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Describe a time when you had a problem with using the computer: IELTS Speaking Cue Card

You should say

  • When did it happen?
  • Where did it happen?
  • What was the problem?
  • How did you solve the problem in the end?
Show all 118 answers

Cue 1:When did it happen?

  • Mention a specific time frame, such as a particular day or month, to give context to your experience.
  • Explain any relevant circumstances that led to the problem occurring at that time.

Example

It happened about three months ago, during the peak of my final exams. I was preparing for my computer science paper, and I had planned to complete my project that evening.

Cue 2:Where did it happen?

  • Describe the location where you were using the computer, such as your home, a library, or a friend's place.
  • Include details about the environment that might have contributed to the situation.

Example

I was at home, sitting at my study desk in my room. It was a quiet evening, and I had all my study materials spread out around me, creating a focused atmosphere.

Cue 3:What was the problem?

  • Clearly state the issue you faced with the computer, such as a software crash or hardware failure.
  • Explain how this problem affected your ability to complete your tasks.

Example

Suddenly, my computer froze while I was running a crucial software program for my project. I panicked because I hadn’t saved my work in a while, and I was worried about losing everything.

Cue 4:How did you solve the problem in the end?

  • Discuss the steps you took to resolve the issue, including any troubleshooting methods or help you sought.
  • Mention the outcome and what you learned from the experience.

Example

I took a deep breath and decided to restart my computer. Thankfully, when it rebooted, I found that the auto-recovery feature had saved my work. I also learned the importance of saving my work frequently and started using cloud storage for future projects.

Conclusion

    Example

    This experience taught me valuable lessons about technology and the importance of being prepared for unexpected issues. Now, I always make sure to back up my work regularly, which has made my study sessions much less stressful.

    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 response unclear. Avoid general statements that do not provide specific details about the problem or the situation.

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    Tip

    Be specific about the time, place, and nature of the problem. Use clear examples to illustrate your experience.

    2: Ignoring the Cues

    Not addressing all the cues can lead to an incomplete answer. Each cue is designed to help structure your response effectively.

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    Tip

    Make sure to answer all the cues in order. This will help you stay organized and cover all important aspects of your experience.

    Lack of Problem-Solving Detail

    Failing to explain how you solved the problem can make your response less engaging. It's important to show your thought process and actions.

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    Tip

    Describe the steps you took to resolve the issue. Highlight any challenges you faced and how you overcame them to add 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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    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

    As I am a computer science engineer so I can say I have a very good exposure with computer and its application both with hardware and software tools. So sometimes I have also faced many problems like once I had a problem in the virtual machine setting I was using the Linux and the Windows operating system on my MacBook. So I was having the three of the operating system in a virtual scheduling so at that time I could stuck in the Linux system because that used a command-line interface and I was making a project of phishing attack it was like taking a bit of project files into the one picture and transferring it to the multiple devices so that the whenever the person will open those files he or she will get the clue of getting the induced into this torsion sources. So at that time when I got stuck into that computer using system problem I took the help of one of my friend and asked her advice how to solve this like that command line was stuck and the coding was not able to do properly through me and not even by her so we so we decided to take the help from the YouTube video that YouTube video also took a lot of time and after an hour of searching a lot of videos based on the malefic attacks and torsions we finally received a code from there which we applied into the structure of the code command line and later that turn into the virtual machines of both the Microsoft as well as on the MacBook OS so this is

    Band 6-7

    So yeah, this was when I was in 11th and my friends sent me a link to a place where we can play a bunch of pirated games and download and play pirated games. At that point of my life I was too into gaming, I was a lot into gaming and yeah it was when I clicked this link I was trying to download a pirated game, at that time I wasn't really I wasn't old enough to purchase games and my parents wouldn't even allow me and it's good that they did not make me a gaming addict. And so I tried to resolve to the other options which were not safe and could harm ourself and it gave me a great lesson after that incident, I never got into this pirated gaming stuff and that day I lost lot of files, important pictures and everything and it just, after downloading it, it just hanged my PC completely and I had to restart, I had to clean the drive and plug a new Windows, I installed a new Windows and uploaded it into my PC and started a fresh start. After that I decided not to download any pirated games no matter what, prioritizing your safety is way more important than playing some games and being harmed in the process.

    Band 6-7

    I could recall from my past experience that I encountered with a problem with computers. The first time it happened was when I was using Microsoft Windows 8 and it was very complex for me because I was trying to use MS-DOS in that computer but I was not able to find it and after searching for very long I wasn't able to find or solve the issue. So in order to resolve this problem I contacted Microsoft support for this. I submit an email which is also called support request and after one hour they reverted back and they provided the resolution for the problem. The problem was resolved by entering a specific code into the Microsoft activation window where it was required to enter and after entering the code which was provided by the Microsoft support I was able to resolve it.

    Band 6-7

    So few days ago I was just you know I had changed my field so earlier I was in medical field and I shifted to IT field so my father recommended me to learn language C for beginners so when I started learning it was like interesting so I had written a code on my VS code and you know actually I didn't save it and the error was coming so I found I tried to find where is the error where is the error and I actually couldn't find anything that where was my error so even I you know copied it and pasted it on chat gpt but it also couldn't tell me what was the error instead it confused me a lot that where is the error so what I did was I searched it on youtube and then I got a lot of solutions and then also I couldn't do it then I realized that I didn't save it that's why the error was coming so I saved it and then it ran appropriately so that is the time that is the last time I had so much trouble with the computer but after that I'm now I'm a pro that whenever I get a problem I just search it and just get that solution so easily so and earlier also I used to have problems with computer but but I'm someone if I don't understand anything I would just go on and search on net and chat gpt that what I'm lacking so yeah that's when I had a problem

