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Describe a skill that was difficult to learn: IELTS Speaking Cue Card

You should say

  • What skill was it?
  • When, why, and how did you learn it?
  • How do you feel about it?
Show all 30 answers

Cue 1:What skill was it?

  • Clearly state the skill you found challenging to learn.
  • Provide a brief context about why this skill was important to you.

Example

The skill I found particularly difficult to learn was playing the guitar. I have always been passionate about music, and I wanted to play my favorite songs for my friends and family.

Cue 2:When, why, and how did you learn it?

  • Mention when you started learning this skill and the motivation behind it.
  • Describe the methods you used to learn, such as taking classes or self-study.

Example

I started learning the guitar about two years ago when I was in college. I wanted to impress my friends at a gathering, so I signed up for a local music class. Initially, I struggled with finger placements and strumming patterns, but I practiced daily and sought help from my instructor.

Cue 3:How do you feel about it?

  • Share your feelings about the learning process and the skill itself.
  • Reflect on how this skill has impacted your life or your confidence.

Example

Looking back, I feel proud of my perseverance. Although it was frustrating at times, learning the guitar has been incredibly rewarding. It has boosted my confidence and allowed me to connect with others through music.

Conclusion

  • Summarize the key points you made about the skill.
  • Express any future intentions regarding this skill or similar skills.

Example

In conclusion, learning to play the guitar was a challenging yet fulfilling experience. I plan to continue improving my skills and perhaps even perform at local events in the future.

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 giving unclear or general answers. Being vague can make it difficult for the examiner to understand your experience and feelings about the skill.

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Tip

Provide specific details about the skill, including examples of challenges you faced and how you overcame them.

2: Ignoring Emotional Impact

Not expressing how you feel about the skill can make your answer less engaging. Emotions help to connect your experience to the examiner.

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Tip

Share your feelings about learning the skill, such as frustration, joy, or pride, to make your response more relatable.

Lack of Structure

A disorganized answer can confuse the listener. It's important to present your thoughts in a clear and logical order.

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Tip

Follow the cue prompts in order: start with the skill, then discuss when and how you learned it, and finish with your feelings about it.

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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

I believe that public speaking is a very perfect skill for everybody to test their capability. A few years ago I had a very great stage fear and I was not able to communicate to people. But then I started learning it very slowly from basic. Lots of teachers helped me in this process. I started learning it in a very slow way and friends surrounding me, they helped me a lot. Then few days later I was able to notice some difference in my public speaking. My level of communicating skills were gradually increasing and it made me feel so happy and proud of myself because I was able to achieve it. I think that's a very great skill for everybody to learn. At the same time public speaking can also be scary. Then later on I worked on it and fixed it.

Band 6-7

Hello, good morning. I am Chata Soni and I am here to speak on skills. So, basically what is skills? Skills is the manners of a person who communicates with other person. Skills is type of communication skills, technical skills. And I am very nervous to communicate everyone. I want to improve my skills for communicate to someone and how I can improve myself to communicate. So, firstly I joined classes for communications and with help of social media, I also learn to how to communicate and how I avoid my nervousness to communicate someone. So, then after that I communicate easily with everyone and my future is very bright for this. And without communication skills, our future is very difficult. Without communication, our life is waste. And communication is the best part of our skills.

Band 6-7

A skill that was difficult to learn for me was like programming in java. Java is very difficult programming language and it is like most complex programming language that I have come through and it was very difficult for me to learn. But I have managed by a class on a YouTuber. It is a free YouTube channel that's available to all and it is by the name of Durgasar. It is like a course java we can prepare for and it was very interesting that I used to learn it and it was very enthusiasm to learn it and all the benefits that I can get is like a very good resume for me to have like to get a job. It will help me and on the basis of that I will be programming, I will be making applications I will be doing further things.

Band 6

So, one of my skill that I have faced difficulty in learning was riding gear bikes. It was when I was in 8th grade that I started to learn to ride bike and it was pretty late during my adolescence. I never even got to properly learn how to ride bicycles. But I had this rather intriguing and weird feel about riding bikes. And it was when this adolescence interest that got me into bike riding. My dad was the one who taught me how to ride a bike. Coming to how I feel about this, I feel really proud. Now I own a 450cc motorcycle. So, looking back at where I come from, I feel really really proud.

