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Describe a thing you did to learn another language?: IELTS Speaking Cue Card

You should say

  • What was it?
  • How was it helpful?
  • How did you feel about it?
Show all 69 answers

Cue 1:What was it?

  • Begin by clearly stating the specific activity you undertook to learn the language.
  • Provide context about why you chose this particular method, such as personal interest or necessity.

Example

I decided to join a local language exchange group where I could practice speaking Spanish with native speakers. I chose this because I wanted to improve my conversational skills and immerse myself in the language.

Cue 2:How was it helpful?

  • Explain the benefits you gained from this experience, such as improved vocabulary or confidence.
  • Mention any specific instances where you noticed progress in your language skills.

Example

This experience was incredibly helpful as it allowed me to practice speaking in a real-world setting. I noticed that my vocabulary expanded significantly, and I became more confident in holding conversations. For example, during one session, I was able to discuss my favorite movies in Spanish without hesitation.

Cue 3:How did you feel about it?

  • Share your emotions regarding the experience, including any challenges you faced.
  • Reflect on how this activity impacted your overall attitude towards learning the language.

Example

Initially, I felt nervous about speaking with native speakers, but as I attended more sessions, I began to enjoy the process. I felt a sense of accomplishment every time I successfully communicated, which motivated me to continue learning.

Conclusion

  • Summarize the key takeaways from your experience.
  • Express how this activity has influenced your future language learning goals.

Example

In conclusion, joining the language exchange group not only improved my Spanish skills but also ignited a passion for learning languages. I now plan to explore other languages and continue participating in similar groups to enhance my skills further.

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

Using vague language can make your answer unclear and unengaging. Candidates often fail to provide specific details about their experiences, which can lead to a lack of depth in their response.

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Tip

Use specific examples and details to illustrate your experience. Describe the methods you used and the context in which you learned the language.

2: Ignoring Emotional Impact

Neglecting to express how you felt about the experience can make your answer less relatable. Candidates often focus solely on facts and forget to share their personal feelings.

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Tip

Include your emotions and thoughts during the learning process. Explain how the experience affected you personally and what it meant to you.

Lack of Structure

A disorganized response can confuse the listener. Candidates sometimes jump between points without a clear flow, making it hard to follow their story.

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Tip

Organize your answer by following the cues clearly. Start with what you did, then explain how it helped you, and finally share your feelings about the experience.

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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

The thing which I have done to learn another language was an English language because it is spoken by everyone all around the globe and it is easily understood by the people either in India or in any abroad countries. So yes I believe English is the language and I have done some efficient work on my English language to get proficiency and get correct pronunciation for my English speaking as well as in daily routine I am practicing English language to get better and to get good scores in my English speaking test. Yes I come from an Hindi background where all of my natives, all of my relatives, all of my parents and others speaks in Hindi but not in English so it is difficult for me to work on English skills and get proficiency and get effectiveness while I am speaking. So yes English was the language which helped me to do some effective work on myself and to gain some professional skills so that I can attain myself in professionalism and also can maintain the professionalism in my career. So yes this is the language which is understood by everyone all around the globe. We don't need to suffer because there are different kind of languages in each countries and we cannot speak their languages so English is the language which helps us to get in touch and communicate with each other so English was the very effective language which I have learnt.

Band 6-7

so basically thing which I did to learn a new language is to joining a class to get better in things regarding languages or mostly I prepared for one language called as German. German language I love the most for my higher education I need to go for Germany and for that the German language should be done and should take a and I should able to speak a German language so for that reason I joined the classes for German language it was so helpful for me to gain knowledge about German language it was not that easy but not that hard but I love to talk loud but I love to take the help from the teachers and all the staffs they really helped me in my language and because of which I got succeed in my IELTS exam also and I also learned to speak a fluent German language without any barriers after that I feel to be a very a complied person and capable person to go to Germany and do the higher studies and to be more successful in my life

Band 6-7

A language is something that everybody should be very consistent in learning. In my case, India as you know is already a very vast country with vast languages. When I had to travel from my native state that is Assam where we speak Assamese and start living in a South Indian state where people mostly speak Telugu, Tamil. I started learning from the local people and I made local friends. I started learning 1, 2, 3, 4 initially and then I started communicating with the shopkeepers where I tried to understand their body languages, how they speak their word and how they make changes in their bodies and their tones. Moreover, I watched few local movies also of that language with subtitles which helps me understand that language in a better way. But mostly I feel making friends in that area and communicating with the local people helps you slowly understand that language. That is the only way I felt one can learn a language by staying at that place.

