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.
people images

33 unique answers with expert feedback

Show all 33 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 6-7

    The change that helps me save a lot of time is planning the task ahead at the start of the day. It helps me keep track of the task throughout the day and be focused within the time allotted for the task. And discipline helps me to navigate the task well and being consistent saves me a lot of time and it keeps me efficient and complete. So through these three things, discipline, planning, consistency, I am able to complete the task efficiently in a day. Moreover, it makes me feel good if I am able to complete more number of tasks planned which makes me do the tasks of next day much better than I have done currently the previous day. So it helps me to, it motivates me to improve on doing that task much better and being more efficient throughout the day. So this is how, this is one of the one change that helped me a lot to save a lot of time that is recent past. And I keep working on my discipline and my efficiency. Yep, that's it.

    Band 6-7

    The best thing that I want to change that saves a lot of time is getting or waking up early in the morning. Waking up early in the morning helps to boost your mood. The thing which I really do is getting up late. I usually get up at 10-10.30 so by waking up early I will be able to manage my time. My college starts at 10 o'clock so I wake up at 9 o'clock so although there is one hour of time to get ready, if I wake up early in the morning, I can do a bit of exercises which motivates me and helps me to stay hydrated the whole day. So it helps me to manage my time a lot which is an advantage. Usually I used to not get up early in the morning as I feel very drowsy. I tend to sleep during reading in the morning. So I used to not get up early in the morning but as I get used to it, I feel some enthusiasm and it helps me to stay hydrated the whole day and I can concentrate on what I am doing. So I am able to experience it. So I tend to change it getting up early in the morning. Not only getting up early but it not only helps to manage my time but also it helps me to plan my whole day like how I can spend the time the whole day. So it helps me to plan my that day's routine.

    Band 6-7

    In today's fast-paced world, managing time effectively is crucial for productivity, efficiency and overall well-being. One significant change that has helped me save a tremendous amount of time is embracing technology, especially task management tools and apps. Prior to adopting these tools, I relied on traditional methods like paper planners, sticky notes and mental reminders. While these methods worked to some extent, they were often cumbersome, disorganized and prone to errors. I would spend hours each week planning, organizing and rearranging my tasks, which took away from the time I could dedicate to actual work. By implementing such tools in my life, like setting reminders and notifications, collaborate with others where I can share tasks, projects and calendars with colleagues, family, friends, making teamwork and coordination seamless, and to centralize my tasks, all my tasks, reminders and deadlines are now in one place, easily accessible and organized. By doing all these, I have been able to save a significant amount of time each week, according to my estimates. I have reduced my planning and organization time by at least 50%. This saved time is now allocated to more important tasks, such as learning new skills, working on certain projects or simply enjoying quality time with my loved ones.

    Band 6-7

    I mean there are a number of ways that I have learned how to manage my own time in the last few months and the major change that I have brought to my lifestyle is planning in advance I think nothing beats a proper planning of your priority list the things that are important and to be done on an urgent basis you go to them first and accomplish them deciding which is more important also is a important thing because then you avoid spending useless time on things which do not really matter so I think planning makes makes your time more efficient and you don't spend it on useless things another thing I would say is the technique called batching so tasks which are more repeatable let's say doing laundry paying bills meeting some friends all of these activity rather than rather than doing them at a certain frequency let's say on a daily basis or once in a two three days you make a batch and do it once in like a interval of two weeks or three weeks let's say I do all my laundry in once in a two week let's say I pay all my bills on one single day so that I don't have to spend the energy and time doing those same tasks again and again and now I have more valuable time available for the things that I would like to do so I think that that is the main technique or main way that I have learned how to manage my own time and one thing is you just stop procrastinating because then things just pile up and then you get overwhelmed and nothing gets done and and everybody has time they just don't know how to manage it well

    Band 6-7

    So for I think almost a year I have been working on myself trying to identify the areas where I lack and for example I started my job as a business analyst and in that role you must need like you must need a proper communication skills which I used to lack but then I started working on it I was working on how to improve that I then I worked on building my confidence and working on all of these things has really helped me to be more confident be more open and it has helped me how to communicate with clients and that process was really difficult and it really takes time to know things about yourself because you really have to do hit and trial in every and each and every aspects of improving those things so it took almost an year I'm still learning a lot about it and still working on myself and I believe everyone should work on themselves try to get to know themselves before that before they go to their 25 or 20 30s because if you know yourself and if you know what you want in life what are the areas that you lack and what are the things that you are strong at it will really help you to choose a career to make decisions and doing so it will literally save your time rather than wasting your time on making decisions that are not what you want and doing that it will waste your time

