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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 64 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
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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
    anonymous person icon

    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 gave the talk to my friends when I visited Madras University, Chennai. It was an Indian National Congress conducted by the organization committee located in Allahabad. They invited me to talk about freedom. I spoke about that. All my ideas were really influenced to the listeners and it was a good interactive section. Moreover, they really enjoyed. They gave a proper feedback regarding the presentation. In addition, they also arranged another section for their upcoming seminar. I'm really excited to be there and re-talk about the ideas, the concepts which I have on freedom. It was the greatest opportunity I have received from the college. I'm always grateful for that. So, group talks are really helpful to understand any concept. Instead of being unaware of anything, it's good to be a part of group talk where we can receive a multitude of ideas.

    Band 6-7

    Every morning, we are obliged to give a talk to our fellow nurses. It is called a safety huddle. One day, I was tasked to talk about the diuretics and its effect. Since I was the senior among the group, I gathered all the different types of diuretics and how it is administered and what are their functions. Moreover, the group of individuals that I gave my talk to are considered my friends. So, I was calm and relaxed during the talk. Also, they gave me feedback after my prepared report. And surprisingly, they all understood what I was trying to convey that time. And because of that talk, they learned a lot of lessons from me, thankfully. Because I did prepared for the talk very keenly the night before. So, everyone will have the best time and they will not consider their time wasted.

    Band 6-7

    Well, communicating with others actually have a lot of benefits that could develop our interactivabilities and all. Here I am going to talk about a talk that I give to a group of people. And I would like to speak about the seminar presentation I had done when I was in college. And it was about the sleep quality among young adults. And it was addressed towards my fellow classmates and my teachers. And it was actually a great experience for me. Even I felt really tense at the beginning. But eventually I got on track and was able to present it in a nice way. It was really difficult for me at the beginning stage. However, after a few minutes I used to get the idea and was able to present it well. And even my friends asked me questions and queries about the seminar and I was able to answer them. After presenting the seminar in a good way, I was really happy that all my works and efforts finally got the perfect result. And that made me have more confidence to do such activities in the future as well.

    Band 6-7

    I'll talk about the time when I was the president of my school's children and track club. So after countless years of hard work, I was finally elected to be the club's president and I was determined to at least conduct 10 events by the time I graduated from school. We formed committees and appointed heads for each committee and I gave them all the tasks and I delegated them to them saying that we should complete 10 tasks by the end of this year and initially the events went smooth. We conducted two activities in the first month and I was hoping to conduct more in the subsequent months. Unfortunately, the club sort of began declining, the people started to lose interest and it became six months where we hardly completed five activities. I was furious but I knew that if I projected my anger towards my committee members, they would not understand the importance and they would still grow further negligence towards it. Hence, I brought all of them together, I gave a talk, I told them how this is important for them as well as me to make sure the club grows into a better one. I gave a few examples of how I used to be in this club and how determined me and my friends were and we made sure that we conducted activities and I'm glad that it inspired them and by the end of the eighth month, we completed the task of doing all 10 activities.

    Band 6-7

    Okay, so I vividly remember the last time I gave talk to the gathering of people. It was I think few months back when in my line of work there was a celebration for the particular disease. What I mean is we celebrate the week for a particular disease and in this celebration what we do is we gather the people around from the community and we deliver the speech to them on the awareness of the disease. We talk about particular stuff such as the risk factors, what you should do to prevent the disease, what you should not do in case you somehow contracted the disease. I mean maybe you get panic after knowing that you have the disease and we counsel them not to get panic etc. Furthermore on that particular day I gave a speech on HIV awareness on which I was talking about what HIV is exactly and how the HIV positive person do not affect them in their regular duties. I mean in the social gathering if I have a person who is let's say HIV positive then many a time people thinks that sharing a handshake with him or sharing a food with him or just sharing a room in general with him might lead them to the contraction of HIV.

    Band 6-7

    Last night I gave a pep talk to my hostel friends, it was about the importance of protein in our diet. As protein is crucial for our brain and body, it helps building muscles and these muscles are good for longevity. I explained them if we work out every day and add protein equivalent of our body weight

    Band 6-7

    So yeah I gave a suggestion to the people out there in my class and yeah it was totally about you know reforming yourself and being consistent the importance of being consistent. I mean in order to succeed in life and in order to be the best version of yourself how important it is for you to be consistent how important it is for you to be resilient no matter what. So yeah I was describing the same thing and discussing the same thing with the people out there in my class and I was making them understand about the importance of being consistent. I mean we can be disciplined but I think most importantly we need to be consistent even if we are not disciplined we are not perfect but we are consistent we are putting the efforts every day and we are tending to do the best every day so yeah eventually we'll be able to succeed so rather than being perfect we need to be consistent and that can certainly lead us to be successful. Apart from that it's like it's really hard to be consistent so yeah you should be daily monitoring yourself how to really have that you know time for yourself or doing the work that is really to be needed apart from all the distractions that are already there in your life so yeah it was all that I have been discussing with the people out there in my class

    Band 6-7

    They called me so that students can feel motivated and I can guide them to follow their dreams like I can guide what other career options they have and so I went there and I gave a talk so I basically gave the talk to my juniors, students from class 6th to class 12th. It was specially arranged for those students of class 10th, 11th and 12th because in class 10th you can, like it is kind of a turning point of your life because whatever the field you choose either it is math science, biology or commerce so it kind of decides how your future will look like if for example if you have taken math science then you might become an engineer. If you have chosen biology in 10th then you can become a doctor and similarly for commerce students they can pursue accounts and they can also become a CA. So that is something I was there for about. My teachers also admired me that you have achieved a lot in your career.

    Band 6-7

    Here, I would like to talk about a speech that I delivered three years ago to my friends. It was a nice experience. Since my childhood, I have been very fascinated about technology and I love speaking about technology. So, I thought I would take a speech and my friends are also interested because they know I love speech, so they also motivated me. I spoke about technologies like driverless cars and the Tesla, especially the Tesla. I love cars also, so there I include the technology, the software, both the softwares and sensors that users in the Tesla cars and they are also interested, they are also motivated and I was on the top of the world when I delivered that speech because I thought I could spread some knowledge to others, so spreading knowledge is the best thing. So looking back, I think it was the best and nice experience and I really got enjoyed and I feel rejuvenated and relaxed.

    Band 6-7

    I gave a talk to two of my friends called Ria and Afrin because that was a talk related to our main project coordination because we three were in a team and things were not going smoothly because we three hadn't joined in any institutions to do the main project because we all wanted to do it on our own but unfortunately things didn't went as planned so the things didn't go as planned so and it left all of us in arguing and quarreling with each other but at last I came up with a idea that we should join an institute so that it will help us to understand what the project is and do it well so I gave I came up with the idea that we should stop arguing with each other and do something productive like joining the Institute which really will help our project move move forward positively so we joined the Institute and how it made me feel we can say that I felt really grateful for myself because and I felt really confident and so proud of myself because I saved a sinking group from failure because I am a person who stand against laziness so at any cost I would wanted my team to join the Institute
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