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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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    Anonymous student Band 8

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    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.
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    Anonymous student Band 6.5

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    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.
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    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

    When I was in school, I mean I am talking about when I was in class 2nd, at that time I just started learning computer. So we used to type our names in the computer, like we go to start, accessibility, all these things. So our teacher used to teach us that thing and it was quite difficult at that time that how to open it, because it was first time, first time I was using computer, so it was difficult for me and I was very young, about 5-6 years old, but later by trying repeatedly I learned how to open Microsoft PowerPoint and type my name, so yeah it was a really great experience.

    Band 6-7

    Well, sometimes people get into bigger trouble and they show some kind of error. It's hard to identify at that time if you have an issue or some kind of other problems. And here I would like to talk about a situation when I had to face a critical problem. When I was in a meeting of this kind. I remember in COVID time I was working from home. And I had to organize many meetings online and we shared our project through our Zoom meetings. And I remember in one meeting, in my initial year of online working, I was the trainer of that meeting. And I was trying to share the screen to my other learners and due to technical issue, I had to face a lot of troubles because everyone was saying that we are unable to see your screen. And I was struggling for at least 30 minutes. And after that I came to know that the application version is not up to date. And after that I reinstalled the application and started meeting at that time.

    Band 6-7

    I had a problem with my computer last year. This problem occurred at work when I was trying to navigate from one column to another in Excel. It took around 20 minutes for me to move from column A to column H. There seems to be a problem with the Excel that was installed in my computer. The particular Excel file that I was handling was quite big as in there were multiple rows of data. Therefore, it was quite hard for the computer to manage opening that particular file and run other programs in the background. Therefore, I took this computer to my IT team. They inspected the software that was installed and noticed that it needed to be updated. There were also some driver issues where some of the drivers were out of date. Therefore, the IT team helped in updating the Windows version along with the drivers in my computer. After this solution, I did not face any issues while navigating the columns in Excel. It was a difficult time, but I was able to get over it.

    Band 6-7

    I would like to share this experience when my laptop got broke. It happened 2 years back. I work in a multinational company known as Wipro. Due to COVID we were compelled to follow work from home policy. At my home I got to experience that my laptop is not working properly. It had some issue with the fan and also it started to get auto restart. I tried multiple ways in order to resolve that issue. For example, I tried to troubleshoot the issue on my own. I raised multiple incidents related to my laptop where the IMG team who is the technical team of my company can resolve the issue. But none of it worked. I was not sure if I can travel to another city because the nearest office campus was from my house at 8 hours of distance. None of the efforts which I made worked. Then I decided to travel to the city nearest to my hometown known as Greater Noida. Because I was working in the rotational shift project, it was very important for me to be in the shift and perform my task. As soon as possible I took permission from my manager and I travelled to the Greater Noida city, the nearest office campus of Wipro. After visiting the office, I straightly went to the IMG team. They told me there is some issue with the fan. They troubleshooted it. They resolved my issue.

    Band 6-7

    There was a time when I had a problem with using my computer is that when I am in college and preparing for our dissertation. I have spent more than 2-3 months in making my dissertations on computer and save my files on the desktop. And on the day of our viva or you can say the dissertation project, the day my computer got hanged and was not able to show the files I have saved in computer. My friends and I, I don't know anything guys please skip to the end.

    Band 6-7

    Why did you need a computer? There was this Microsoft inbuilt games like software collection, software collection, chess etc, mini games like that. It was, exactly it was happened during my age of 8 in a rental house. It was a peaceful morning, during that as usual I woke up, all the things went on, bathing, eating. After that I came to the computer and tried to turn on, I don't know how to turn on the CPU. I was searching the button, where it is located and where it is connected to the computer, like how many algorithms went on in my mind. I don't know, I just left the room. After 2 days, 2 days later, my father turned on the computer for a work. At that time I sneaked, I sneaked the room while he was turning on the system. After that I tried to turn on and everything went well. I played game, watched how the computer works and what are the stops in the computer. After that I left the room.

    Band 6-7

    Once when I was preparing for my thesis, a snag occurred to my computer. It was actually a virus that multiplied itself on my system because my antivirus has already expired a day before. So I could not cope with the situation properly. All my data of the thesis got lost in the process and ultimately I tried a lot to recover back the lost data but I could not. Over that though the firewall was also working but the virus was getting the worst. So what I did, I put my system in the recovery mode but that also could not help. So ultimately I got an antivirus installed on my system but it also could not solve the problem. Then I had to call one of the local computer engineers to arrive at my home to recover my system from virus. It took him around 2 hours to bring my system back to functioning and also to recover back the lost data of my thesis. But ultimately everything was done to my satisfaction.

    Band 6-7

    To begin with, I'm not really handy while using computers, although I really used to face it really challenging while using computers. But now that I've learned it, it's been, it has been really easy and normal for me to use computers laptop. Although during lockdown, I faced a lot of challenges while learning computer. And in 2021, I guess, in the month of July or June, June or July, it was, I have faced a detrimental problem while using my computer. As I was being really careless with downloading many things on my laptop and I accidentally downloaded some virus on my computer. And I was not really a professional or like really experienced in using computers or everything. But however, I enhanced my knowledge about using computers and I, I found out a resolution regarding to my virus. And later on, when I fixed that problem, I installed antivirus in my computer, which was really helpful for me. For instance, whenever people don't have to really, when people really don't know how to use computer and laptops or any window devices, they face a lot of problems, issues, but it can be really frustrating for many people. However, to contemplate learning computer can be a really nice asset for everyone as being as a citizen of a modern society, everybody should concur on that learning computer can be a really beneficial and positive outcome for everybody. Even though if it's an elderly person or a young person, it can be really helpful.

    Band 6-7

    I have a really old computer which gives me a lot of problems in my everyday life. I feel like the computer is always overheating or is getting hacked a lot. I have a really old computer which gives me a lot of problems in my everyday life. It is always overheating, it is always pointing to the wrong link that I have typed, the keyboard is not working properly and a lot of other issues. But although there are a lot of problems with my computer, I remember this particular incident as it was yesterday. But it happened during the October of 2020, during one of the first few lectures of my college. It was during the lockdown so we had online lectures and it was my first time using a computer to join a Google Meet. I have never used an online platform like that before so I found it difficult to navigate. But gratefully my sister was nearby who was attending her school classes online on the same platform for almost two months. She helped me to set up the classroom and also taught me how to navigate around the platform. Another time was when the computer stopped working in the middle of my research paper. In the last year I had to write a research paper and my laptop just shut down and it wouldn't on until I had to take it to a professional and get it fixed. I feel like I wasted a lot of my time.

    Band 6-7

    On a random day, I started my project of Diwali which I got from my universities. I started my project on my computer and suddenly I had problem while using the computer. My cursor was blocked and I was unable to fix that problem. I called, I tried many a times to fix that problem but I was unable to do. At that time, I thought of my friend who is very expert in tech and internet also in computer who is certified technician of computer. She is very intelligent so I called her and learnt how to fix that and she helped me very well and she also asked me if I get any problem in future about computer. She was very helpful and I fixed my problem at that time with the help of my friend.
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