arrow back icon Top Answers

Describe a way/change that helps you save a lot of time: IELTS Speaking Cue Card

You should say

  • How is it?
  • How do you implement it?
  • How difficult is it?
  • And explain how you feel about the way/change.
Show all 62 answers

Cue 1:How is it?

  • Begin by describing the specific way or change that helps you save time.
  • Mention the context in which you use this method or change.

Example

One significant change that has helped me save a lot of time is using a digital planner instead of a traditional paper diary. I started using it about a year ago, and it has transformed how I manage my daily tasks and appointments.

Cue 2:How do you implement it?

  • Explain the steps you take to use this method effectively.
  • Share any tools or apps you use to make this process easier.

Example

I implement this by setting aside a few minutes each morning to plan my day. I use an app called Todoist, where I list all my tasks and set reminders. This way, I can prioritize my work and ensure I don’t forget important deadlines.

Cue 3:How difficult is it?

  • Discuss any challenges you faced when adopting this change.
  • Explain how you overcame those challenges.

Example

Initially, I found it a bit challenging to switch from paper to digital. I was worried about losing my data or not being able to access it when needed. However, I overcame this by regularly backing up my planner and learning more about the app's features through online tutorials.

Cue 4:And explain how you feel about the way/change.

  • Share your feelings about the effectiveness of this change.
  • Mention any positive impacts it has had on your life.

Example

I feel incredibly positive about this change. It has not only saved me time but also reduced my stress levels. I can now focus more on my work and personal life without the constant worry of forgetting tasks. Overall, it has made me more organized and productive.

Conclusion

    Example

    In conclusion, switching to a digital planner has been a game-changer for me. It has streamlined my daily routine and allowed me to manage my time more effectively, which is essential in today’s fast-paced world.

    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. It's important to provide specific details about the way or change you are describing to engage the listener.

    bulb icon

    Tip

    Use clear examples and specific details to illustrate your points. For instance, mention a particular app or method you use to save time.

    2: Ignoring Implementation Steps

    Failing to explain how you implement the change can leave your answer incomplete. It's crucial to show the process behind your time-saving method.

    bulb icon

    Tip

    Break down the steps you take to implement the change. Describe your routine or the tools you use to make it effective.

    Neglecting Personal Feelings

    Not sharing your feelings about the change can make your response less engaging. Personal reflections add depth and interest to your answer.

    bulb icon

    Tip

    Include your emotions or thoughts about the change. Explain how it has positively impacted your life or made you feel more productive.

    calendar icon

    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
    anonymous person icon

    Reported by

    Anonymous student Band 7.5

    location icon

    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
    anonymous person icon

    Reported by

    Anonymous student Band 8

    location icon

    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
    anonymous person icon

    Reported by

    Anonymous student Band 6.5

    location icon

    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
    anonymous person icon

    Reported by

    Anonymous student Band 7

    location icon

    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

    location icon

    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 7

    A change that has helped me save a significant amount of time is meal prepping. Essentially it involves planning and cooking meals in bulk so that I don't have to cook from scratch every single day. I usually set aside a few hours on Sunday to do my grocery shopping and prepare my meals for the week. First I decide on a simple menu, often dishes that are easy to cook in large batches like pasta, stir fries or soup. Then I chop all the vegetables, cook the protein and portion everything into containers. I store them in the fridge or freezer, ready to be reheated when I am pressed for time during the weekdays. Initially it was a bit challenging because I had to get used to cooking multiple meals at once and figuring out the right quantities. However, after a few attempts, I developed a system that works for me. Now it's much easier, in fact it's become a weekly routine that I look forward to since it saves me a lot of hassle later on. I feel incredibly relieved because it frees up my weekday evening, instead of worrying about what to cook after a long day, I just heat up a pre-made meal. This has helped me manage my time better, reduce my stress level and even eat healthier. Overall I am very satisfied with this change and highly recommend it to anyone looking to streamline their daily routine.

    Band 6-7

    A way that helps me save a lot of time is waking up early and sleeping early. I used to sleep in a lot and I used to stay up till late night and get up very, waking up very tired. But I realized that I need to change this habit so that I can save a lot of time. I can make good habits in my life and I've realized that it just makes my day a bit better. I've realized when I sleep early and wake up early, I feel that I have a much longer day. I get things done at a much faster pace and I feel much more energetic. I started doing this two months back. At first, it was very difficult for me to incorporate this change in my life. But I built in the discipline to do that. It feels very good waking up early and sleeping early. I feel like I have much more energy now. I used to feel very tired even after getting eight hours of sleep before because I was not waking up early. My entire day used to feel very tired. I used to feel irritated very easily. But now it's been good. I try to get up early, start my day with doing some yoga, pranayama, which just gives me a great start of the day. After that, I try to have healthy food and get up, get ready for work and it just makes my day a bit more productive. I've tried doing yoga for almost two months now. It was very difficult to incorporate this in my life because I was a lazy person and getting myself to follow this was a very big challenge. It was a great thing I've incorporated in my life, but yeah, I feel like I can do better now that I have much more time in my day. I can get things done faster and I just have a bit more time to myself and I feel like my sleep gets done very quickly.

