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Describe a talk you gave to a group of people: IELTS Speaking Cue Card

You should say

  • Who you gave the talk to
  • What the talk was about
  • Why you gave the talk
  • And explain how you felt about the talk
Show all 73 answers

Cue 1:Who you gave the talk to

  • Begin by describing the audience, including their age, background, and interests.
  • Mention the setting of the talk, such as whether it was in a classroom, community hall, or online.

Example

I gave the talk to a group of college students at my university. They were mostly in their early twenties, studying various fields like engineering and business. The talk took place in a large classroom, which was filled with eager faces looking to learn more about career opportunities.

Cue 2:What the talk was about

  • Clearly state the main topic of your talk and its relevance to the audience.
  • Include any key points or subtopics you covered during the talk.

Example

The talk was about 'Effective Resume Writing and Interview Skills.' I focused on how to create a standout resume, the importance of tailoring it for specific jobs, and shared tips on how to prepare for interviews. I also included some personal anecdotes to make it relatable.

Cue 3:Why you gave the talk

  • Explain your motivation for giving the talk, such as personal experiences or a desire to help others.
  • Mention any specific events or circumstances that inspired you to share this knowledge.

Example

I decided to give this talk because I remember how challenging it was for me to secure my first job after college. I wanted to help my peers avoid the same pitfalls I faced and empower them with the skills they need to succeed in their job search.

Cue 4:And explain how you felt about the talk

  • Share your emotions before, during, and after the talk.
  • Reflect on the feedback you received and how it impacted your feelings about the experience.

Example

Before the talk, I felt a mix of excitement and nervousness. However, once I started speaking and saw the students engaged, my confidence grew. After the talk, I received positive feedback, which made me feel proud and motivated to give more talks in the future.

Conclusion

    Example

    In conclusion, giving that talk was a rewarding experience. It not only allowed me to share valuable information but also helped me connect with my peers. I believe that such opportunities to speak in public can significantly enhance our communication skills and boost our confidence.

    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: Lack of Structure in Response

    Failing to organize your answer can lead to confusion. Without a clear structure, the listener may struggle to follow your points, making your talk less effective.

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    Tip

    Use the cues provided to structure your response clearly: start with who you spoke to, then the topic, followed by why you gave the talk, and conclude with your feelings.

    2: Overly Brief Answers

    Giving short, vague answers can make your response seem unengaging. It may leave out important details that showcase your experience and feelings about the talk.

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    Tip

    Expand on each cue by providing specific examples or anecdotes that illustrate your points, ensuring your answer is detailed and engaging.

    Neglecting Personal Feelings

    Not expressing your feelings about the talk can make your response less personal and relatable. It’s important to connect emotionally with your audience.

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    Tip

    Include your emotions and reflections about the experience, such as excitement or nervousness, to make your response more authentic and engaging.

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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
    anonymous person icon

    Reported by

    Anonymous student Band 8

    location icon

    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
    anonymous person icon

    Reported by

    Anonymous student Band 6.5

    location icon

    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
    anonymous person icon

    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
    anonymous person icon

    Reported by

    Anonymous student Band 7.5

    location icon

    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

    So, I gave this talk to my group of friends, so it was related to the demerits of using social media on a much extent. So basically, I belong from a Gen Z generation and this generation is very much involved in using social media, posting a lot of things, even what they are eating or what they are doing. They keep on updating these things on social media. So, I think this is a very bad habit because people don't care what you are really doing. Even showing all of these things to people doesn't make any sense because we really give an exposure to the world of what we are doing or what we are living with. So, I think it's really important for people to talk on these topics with their peers and family and even it's very important to tell them that it's not always about telling what you are doing at the point. So I think people waste their time using social media whereas they can spend it on reading some books or maybe generating some new skills or developing it and I think so that would be a really good experience for everyone to know something new, to learn something new and I felt really good to talk about them because even they realized about how things go and what are the...

