arrow back icon Top Answers

Describe the time when you first talked in a foreign language: IELTS Speaking Cue Card

You should say

  • Where you were
  • Who you were with
  • What you talked about
  • And explain how you felt about it
Show all 104 answers

Cue 1:Where you were

  • Begin by describing the location where you first spoke in a foreign language, making it vivid and relatable.
  • Mention any specific details about the environment that made it memorable.

Example

I was at a language exchange event in my city, held at a local community center. The room was filled with people from different backgrounds, and there was a buzz of excitement in the air as everyone was eager to practice their language skills.

Cue 2:Who you were with

  • Introduce the person or people you were with during this experience.
  • Explain your relationship with them and why they were significant to this moment.

Example

I was paired with a native Spanish speaker named Carlos, who was also learning English. We were both nervous but excited to help each other improve our language skills.

Cue 3:What you talked about

  • Outline the main topics of conversation you had with the person.
  • Include any interesting or funny moments that occurred during your discussion.

Example

We talked about our favorite hobbies, food, and cultural differences. I remember laughing when Carlos tried to explain a traditional Spanish dish, and I struggled to pronounce it correctly.

Cue 4:And explain how you felt about it

  • Share your emotions during and after the conversation.
  • Reflect on how this experience impacted your confidence in speaking a foreign language.

Example

At first, I felt anxious and self-conscious about making mistakes. However, as we continued talking, I felt a sense of accomplishment and joy. It was liberating to express myself in a different language, and I left the event feeling more confident in my abilities.

Conclusion

    Example

    Overall, that experience was a turning point for me. It not only improved my language skills but also encouraged me to seek more opportunities to practice speaking in foreign languages. I realized that making mistakes is part of the learning process, and it made me more open to new experiences.

    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: Avoid Vague Responses

    Being vague can make your answer less engaging and informative. It may lead to a lack of detail that is crucial for a good score.

    bulb icon

    Tip

    Provide specific details about the location, people, and conversation to create a vivid picture for the examiner.

    2: Don't Overuse Simple Language

    Relying too much on simple words can limit your expression and fail to showcase your language skills. This may affect your fluency score.

    bulb icon

    Tip

    Incorporate a variety of vocabulary and sentence structures to demonstrate your language proficiency.

    Neglecting Emotional Impact

    Failing to express how you felt can make your answer less personal and relatable. Emotions add depth to your response.

    bulb icon

    Tip

    Share your feelings about the experience, such as excitement or nervousness, to connect better with the examiner.

    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

    First, I was first taught a foreign language in 2013 when I joined my language center. The first topic is to introduce myself and I introduced myself in front of my classmate. I feel very good that I introduced myself and it's a good feeling to express myself and speak in English in front of my classmate and in front of my teacher. It was a very good experience to speak in front of so many people. I remember my teacher appreciated me. He spoke well when I was speaking in front of my classmate so they also appreciated me. It was a great experience. When I first talked in a foreign language, I learned this language also in my school. At that time, I was in my school time but usually I speak with my classmate when I was in school. So, I usually speak in a foreign language but not verbose, not speak well. When I joined my language center in 2013, I was speaking first in a foreign language.

    Band 6-7

    We first talked to the foreign language when we visited Canada last year and I was accompanied by my friends there as we explored the country and its nature. We first talked English with the local shopkeepers of the country and we asked about their fine goods and other stuffs they had in their shops and what we felt was that in starting we felt a little difficulty communicating with them but slowly we enjoyed the communication and they corrected our mistakes, our grammar and we enjoyed learning the mistakes and hoped to correct them. Thank you.

    Band 6-7

    I was in Kerala for a trip. There I met a British. His accent is different. I'm from India. We usually talk English but the accent and the way we speak English is completely different from what British people speak. So it feels different to talk to them. It was the first time I talked to them. We talked about the dress I wore on that day. He started saying that you are looking adorable. That was our conversation. That was the first time I talked to a British person in British English. It was a completely different experience.

    Band 6-7

    Today I am going to speak on the first time I had spoken a foreign language. Usually my mother tongue is Telugu, but in my school days, we had a rule that we should speak in English, which is not our language or mother tongue. We feel usually hard to speak in English at that moment, because we are too small at that age and we don't have good awareness about that language. We will speak with lot of grammatical errors and there will be no fluency in our language. But after speaking, speaking, speaking, later on that we came to know what the language is, how to speak and we had rectified our errors and I had overcame with that errors and I started speaking fluently and coherently while taking the seminars in my college days, we had to use the English and for communication also, because I transferred to another state, so I have to communicate in another language, which is in English. They don't know my mother tongue and I don't know their mother tongue, so we usually communicate in the language, which is English. So during my all over college, I had competed with my English only.