    Band 6-7

    I think one of the way that helps me to save time and energy is traveling by metros instead of the buses in when I am in New Delhi because traveling by metros save you a lot of time as you tend to bypass all the traffic jam. Moreover and traveling by metro is quite convenient and very peaceful as compared to traveling by a car or a bus. I think it has saved me a lot of time and energy and I would rather travel by a metro than by a car or a bus. I think traffic is one of the major problems that most of the major cities face nowadays. To tackle that metros are a great solution. I have been using metros since I've traveled to New Delhi and metros are one of the most used modes of transportation in New Delhi. Around 1 million people use metro daily in New Delhi. According to estimates the New Delhi metro is one of the most used and busiest metro around the world. Transportation needs a lot of improvement and government needs to spend a lot of money and time to find out more efficient ways to transport people from one place to another.

    Band 6-7

    I've been practicing one change in my life on a daily routine. So it is called a one hour time limit. So it's not an internet product or anything. I just went through an internet troll about it and I started implementing it. So it's more like if I want to do some workout or if I want to do any task and work I do a lot of procrastinating. So just to avoid that I put an alarm for one hour so that I can jump into that task no distractions and all. I can work on it for one hour until the alarm stops. After that I'll take a 15 minutes or something sometime a break and I'll start doing or working on another task. So it was kind of hard at the beginning because one hour is a pretty long time for me to work on one thing. So I ended up taking breaks in middle but now I'm like getting up and doing that one hour work completely not by any distractions and all. So in conclusion I can say it is working pretty effectively these days.

    Band 6-7

    So, firstly, earlier I used to have a lot of, I used to waste a lot of time, time of mine, like whenever my exams will get over, I just started chilling and not studying until the next exam is, next exam approaches, but when I decided to preparing for my IELTS examination, I had to give up this habit of mine of wasting time. I used to, I used to use time very wisely and try to establish a balance between my chilling time and my studies and also, it was very difficult initially because I had to manage both the things, like I had to manage my college as well as IELTS preparation, so I used to not get time at all because my college timings are from 9am to 6pm, meanwhile I have my postings as well in between the college timings, so I decided, I decided to make a time table or something like that so that I could not waste much time and give all the time to the, to the, all the remaining time to my preparation. I always wanted to study abroad, for that I need to work hard, I worked really hard for that, I am working, still working really hard for that and I think this, this way changed me a lot because I completely stopped wasting my leisure time, I used to become, I become more punctual and I become…

    Band 6-7

    There may be several ways that help other people so that they can save their time. But what I do to save my time is to make a to-do list. Usually I plan my activities the night before the scheduled work. For example, if I have a meeting or a presentation for my college, I plan the list of what to do and what not to do. Also I gather all the things that are required for the work beforehand so that it saves my time. Otherwise, it can be very time consuming. And I think about the list of my procedures of what to expect and what not to expect in that work schedule so that I can be prepared beforehand. It saves my time. Also sometimes it's very cost effective because I do not have to repeat the same work if it gets filled.

    Band 6-7

    Although this may sound quite silly, a change that's helped me adapt with functioning or being able to complete tasks on time in the kitchen is using a vegetable chopper. It took us some time to buy a vegetable chopper, largely because of societal norms and which imply that we have to make everything from scratch or everything has to be a detailed manual labour intensive process. And it took some time for my parents and me to learn that it's okay to automate some things in your life. And what I like about the vegetable chopper is that it's easy and convenient to use and it significantly changes the amount of time you need to prepare dishes. And probably due to our middle class mentality, we thought of it as a luxury, but now we've come to notice that it is an essential luxury. It saves my mom plenty of time as she wakes up earlier than all of us to prepare food for the whole family. As for me, it mostly helps me out because I am way less experienced than she is in the kitchen, so my cuts used to be very sloppy. But when it comes to the vegetable chopper, there's only one way the cut would go. So I don't feel as guilty about making the dishes now or even having to worry about how they would taste because sometimes the way you cut affects the way the vegetable gets seasoned while cooking.
    1 2 3 4
    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

    Want to know your score on this topic?

    Check your score now