    Band 6-7

    as we know that health issues are arising and it is on peak so I remembered that I was motivated and I gathered few person to talk about the healthy eating habits as well as importance of physical activities nowadays food industries are the biggest scams they prepare the food with toxic and harmful substances to increase the shelf life and the taste of the product but indirectly we are we suffer a lot for example having early heart attacks obesity is the major problem so to address all this issue I encouraged people by giving a small talk on physical activity I find that physical exercise is a must in nowadays when people's life are fast paced and they do not have much time for leisure activities but we should opt various options like going to office by foot or even opting a cycle so that it helps in the body development further we should focus more on home-cooked meal instead of the packaged food as it contains lot of harmful chemicals which are really bad for our health further the significant part is taking a walk once a day that's really beneficial

    Band 6-7

    Okay, so I had this talk on my friend experience, my experience of having new friends going to school. I gave a brief about how I really like to be in the school premises, like why I actually love going to school. And I love meeting friends while in order to wake up, but no, I really like going to school because I love meeting my friends and having a chit chat with them. And I definitely know that I'll miss these a lot. I gave this talk to a group of my friends who were really interested in knowing why I love going to school. And it was all about my sweet little memories I'll have after I graduate from school. And I really like going to school, talking with my friends, being with them, just being there and I know I am very attached with them and I'll miss them a lot. And after the school gets over, I'll just be in delusion to, I'll just be in delusion reminiscing all the memories I have, I made with my friends, even though we weren't very close, but yes, I love all of them. And this talk was really good and inspiring for my other friends. And they also agreed to my lesson.

    Band 6-7

    Yesterday, I talked with a group of young girls about the importance of respecting mental peace of their mind and it is a very important issue that most of us are neglecting nowadays. This topic arises because one of them was thinking about a living job because she was not able to carry all those pressure. It was very overwhelming for her but she was skeptical about leaving the job because of the current economic and market scenario and I talked to her that it really doesn't matter whether you are getting money or not. If that place or people are making or damaging your mental peace, then you should move from that space and that talk was very important for me because when I was younger, I left my first job after 9 days because it was hampering my mental peace.

    Band 6-7

    One talk I remember giving was in my school. I had just won first prize in an inter-school science quiz, and my teacher asked me to share the whole experience with the whole class. I mainly talked about how I prepared for the quiz, what study material used, and the small problems which I faced during the practice. My teacher wanted me to explain it so that other students could also get inspired and also follow the same steps. Initially I felt quite nervous because I was not used to speaking in front of so many people. However, once I started talking more confident, especially when I saw my friends listening carefully. After I finished my talk, a lot of my classmates came up to me and told me that they learnt a lot of me. Eventually, I felt proud of myself. Overall, it was a great experience. It gave me more confidence in public speaking and also showed me that even a small talk can motivate others.

    Band 6-7

    I gave a talk to a bunch of students in my school who were in grade 12 on the topic of mental health and awareness. I personally chose to give this particular talk because I am deeply interested in the field of psychology and mental health issues surround the contemporary world. Also, I really enjoy talking to others and putting forth my personal ideas. I felt amazing while talking to the group of students. They were not only enthusiastic but they listened carefully and even asked me amazing questions at the end of my talk. The talk overall was very insightful for the students and it also helped me learn more as I got to understand their questions and answer effectively. Talking more about mental health, I was initially interested in this topic when I learnt about different disorders in my psychology class. It made me think about how many people struggle with it daily and what I can do and the knowledge that I can provide to help people. Thus, I started with my own school. I made a PPT on different disorders and how they can be treated so that the students get a safe space to put forth their problems. Overall, it was a beyond grateful experience for me and I will always remember it to be a very pleasant one as well. Thank you.

    Band 6-7

    Recently, my friends have found themselves in an uncertain situation regarding their life decisions and they have found that they cannot assert themselves. They always ask me, how do you do it? As someone who has had a very assertive personality throughout my life and have been able to communicate my feelings and my opinions very thoroughly to the people before me, I thought I could help them with some advices and suggestions regarding the same. So I came up with this talk which we had in our college setting and I explained to them about how they can bring themselves more forward in front of a group of people and I gave them a few advices like using a vocabulary that does not sound rude but at the same time conveys what you intend to do, using a mix of approaches to go ahead with communicating your plans to the people you are working with to enhance your team spirit while also showcasing your collaborative abilities. I came up with these ideologies to present in front of them and how they can use those to enhance their communication skills and make themselves seem more assertive without being termed as arrogant or unapproachable. I felt very good about having given this talk to them because it almost made me feel like I could contribute healthily towards their development and growth and it became an essential part of how our personalities shape up. College comes out to be a time where we are always looking for these growths and where we come across moments when we hope that somebody can lead us through these. So I felt very exhilarated to be part of that conversation, to be able to give that talk to them.