Band 6

I remember that one skill that was difficult for me to learn but somehow I managed to learn it, the leadership skills. So in the last year of my nursing I was assigned for a research project. In that project there was four to five group members so I was assigned as a group leader. Initially it was very difficult for me to guide my group members and to lead them in the way that made the smooth functioning of the project because my group members were not very familiar to the topic. Somehow I managed it. I seek help from the guides like how to deal with such kind of the issues. So she helped me to overcome these challenges and anyhow I tried to manage my research project and to manage them to have some contribution in the research project.

Band 6

The first thing I can think of when I hear this question is my coursework. I am currently doing my Bachelor of Science in Audiology and Speech Language Pathology, which includes patient communication and diagnosis of hearing loss and aiding the patients to hearing devices and programming them. Hearing aid programming was a difficult skill for me to learn. A lot of hands-on experience was required to just know what hearing aid goes with what type of processor and other styles of hearing aids. So I think it was a difficult skill for me to learn.

Band 6

In my perspective the difficult skill that was In my point of view the difficult skill that I am not able to learn and I keep on persisting to learn is be master at your programming language for problem solving. So problem solving is kind of tricky thing like from the college itself I used to In my perspective a skill that was difficult to learn is problem solving at your key domain for any programming languages. So for example in my college first year I used to started learning with python programming and there are so many various questions at my first library assignment. It was simple questions only at the beginning like even, odd, then predicting a number, finding a number kind of things. I thought okay it was very easy to predict and solve a problem very quick manner and computer science was very easy but after that only I understand no it's very difficult to do it because after that when I given my placement assignments and test I gone through lot of difficult situations like there are so many difficult questions which will up to the level I can't able to predict the answer even I can't read the question that much faster. I don't know whether it is lack of practice no definitely not because for my whole three years like first year to third year I practice lot of questions with easy level, medium level and difficulty level but in the placements I get questions like about the difficulty level that time only I get to know how problem solving important was. So analytical thinking and puzzle so many things involved in it.

Band 6

The skill that was difficult to learn was to program. I think it's one of the hardest skills to learn these days. But, if you learn it, and you have the ability to program and code, it would be an amazing skill to show off your friends. But, on the other hand, I do think coding is hard because you gotta learn a lot of things, and a lot of codes, and opinions, and a lot of obeying. The skill that was difficult to learn was how to fight. I think people might disagree with me because some people may say, Fighting is very easy, it does not need any force. But I do think being able to defend yourself and have self-aware is very hard to learn. Especially when you are being treated badly in school or in the street every day. So learning self-defense or martial arts may be a good solution. What I think is hard about learning how to fight or defending yourself is, You gotta acquire a certain physical cardiovascular point, And you have to defend yourself, and you have to train your muscles to be able to defend you when you are being hit.

Band 6

this reminds me the fact that I hate cooking and when I was a kid and my mother used to say the words that you you should learn cooking because this is an essential part of life you know a girl should always know about the cuisines and she should be sufficient to cook for the family as well I always denied and say no I don't like this thing now I just hate being into the kitchen and whole day spent there instead of that I like the cleaning course done at home I like to wash dishes or mop floor or any other thing besides that but when I get married I need to cook for the family and as a first ritual and tradition of a Hindu family I need to cook a sweet dish called halwa for entire family and it was very difficult task I just take some help from my sister-in-law as well as my husband encouraged to do me and prepare the dish and after that I started learning to cook different type of meal preparing and also preparing and garnishing the dishes I learned the importance of cooking in life of a woman and now I prefer cooking over other things I found it quite easy I see it is it is a easy task and anybody can cook if he or she have a will to cook even necessity to

Band 6

As we know that there are numerous types of skills, which includes academic skills, sports skills, cultural skills and so on. So, I was quite good and better in academics and sports, but the skill which was lacking in me was one of the cultural skills. Cultural skills basically includes the types of dances, singing and so on. So, I would like to talk about a skill which is known as Garba. Garba is a type of folk dance which is famous in India, especially in Gujarat. So, there is one festival named Navratri in which people perform Garba just to pray the Goddess Ambe Maa. So, I would like to tell you about that. I learned that skill when I was in 11th through my brother. He made me learn about that because he is master in that and he knows the basic to the hardest steps of the Garba. At the present, I am feeling quite good and quite happy that I have learned Garba because when I saw my brother playing Garba, I was feeling quite low that I don't know Garba. But after teaching the Garba, now I am feeling that I am quite capable of it and now I am more than average in the folk dance that which is named as Garba.
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