    Band 6-7

    So, I would like to talk about a time when I faced an issue with a computer in my university lab. So, it was a lab for a software engineering class. And the way the computers in our university work is they are all connected to a central hub within the lab. So, for internet access and for remote control and everything, the computers are connected to this hub and everything goes through it. Now, the issue with the computer that I was assigned was that it had a tethered internet cable. So, some of the pins had been damaged due to some reason and it was not connecting to the internet. So, when I tried logging in with my university ID into the computer, it just did not allow me to. Now, at first I thought maybe there is some issue with my ID because I was able to log in earlier when I came to the lab. But it was not working right now. So, I contacted my faculty who guided me to contact the lab support team. And they said that I changed the computer myself. So, I tried logging into another system within the same lab and it did work. Now, this gave me the clarity that it was not an issue with my account. So, then I contacted the IT team again and I informed them that it is not an issue with my ID. Rather, there is some issue with the computer itself. So, a few days later, they came to check it and they found that there was an issue with the ethernet cable. And the central hub was not connecting to the particular computer that I was sat on. So, they fixed the cable and it did start working properly. I was happy that I was able to help the IT team because it was just a normal lab and not an examination. It did not waste any time of mine either. So, overall, I think it was a pretty good story.

    Band 6-7

    Although I am really good at computers, but this one time I was really stuck with a greatest problem that was during my computer internal exams, that was our final examination and an external assigner came in to give the duty and assess it on that basis of our tasks done. So the task was, you need to prepare an excel sheet and then transfer it to powerpoint one. Though I had attained every skills of excel and powerpoint, but due to the tension of the atmosphere or pressure on my head to get good marks, I ended up doing a bit confusing thing there and I tried to solve it many times by preparing it again and then trying to transfer it from one to another app, but nothing worked out. However, when at the end I got a recommendation from my friend that you just need to put on the copy and paste feature on that, I got it easily and when I did that, it worked out and I was so relieved at that time that it happened because if not of that, I would have ended up getting lower marks and my whole result would have been affected by that small mistake of mine.

    Band 6-7

    It happened a few weeks back at my work. My system was crashing. Like when I tried to open any app, the app keeps on closing itself. And the system was very slow. Like if you want to open one app, it will take 1-2 minutes to load the app. And it was so frustrating. So I called up our support team. They told that the PC only has 4GB of RAM and we need to upgrade it to 8 or 16. So my manager told me it's a better option to change the PC. So we changed the PC and now I have a good PC. It works like a charm. It's so fast. I don't know how long it will be doing that. It's so fast. It's amazing.

    Band 6-7

    There was a numerous time when I had a problem while using computer but if I talk about a specific time, it was a time when I have recently completed my grade 12 and pursuing for my higher education from abroad. I was just scrolling and I have a keen interest in using and playing games. So I want to play game and I have my old computer. It was fully old and for Windows 7 and there was no graphic card inserted in it and it works how normal computer works but one day my father told me to upgrade your computer. So I went to a store with one of my friend and my friend is a well known computer researcher. He know everything about the computer but the thing he also don't know is when I installed graphic card inside my computer to play games and high graphic games. So my friend told me that your computer is safe but when I inserted graphic card in it and on the computer, my computer doesn't even own. I was not knowing what is the issue, what is the problem because my computer was fully upgraded and I don't know about the features, what is the new feature, it is unlocked and why it is not starting. So I take my friend and went again to the shop and the shopkeeper suggest me that you have to use HMD. It is a port which is used in the computers when graphic card is installed. So your computer will not work with your power cable. It will work with the HMD. So that was the time.

    Band 6-7

    So, basically the last time I had a problem with using the computer was when I was a kid. So, we had a class, we had computer classes in our school every twice a week. So, me and my friends would sit together and we would work on the computers. Each one of us had an individual computer given to us. So, one day I was sitting and suddenly my computer got stuck. I guess it was a glitch or something like that. And then I panicked because I didn't know what to do. And everyone, all other of my friends, their computers were working. So, obviously it was like I was in a pickle and I didn't know how to face the music. But then my friends noticed that I was stressed out and they came, they asked me if they could help me. And then all of them helped me out. So that, you know, I was so grateful because at the end I didn't have to face any problem because my friends were there to help me and eventually we came out of the problem. I was really grateful to my friends that, you know, and then we even had a joke about it because it was a really small and petty issue and I was simply so stressed about it. Anyway, all in all, I would really say if you are, if anyone is having a difficult time or is in a pickle, they should always look forward to their friends or family and talk about it. That's the only way this problem will be solved.

    Band 6-7

    The problem I have faced and my biggest question was a problem in the computer. I was ready to prepare for the IELTS exam and I was giving the test for the exchanger company and the company was very straight in the computer system and it also gave us the straight rules to follow and my system has not even following one of the rules in which it cannot install the WhatsApp app and it cannot integrate the Wi-Fi connections also. So in that situation I have faced a lot of issues and by facing those issues I have checked all the settings, I cleared all the apps and I have done all the possibility things which I can do. I have installed another software for that and I have installed all the things which are needed. So by doing all these things also I could not attend the test I could not attend the test because due to the lack of time, the time has given only further two hours but I have spent the time by doing all the connections in this time. So one hour of the time has been gone in this in this instructions only. So then I have contacted to the exchanger people and the exchanger company has given me the whole support and it has told me to raise the ticket. I have raised the ticket. The issue in the computer was my computer software is not up to date so I have to change the computer. Then I have bought the Lenovo laptop which is up to date and I gave my exam in the exchanger company and it was very well. I really feel impressive when my laptop hasn't worked. I felt myself a great brave girl and took courage of working
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