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Describe a unique animal you've encountered.: IELTS Speaking Cue Card

You should say

  • What animal?
  • Where & when did you see it?
  • What makes it unique? How did you feel about it?
Show all 27 answers

Cue 1:What animal?

  • Begin by naming the animal and giving a brief description of its appearance.
  • Mention any interesting facts about the animal that highlight its uniqueness.

Example

The unique animal I encountered was a Nilgai, also known as the blue bull. It is a large antelope with a striking blue-grey coat and long legs, which makes it stand out in the grasslands of India.

Cue 2:Where & when did you see it?

  • Describe the location where you saw the animal, including any relevant details about the environment.
  • Mention the time of year or occasion when you saw it to provide context.

Example

I saw the Nilgai during a trip to the Keoladeo National Park in Bharatpur last summer. It was early morning, and the park was serene, with the sun rising over the wetlands.

Cue 3:What makes it unique? How did you feel about it?

  • Explain what makes the animal special or different from other animals you have seen.
  • Share your feelings about the encounter and any thoughts it provoked.

Example

The Nilgai is unique because it is the largest antelope in India and is known for its agility and speed. Seeing it in its natural habitat was exhilarating; I felt a deep appreciation for wildlife and the beauty of nature.

Conclusion

  • Summarize your overall experience with the animal.
  • Reflect on how this encounter has impacted your view on wildlife conservation.

Example

In conclusion, encountering the Nilgai was a memorable experience that deepened my respect for wildlife. It reminded me of the importance of protecting such unique animals and their habitats for future generations.

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 Specific Details

Avoid vague descriptions of the animal. Not providing specific details can make your answer less engaging and informative.

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Tip

Include specific characteristics of the animal, such as its color, size, and behavior, to create a vivid image for the listener.

2: Ignoring the Emotional Impact

Failing to express your feelings about the encounter can make your response less personal and relatable.

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Tip

Share your emotions and thoughts during the encounter, explaining how it affected you and why it was memorable.

Rushing Through the Story

Speaking too quickly can lead to unclear communication and missed important points about the animal and your experience.

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Tip

Take your time to structure your answer, ensuring you cover each cue clearly and thoughtfully, while maintaining a steady pace.

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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

Well, actually I love animals and I recently visited the zoo also. I frequently watch the videos about animals and a unique animal that I went through was a crocodile which was in the zoo in Vishakhapatnam. The size of it is very massive and it has very unique colors on it. Its body has different types of ruptures on it and the crocodile has the sharpest teeth I ever saw. It looks very scary although. This crocodile is known for having records on it as it is very huge and also weighs more than 500 pounds. So it is considered as one of the massive animals in the Vishakhapatnam Zoo. I felt this crocodile very unique because I saw this type of animals only on television. I never saw this through live with my eyes. Once I saw this crocodile with my parents when I went to the zoo. It took me some time to move from the place of this arena. I took so many photographs of the crocodile and I remember this very clearly very much.

Band 6-7

A unique animal that I have encountered is a white tusked elephant which had one of its tusks broken. I encountered this elephant when I was going to Mysore, funnily enough we were going to Mysore to actually visit a zoo there, but on our way to Mysore we actually encountered it in one of the guard section roads. It was about 3-4 pm in the evening, where the sun was just about to begin setting. It was becoming like pale orange in colour and when we were going through this section right then we heard a loud noise from the front forest towards the right, there and a big elephant about 2-3 feet tall, big elephant just came running out onto the road and then it looked at us and then it gave out a big noise and I noticed that one of its tusks were actually broken, it was actually bent a bit and then broken. I assumed that maybe it just got into a fight and hit a tree or something and yeah, it really did surprise me about how majestic that elephant was.

Band 6-7

I have seen the unique animal recently is polar bear and I have encountered it on a National Geographic television channel and what makes me unique about this it's despite living in the chilling environment it has an absolute mechanism or metabolism to keep up the heat inside its body. I have actually read about polar bears that they do have high scalability cognitive thinking and logical thinking also despite having 7 11 centimeter inch of layer fat layer that actually causes cholesterol or else obesity in humans this fat layer helps them in insulating the insulation is the main mechanism where you can observe in many architect or else you know snow as snow centered animals have this fat layer enabling them to prevent their loss of heat from the body the polar bears when females are pregnant they undergo a stage of hibernation where the bone density and the bone volume along with the depletion of some bone main reserves get depleted this actually happened for for a new growth to form or else a new baby to form the depletion process helps the child to develop fully and healthy after delivery of the baby the depletion still continues for six months we call that as postpartum period and after postpartum period the polar bear appears to be just as it was before pregnant it's the unique way of animal I have seen it

Band 6-7

A decade back, there was an animal sighting near my house, people were everywhere, everyone near my house were scared and locked inside my home, I didn't know which animal was that, but my parents were kept telling that there was a cheetah that lost the way to the jungle and came into the city. Since we were living in the edges of our city then, we were quite scared and terrified because of the animal sighting that happened to me. I was in my room and was seeing through the window, I saw a cheetah, a leopard zip pass through the window, I was terrified because since it is a carnivore and top predator, everyone will be scared of it, since I was a kid and I didn't know which animal was it and since it is huge, I got little perplexed and terrified because of that. Since I was with my parents, I felt little bit of in safety because of them, I cried a lot when I saw that my parents condoled me.