Band 6-7

I recently started learning Italian language. The first thing I went for was for online classes. I searched for many but the only sustainable class I found was using an online app on which we can practice by learning writing and you can also ask for them to do online classes which can be one on one interaction one on one actually and then other thing I will do is to watch some cartoons or some kids show as there we can hear some basic languages basics of the language what was it? English, Duolingo or Falao I recently started learning Italian language through an online app but I am also looking for other options such as one on one language classes there are three types of level in Italian language such as A1, A2, B1, B2, C1, C2 these are six levels but they are divided into three parts I also started to watch some basic language videos such as cartoons, kids TV shows which helps us to understand the basic conversation certainly and it is much more efficient than just reading and writing Italian if you can talk to some person like not a native person but who is also learning Italian with you she can help you to analyze your mistakes and further improvement if you are looking for very high level speaking then you can go to some Italian language center or many platforms which offer you basic grammars and many other steps

Band 6-7

Hi, my name is Harsha Varadhan and I have learned almost around 22 languages in total, which are categorized up to 3 accents in English and rest of the 19 languages I have learned along with my excellence in perfectly learning about the language. So basically I have done a lot of research upon how to learn these languages. Basically if you want to learn such a language, you could do one thing that is called as short-term speaking. To increase the short-term speaking, you can only use these basic words and use it in your daily life, which increases the scope of increasing your vocabulary and way of speaking. By this also you can get good grading and good marks in the examinations if you try. So short-term learning is the best opportunity if you want to learn new languages. This also helped me to learn Spanish, Georgian, Yemeni, Hindi and much more. If you want to learn such languages, the only way you could do also was the long-term speaking, which includes the learning of the vocabulary in a tough basis and you need to have a lot of consistent hard work in the grammatical mistakes. So yeah, thank you for giving me this opportunity.

Band 6-7

When I was quite young I was fascinated with the language English and I wanted not to speak just the normal one but to have a British or an American accent. In order to gain that efficiency I watched Hollywood movies, videos, listened to English songs, practiced the lyrics the way the singers pronounced. It was overall an exciting process and I'm very happy that today no matter however I speak but I speak way better than many of the people and it's an added asset to my whole personality. So English is a fun language, I enjoyed learning it and I have done a lot of experiences, experiment in order to learn it.

Band 6-7

Learning a new language is always challenging for everyone, so I always wanted to learn a new language for my own use and for professional use. Moreover, it should be beneficial in a more positive way. For example, there are many centres from where I like to learn and there are many online platforms for learning language because my future prospect is having graduation from master's in Germany. So I have a basic knowledge of Germany to be more peaceful and knowledge of surroundings over the year. Instead of this, I learnt German basic level from Duolingo, so it will be convenient. According to my comfort, I will learn and spend as much as quality time over the year. Instead of this, it's quite helpful and beneficial for me. Furthermore, there are many advantages of learning a new language as it will create a positive impact on your working section as it may create positive impact and also it might be helpful for me if I move abroad there, then it will be easier for me to get involved for their learning, for the rural people to engage them in their rural activities by understanding the concept and their language by having little bit knowledge of the language.

Band 6-7

To learn another languages, the first step I take is to learn the grammar and the basic words. Then, the second very useful step is always to watch movies or series from that specific language. Initially, I watch the movies from that specific language with subtitles. Later, I try to watch them without subtitles and sometimes I pause and take breaks and try to translate the unknown words and that really helps in developing the language skill and the vocabulary we require in the new language. And other than that, there is a very brave step I personally take is to start speaking the language. It is very difficult to form sentences in the initiative stage. You might not know the proper vocabulary. Sometimes you might make big difference mistakes where the meaning of the sentence completely changes and you might get embarrassed but overcoming all the slightness and embarrassment, you should constantly speak and that's how the fluency is definitely going to increase. My father usually tells that fluency of any language is the time taken in our brain to translate the particular idea from our mother tongue to the language. So when we start thinking in the specific language inside the brain, the fluency of the language goes really high. I learnt around two or three local Indian languages except for my mother tongue. So definitely these two few steps comes much handy. It is difficult but we'll get used to it.

Band 6-7

No audio text available

Band 6-7

When I was a kid, I used to read books and my father advised me once that whenever I read a book, I must always have a notebook beside me and whenever I find a difficult word which I am not aware of or whose meaning I don't know, I can simply write it and find the meaning of it. In this way, I will be able to increase my vocabulary and be creative and be more open to new words. So in this way, whenever I read a book, I used to write the word meanings but it actually made me a bit weak when it comes to phonetics because you see, whenever you find word meaning in a dictionary, everything is in a written form because of which you don't know the correct pronunciation of certain words because everything is a written format. You cannot have the audio. So in this way, I made my vocabulary better but at the same time, I struggled with phonetics and till this day, I personally think that I find some words difficult to pronounce but I am still working on it and I think it will someday pay me off.
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