    Band 6-7

    The change I would like to talk about is a change I have recently implemented in my life which helps me in saving a lot of time of my day. The change is to wake up early in the morning. Previously, since so many years, I was a night owl person but recently I tried to make myself as an early bird because it's very important nowadays to make ourselves productive in order to attain our goals in this fast-paced world. So, I have to change my routine. That's why I implemented this change in my life. I remember, firstly, I have to face so many difficulties as I was failing to get sleep at night early and then feeling very lazy in the daytime but gradually I started following it. It makes me better and now I can see that I adapted this change of going to bed early simultaneously, waking up early. This change makes me a very good person and overall I would say I feel much more productive than I felt previously.

    Band 6-7

    The main thing I changed in my life was, previously I was not having any kind of plan for a day. The day will go as if what should be done, it will go according to itself. One thing I admired from my wife, she used to do a particular, correct, disciplined form of a day, what the task should be done in a day. So I started to develop the thing in my life. All nights I used to sit and do the points that will be done in the next day. All the things I just note down and when I got up in the morning I used to see the things and I will go according to it. Starting several days it was very difficult to me because it was a drastic change in me from unordered life to ordered life. It was very tough for me in several days, starting days. Then I adopted it and I go on going according to it. Now I think it's a major turn in my life. Because of that my life started in a very disciplined way. I save lots of time and I can invest my time in other things which are beneficiary for my future.

    Band 6-7

    A change that helped me save a lot of time would be the moment that I stopped using social media. So basically what I did was, I uninstalled all the apps from my phone, all the social media apps from my phone. Once when I did that, it was then when I realized that how much time I had been spending on these apps, which I could have productively used on a lot of other things. So I had nearly been using 4-5 hours of social media a day, the time that I could have spent on a lot of things such as studying for sports or going to gym and taking care of myself. So once when I stopped using social media, the main changes that I could see in myself was, I started becoming more productive. I started spending the time on learning for exams which could be useful for my higher studies. Initially it was difficult because when a thing that takes up nearly 4-5 hours of your life a day, and you suddenly stop it, it's really difficult. But slowly I got hold of myself and had some self-control. So eventually I was able to overcome it and now I'm happily living without using them.

    Band 6-7

    The change that helps me a lot of time would be my multitasking skills which I use regularly to avoid more time-consuming works, for example while I was cooking I also turn on the washing machine to clean the clothes, simultaneously the work will be done and it saves me a lot of time, moreover I always think that multitasking helps me very much but it is quite difficult for people to multitask, moreover when multitasking we need to focus on two major things at the same time, people think that it is very much exhausting to do that simultaneously and appropriately and it lacks more of our personal development and confidence on that and we need to focus on both the things at the same time that can consume less time but it is difficult to process that in cooking only I use this type of multitasking because it saves me a lot of time and also in many other during my graduation.

    Band 6-7

    As time plays a virtual role in every individual's life, it's very precocious for every human, being it's the responsibility of every person to be punctual with their time. If I talk about myself a change that helped me save time was after my senior secondary education, before my senior secondary education. I did not use any phone for my studies, but after that when I started using a phone for my studies, it saved a lot of time before using the smartphone I hear old chapters. But I started using my mobile, I watched brief summary videos on YouTube related to my studies. This was not only crucial for watching videos, but it also helped me with the assignment and daily studies.

    Band 6-7

    Well, I do a lot of things to change my life because I want my life to be more organized and efficient. Here I would like to talk about one such change that saved a lot of time. I would like to talk about a thing that changed my lot of time. It is about using online banking. My father taught me to use net banking. Earlier I had to go to bank for my every transaction and to make fixed deposit. It was very time-consuming because I had to wait for hours in a long queue and even there was a holiday or weekend. I had to wait for one or two days for paying my transactions. It was very inconvenient for me because I had faced a lot of problems because of it. When I was in 12th standard, my father introduced me to an online banking which is Google Pay. It makes my life more easier. This app provides me the facility to pay anywhere, anytime to any person. I do not have to wait for anyone to pay. It just takes less than one minute to pay.

    Band 6-7

    A change that has helped me save a significant amount of time is meal prepping. Essentially it involves planning and cooking meals in bulk so that I don't have to cook from scratch every single day. I usually set aside a few hours on Sunday to do my grocery shopping and prepare my meals for the week. It feels like so much enjoyable time and so much free time I have saved to do my rescue.

    Band 6-7

    A way or change that helps save a lot of time for me personally is being well organized and have an early plan out. Preplanned organized way is something that gets you going and being systematic. One of the various ways we could implement this is planning ahead of time and having a timetable of what has to be done in each and every period of time would always get things done for us and it would obviously be more successful in the later part of the time. Something that I find really difficult to do is for example I would like to tell an anecdote of how I had to prepare for my exams, my final board exams and I had only about two weeks so I started creating a timetable listing out things I have to do when and I planned and organized it systematically. Well at first it was pretty difficult to get us to accustomed to it but later on I when doing it repeatedly I got accustomed to it and it eventually turned out to be really easy and feasible and the result that I got out of it is I got the first in school not only did I get first but also I won a prize for the best student award during the graduation. It felt so rewarding and incredible about the results that I have done.
    1 2 3 4 5 6 7
    ielts logo

    Get the IELTS Prep App

    Star rating icon

    4.2

    1M+ Installs

     app download banner image

    Get the app link on your phone

    +91

    Or download app from

    google play storeapp store
    master ielts speaking ad