    Band 6-7

    So, I gave the talk to my classmates. The group of people who I gave the talk was to my classmates and I had to speak about film genres and it was a film studies class. So, the group of people I had to give talk was to my classmates. It was a film studies class and I had to talk about my favorite genre of film and I spoke about film noir. It's a specific genre that captures the elements of a movie which has different features such as mist flowing above the clouds and mainly the movie is revolved around mystery, thriller, true crimes, for example Alfred Hitchcock's movie that is Shadow of a Doubt. Thankfully, I was able to give the class really well and it was well received by my classmates. It was for my seminar and I gave the talk to my classmates and I had to talk about film noir. It was for my film studies class and genre film and I choose. So, the group of people who I gave talk to was definitely to my classmates during my university days while doing my bachelor's degree in English honours. It was a film studies class and I had to present the seminar since it will be graded. So, I was asked to talk about film genre and I chose film noir. It's a very niche area within the classic Hollywood films and I had to go through the features of the film and explain them and give examples of the movies. It was about film genre and I chose for the seminar. I was very anxious at the time but I have. So, I gave talk to my classmates. It was about genre film for my film studies class. I did it during my undergrad while doing my bachelor's in English literature and the topic I chose was film noir. I had to speak about it because I was being graded on it. We had group of presentations for our internals and everybody has to choose their own favourite topic and I chose film noir because I love watching old classic Hollywood films. For instance, Shadow of Doubt by Alfred Hitchcock is one prime example to portray how a film noir is. That is black and white, mystery, thriller with a bit of suspense and other elements would be smoke rising in the scene, tense background music. So, these are the elements present in film noir and I had to explain that to my classmates. I was very nervous while giving presentation because definitely I was worked up and I had huge stage fright. Thankfully, I had immense reverence for my professor for receiving it well and easing my anxiety because I was extremely nervous whether I would mess up or if I go blank or if I forget any points or if I don't talk over any important parts that I had practiced back in the time. So, yeah, it was a very nerve-wracking time in my life because giving presentations was definitely a hassle for me.

    Band 6-7

    Recently I gave a talk on motivation. It was particularly motivational talk. I gave to people of 50 in my college. It was actually a competition for speech and my theme was to give motivation. I started speaking and I also used some idioms, phrases and some particular dialogues from other movies which greatly attracted them. I also had some guiding techniques from my professors and lecturers. They helped me to change some particular things which will affect the college institution. So they helped me to change some topics and they also guided me to the success path. I also won the competition simultaneously. The audience particularly enjoyed my way of speech. I used some slang of different accents and I also performed mimicry skills. Nothing like male or female, just some mimicry skills of animals like cat, dog, rabbit, goat etc. I saw how they clearly enjoyed my speaking and at last I could say that they were particularly motivated. I think my audience enjoyed my speech.

    Band 6-7

    It was a time, I mean, I was in class 12th, so my class teacher asked me to give this speech. We gave it up. It was a time when I was in class 12th and my class teacher asked me to give the talk about the tree conservation. So, that time I feel very shy. So, next day in the morning of the school time, I gave the speech to the people about the conservation of tree. And that talk was very important because I feel that the deforestation is the major cause of trees destruction. So, I found that the speech is useful for everyone to conserve the tree and how to protect the trees. The woodcutters who use the woods to make tables or other things for their benefit. So, I wanted to ask that why should you allow them to cut the trees. So, this speech is very useful for the government also to make the penalties. Who cut the trees unusually and who found that the trees is not good. But the trees is the main source of oxygen and it gives a lot of fruits. So, it is very useful for us to protect the trees and destruction of the trees to demand.
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