Details

Written by IELTS Mentor

IELTS Speaking Part 2: IELTS Cue Card/ Candidate Task Card.

Describe a friend who has played an important part in your life.

You should say:

• who was he/she
• how you two met
• how long you two have known each other

and explain what important part he/she has played in your life.

Model Answer 1:

Somewhere I heard or read that walking with a friend in the dark is better than walking alone in the light. And, I must say that I fully agree with the statement. Indeed, friends are important because they always somehow affect us. Today, I would like to talk about one such friend who has played an important part in my life.

His name was Fazle Rabbi, and he was my university friend. I met him for the first time at our university cafeteria about 7 years ago when we both were waiting on a line to pay for our coffee.

He asked me if I was coming from a certain part of my county as I was talking in a different dialect, and I said that he was right in his assumption. After that casual conversation, our friendship had started, and we are continuing our friendship still to this date Anyway, both I and Fazle were in the same year of our university, but Fazle was studying a different subject.

After we started our friendship, Fazle had helped me with a number of things, which included collecting class notes for me from his friends and taking me to the hospital when I was sick. Sometimes, he even offered me to use his bicycle to reach the university library on a cold evening. Even though we were just friends, we treated each other like a brother. By the way, I had a bad habit of smoking, and it was Fazle who finally convinced me to quit smoking. Fazle even took a very innovative approach to force me to follow a particular study routine, which ultimately had helped me to get a very good final grade, when leaving university.  

Anyway, Fazle has influenced my life in a tremendous manner, but I think that he played his most important role as a friend when he encouraged me to choose teaching as a profession instead of becoming a public health professional. In fact, it is because of my friend Fazle that I have such a fulfilling career today.

Sample Answer 2:

I always consider myself to be extremely lucky to have many close friends who have raised their helping hands in times when I desperately needed. Thus I have many real friends who are not only friends in good times but also for bad times. One such friend is Ricardo who helped me greatly and his contribution to my life has placed him in an important and special position in my life.

This was the time when I was a fresher in my college and I became acquainted with Ricardo. Our friendship grew deeper with time and we became very close friends. In my second year, I got involved in a local group and I was mostly interested in their theatre performance. I never knew they were indirectly involved in politics and were funded by the major political party of our city. When I got suspicious of this group’s activity I submitted my resignation and then the real dilemma started. They would not allow me to leave intentionally and started showing me how much they have already done for me. Somehow I did not care and left this group. After a few months, the group was accused of doing political vandalism and an act against the law and I got trapped. As they have not permitted me officially to resign, I was shown as an active member of this group. I was quite in trouble as my college authority took it as a serious threat towards their disciplinary rules and they started interrogating me.

In fact, I had no big connections and influences to get out from this trap and my friend Ricardo came to save me from this ploy with every connections and influence he had. I knew him merely for only 2 years at that time and to my surprise, he did everything humanly possible to save me from the disgrace.

In fact, because of his help and advice, I had been able to save myself from an unexpected danger and disgrace. Even the college authority would not have listened to me if he had not been there for me. Thus he has saved me from a disastrous experience I might have to face. After that, I started feeling immense gratitude towards him and consider his help as an important part of my life.

Sample Answer 3:

Thank you very much for this nice topic. I really appreciate the time you have allowed me to think about this topic and then describe it to you.

Well, for this candidate task card, I am going to talk about one of my friends from childhood and her name is Geetha. She was one of the closest friends to me and also a classmate, and her home was adjacent to my house. We are friends from my adolescent and we are still close friends.

I still remember our first meeting in our childhood very lucidly. One day on the playground while practising badminton, I saw her and at that time, we were studying in standard ten; that was 10 years ago, to be more accurate.  She had an aura of friendliness and a great personality, even in her tender and young age. We talked for a while, played badminton together for an hour and discovered that she lives in my area, next door, to be more precise. They have recently moved to this area and I was glad to have met her. We are still very good friends and we remain in touch with each other despite our busy schedule these days.

She had a distinctive personality and a great smile that would give a friendly gesture to others. I have scarcely seen any other with such attractive personality at our age. She has such "good qualities" and I was lucky to have a friend like her. She always encouraged me to participate in different sports and games and it would not be an exaggeration if I say that I would have discontinued playing badminton without her motivation and inspiration. She was a great badminton player and had a natural talent for it. She was caring, helpful and a  great mentor.

I revere our memory together in our school and she was one of the top scorers in our class despite her passion for many other things including sports. Every year our school used to organise sports day - a day when all interested pupils would take part in different sporting competitions and parents and teachers would be invited to witness the competition. I had been intimidated by the arrangements of this big sporting event and did not have enough skill sets to win any prize until Geetha paired with me. She encouraged me and practised about 2 hours in the evening daily.  With time I overcame my fear and became a better player with her courage, tips and help. Interestingly in a year, we became the winning team and that was possible due to her great contribution to my improvement. I was really over the moon on the night and thanked her or her help. My parents were happy as I was progressing with my academic studies as well.
 
So my friend is the person who has influenced very positively in my life and I will never forget her. Friends are like smiles in our face and a good friend is a heavenly gift. Geetha was such a good friend, she still is, and I hope our friendship continues forever.  

[Written by - Aysha Fathima]

Similar Cue Card Topics

Your ability to talk about this Cue Card would enable you to talk about the following Cue Cards as well:

1. Describe a time when someone helped you.
2. Describe a friend who helped you once.
3. Describe a bad experience you have in your life.
4. Describe a memorable event in your life.
5. Describe an event when you were trapped.
6. Describe a helpful friend you have. 

• IELTS Cue Card
• IELTS Speaking
• Candidate Task Card

• Prev
• Next