    Band 6-7

    So, basically, I am a person who loves to speak in my mother tongue and I am so comfortable in my mother tongue language but today I am talking, today I am going to talk about Japanese I heard Japanese from lots of Korean movies and I become aware of it then during my summer vacation I went to Japan and at that time there are lot of Japanese who spoke very well and I think Japanese is a language which is similar to English but I think their language is more polite and it is so, we can, some of the words are similar to Malayalam like Appa and Appa and they greet us and first of all we just don't know Japanese and first of all we can't understand anything and I show my phone to them and we communicate through Google translator and I think we must learn new language and it is more, it is good for us for our better condition.

    Band 6-7

    I would like to talk about a language that is English. I started learning English in my childhood. Actually I was from a Telugu medium background, which is my native language. So we have a simple subject that is English. So when I started my intermediate, during that time I started learning, studying everything in English. So that time I started learning words, vocabulary, especially the technical side of terms. In addition, I also practiced during my break times, new English words, vocabulary, everything. And also the first time I talked in English, which is a foreign language, with the other person is during my working days. So when I worked in TCS company, that time I didn't get a chance to talk to my client, who is a foreign client, who is from US. So during that time I had to talk about the technical terms, I had to give a demo. So that I gave so perfectly and I felt so good about it. I also got compliments from my client's side for the way I presented and for the description.

    Band 6-7

    When I was in Dubai, I have taught the first time in a foreign language, that is English. And my English has been improving since then. And when the first time I taught in a foreign language, I was with my parents getting admission for my kindergarten, which has been a very cute and also good experience while practicing English for many days, but when I used the foreign language, I had made many mistakes out of it, but I could come and overcome it again. And now I have been fluent in English, whereas the first time when I had to speak in English, I couldn't even pronounce some words properly, which were very dissatisfied by me. And now I have been attending a lot of English classes, English lessons, I have written many exams, and I have always topped in my English scores. So this is the first time I have spoken in a foreign language. And now that foreign language has become one of my fluent languages. This had made me a very proud gesture for me as I have been practicing English. And there are many other languages which I know that are Hindi, English, Telugu, Tamil and stuff, but English has become a priority for everyone nowadays. And I am very proud to say that I have been a fluent English speaker in coming days.

    Band 6-7

    Today I want to talk about my experience when I taught first time of foreign language. It was incident after my 10th class completion. I had joined in the spoken class when I had given introduction of myself in English. It was quite an embarrassment for me to introduce in English because I did not have fluency as well as vocabulary and sentence. After speaking 1 to 2 lines, I felt helpless and then I went for sitting. After finishing introduction of all the new students, the mentor came to me and he gave encouragement and asked me to practice daily to improve your foreign language ability to speak, write and to read. So I decided to practice every day and I got my fluency throughout the practice and I could speak clearly than I spoke on first day.

    Band 6-7

    When I was doing degree course, I went Goa with my friends and it was a great fun for me. There I met so many foreigners, so we actually wanted to take a photo with a foreigner. So then we asked a foreigner to pose with us. So I just went to a lady and asked her permission to take a photo with her. And she was very genuine and she agreed to take photos and snaps with us. And that was the time I spoke a foreign language first time in my life. It was a very exciting moment for me and I spoke something related in English language. So that was the first time I used. And furthermore, I just asked her from where she was. She told she was from Netherlands and she was tall and I was short. Anyway, we took lot of snaps nearby beaches and she was very warm and cool lady. She was with her friends too. And after sometimes we had a coffee and then after sometime we left the venue. It was a great event for me.

    Band 6-7

    The first time I spoke a foreign language was back at my time in college, when I was preparing, when I was going for my Bachelor's degree in, Bachelor of Commerce, Finance and Accountancy. I was sitting in a room full of people from the south of India, majorly from Karnataka, who all spoke Kannada, which was a foreign language to me, being a native speaker of Hindi. It was overwhelming, they were all teaching me different words, different sentences, most which I would need to navigate around the city of Bangalore, where my college was located. Talking to auto drivers, negotiating, the art of bargaining, making the shopkeepers feel more at ease, when I'm asking them for surveys, which are eventually needed for college research papers. It was overwhelming at the same time also, there was so much fun, so much new information, something just to get your brain kicking. I loved it.
    1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11
    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