' Opinions

Neglecting to mention how others felt about the rule can make your response seem one-sided. It's important to show awareness of different perspectives.

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Tip

Include at least one or two examples of how your classmates reacted to the rule to enrich your answer.

Lack of Personal Experience

Failing to share your personal experience with the rule can make your answer less relatable. Personal stories can enhance your response significantly.

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Tip

Discuss whether you ever violated the rule and what motivated you to do so, adding depth to your answer.

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IELTS Cue Cards asked last week

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

Hi, so a rule which I did not like in my school was standing in the assembly in the summer time. I really disliked it because as I belong from Siliguli and during the summers it is really heated up and the scorching heat of summer really makes us feel dizzy and we did not like standing in the morning assemblies during that time. But the one thing which I would say that really pissed me off was even before dispersing, even before getting out of this, even before. Hello, I studied in Siliguli, St. James school. It was in ICICI convent school located in Siliguli. So, there were many different rules in our school but one rule which I can recall and which I really hated the most was our afternoon assembly. So afternoon assembly used to happen just before the school gets over, used to get, the school got over. So it was around, school used to get over by 2 pm and our afternoon assembly used to occur around 1.30. So it was really, it really pissed all of us because not just me but also my fellow mates because especially during the summers because during winter it was fine but during the summers we used to, we had to stand in the scorching heat and you can understand that in the afternoon, the summers are really, really bad. So in the, during the summer, the sun is really, really bad. So we used to stand in the morning, in the afternoon assembly for like 15 to 20 minutes and it was, and during that time many of the students also fainted but as they got dehydrated and weak. So we actually never violated the rule or never really protested for not conducting the afternoon assembly. But I think it really kind of pissed all of us.

Band 6-7

One rule that I hated when I was in school was to wear white uniform during Saturdays. I disliked it because I need to be very careful because white catches stain easily and as a result of which I do not participate in various sports such as football, cricket etc. in the fear of getting my white uniform dirty. And it was not just me, there were a lot of students from my class as well as from the junior and senior batch who really disliked this rule and have even appealed to the administration to revoke this rule. But sadly the decision makers didn't took us seriously and this rule prevails even today. I remember that once I forgot to wear the white uniform because of some examination pressure and because of which I was given punishment of standing in front of the entire school in the morning assembly. That was extremely embarrassing and as a child it made a strong impression in my mind that never ever tend to violate any rule otherwise you know I'll be prone to embarrassment.

Band 6-7

Yeah, back in the days, in my school, people were not allowed to fancily braid their hair or do a lot of makeup and come to school. They were asked to braid their hair, dividing it into two sections and barely applying any kind of makeup products on their faces, especially in case of girls. And another thing is that even in case of stitching clothes, they were supposed to be in a very formal way without even making it a tight kind of costume. So I felt this as an unreasonable thing as people are supposed to focus on teaching students rather than giving more importance on these functions. These things as people should be judged based on how they perform or act as a person rather than being judged on how they look or carry themselves. So that's what I personally believe. And definitely there are a lot of areas under that age where people like breaking rules and definitely I have done the same. I have most of the time applied some kind of makeup and passionately I used to carry myself around in my school time as well. So I honestly believe it's not an issue.

Band 6-7

The rule I didn't like in my school was we should never be late and the people who are late are going to miss the first class of the school but sometimes what happens is students get stuck in the traffic which is very unfortunate and I feel that this rule should be removed in few schools in which these rules are being implemented. I personally feel that students and teachers should be treated equally when the rules are implemented. Sometimes when teachers do come late they don't face any consequences but children or students studying in the school have to miss the class consequently. So I feel that these rules should be equally implemented on students as well as teachers. Even some of the students in the school feel the same opinion like me. So I would like to say rules should be strictly implemented to all the people equally.

Band 6-7

In my school I did not like the rule of meditation in the early morning as at that time I was a kid and I was not aware the benefits of meditation but now as I am grown up now so I read and learn more about meditation so yeah there are lot of free social media that improve our day to day basic knowledge and meditation is a great source of positive energy you will feel it if you do on daily basis it brings inner peace and put world's chaos aside and boost your mental health and give you inner power which only you can feel inside your body yes but sometime I have to I also violate this rule because if I am very busy or having a very hectic day or I would like to say if I have to go to some party or get to attend some important meeting so sometimes but I hate it when I violate this rule so I try not to avoid this and not miss any chance if I am getting to get meditation and to learn some new technique it also keep me very concentrated

Band 6-7

The only rule which I didn't like in school is they prefer theoretical knowledge more rather than giving a practical approach on every topic, which makes students unaware of the practicality of life, so that is what I didn't like about school. Apart from that, every student has to be treated equally, there should be no differences, everyone is different and has to be nurtured carefully, so these are the two things I wanted to change. If a school can give a practical approach to every student, it will really help him in the future rather than only giving theoretical lessons. Also giving practical classes on nature and how physics work will help them easily secure good grades, where in today's world everyone is into technical background, like they go for engineering, medical, physics and science, like mathematics, they are the essential part of today's life, so it will be really helpful for the students and for the nation as well.

Band 6-7

Thank you for the cue card. The cue card I received is to describe a rule that you did not like in school. In my school there was a rule of not allowing boys and girls to play together. We had drill hours every week. Every week one hour will be a drill hour. But during the drill hour girls have their own games. They play together. Boys have their own game. They play together. But we have never been allowed to play together. That is a mix of boys and girls together have never played during the drill hours. I did not personally, I did not like the rule because the society, the society see this like if a boy and girl sit together or play together. The society has sees such things as indecent behavior and all. So there are times at during which indecent behavior take, indecent behavior happens between boys and girls. I agree to that. But not every boy or girl is like that. Okay. There are boys and girls who know the boundary, who know their personal space and boundary and can mingle with the other gender, other gender like boys or girls without any

Band 6-7

There were so many rules in my school which I didn't like. One of them was talking during silence period. In my school, there was a 5 minutes dedicated to silence period. It stated that while coming to class after having your recess break or lunch break, you have to stay quiet for 5 minutes and perform breathing and breathe out exercises. In that interval of time, you are not allowed to talk to your friends or even perform any activities. You are strictly advised to perform those exercises. Initially, I thought it's a very boring and very annoying exercise as no one in our class used to go serious about that and perform that exercise perfectly. But later, after passing out my school education, we all think that that was the exercise which we should be practicing during our college life as well. Because we do not have any peace in our college life and it's very stressful and having the same problems going everyday in our entire life without having any solutions to them. So having a silence period was very problematic initially but now I think it's very helpful for us to have that silence period right now.

Band 6-7

Well, it is a very interesting topic for me because when I was a school-going girl, I loved those days. I consider those days the golden days of my life. But here, today I am going to talk about a rule I don't like, which was a punishment on homework. That time, I have no time to do all subject homework on time. Sometimes, I did not homework any particular subject. That time frame, our teacher was punished to us, all students and that's why all students hesitate to go, hesitate when to the school and I think that it was not a good punishment.

Band 6-7

Okay, rules that I didn't like in school. When I was in school, I knew there were so many rules, starting from teachers giving you home assignments and a few others. Out of all those things, the rules that I didn't like was that when teacher gave me home tasks which I could not do, which I was not aware of, that was something that was really arduous for me to practice. And so I would say that that sort of rule that you are unaware of is something that is giving me a hard time and it's really difficult for me.
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