Band 6-7

The one animal that caught my eye is a dolphin. I was always intrigued by the dolphins because they just provide a sense of excitement and something that is cute. Moreover, when I got to know about the existence of pink dolphins, I was very fascinated by it. Pink dolphins are usually found in the Amazon river. I never actually saw a pink dolphin in real life but I did a little research about pink dolphins on the internet. Pink is a colour that is pretty and considered pleasant and a dolphin that is pink in colour is something that would excite children.

Band 6-7

Yes, my favorite animal or the animal which I have in my home is a domestic animal which is cat. Yeah, I got this cat from a street side one day. It was a small young one when I was taking the cat to my home. So it was just standing alone in the street, so I thought that if I took that to home, maybe it would survive for a longer time. Because of that, I took that to home. So when I helped the cat, it was just a newborn cat and doesn't know anything. I didn't know even what to feed and how to take care. It was literally too much thin without having any food for few days. And yeah, I rescued it and gave as much as support as possible from my side. So yeah, I love the cat because it has grown a little bit more and now I think he is a child for now. And recently, we experienced an incident like it was very rainy and there was a snake came in our house veranda. So this cat already saved us from... in the night time, the cat actually bit the snake and rescued us. It is a huge support from the cat side and I am glad to have a cat as a pet in my home.

Band 6-7

A unique animal that I can describe that I have seen with my eyes is a Pangolin. I have seen it near a national park. It is quite unique because of its scales that it produces to defend itself. And also, it's the only mammal that has scales all over its body, apart from its mouth and the lower part, near the abdomen. It doesn't have scales there. But it doesn't attack humans at all. It's quite humble and everything. It is not aggressive at all. When it gets scared or something like that, then it will turn up into a ball. It will just wind up into a ball. It's unfortunate that it does that. Because poachers usually just take it away. It comes into the red list of highest animals that are getting poached. It tops the list of that. Apart from that, that's it.

Band 6

I think on myself, I feel cat is an unique animal. Since my childhood I've seen a cat many times but particularly on my 11th standard, we bought one cat for my home. That cat looks very pretty and he have a doll eyes and we named it as Toru and he was very playful and we used to, I used to sleep with him and I used to go walking with him. Every time I was with him after my school completed, I will spend my most of the time with that cat. Then after a few months ago, maybe six to seven months, he get sick eventually and we feel very bad about that. He will sick occasionally like regularly, weekly like that. We go to hospital and try to recover the cat but nothing can help us because we used to save that cat but usually cat will not understand the owner's word. The cat can do whatever the cat will need.

Band 5-6

I have seen a snake, first of all I encounter on a zoo, that is a cobra snake, I can see that, the first of all I think that is a unique snake because the snake or cobra is very dangerous for us, and I can see them on other types of snakes, but I can see them mainly the cobra snake first time, because many times I can, in animals like elephant and many types of animals I can see everywhere, the cobra snake I can only see in the forest first time, because when I travelling to the forest and when I realize that the cobra snake is in front of me, I think it's my last time because the most dangerous snake is cobra snake, and when I going for travel for like visit the zoos and many type of things, then I with my friends then I visit to also the animal and like many types tiger, elephant, giraffe, this type of animals,

Band 5-6

Okay, I am not talking about a unique animal I have seen, but I am talking about my pet animal cat. I love cat so much and I love cat so much and it's very cute animal, although cats are nowadays cats are like, cats are saved by, only Persian cats are taken care of by people. Animal cats are not taken by people. So when it comes to cat, sorry, when it comes to my family, my dad used to take care of cat so much. So by seeing that they are treating the cat as their own family member, I, my habit also has changed. I also started to take care of the animal and make it, make them feel as my family member. So that is about cat and dog also very, you know, very loving animal and if you take care of the dogs rather than take care of the cat, it's better that dogs are very good than cats, but cats are very good looking. When I came to Himachal Pradesh, I have seen sheep, I didn't see sheep in my life, but when I came to here, it is a mountain area, so I have seen sheep, I felt unique when I see the sheep and all. So this was my...
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