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

Describe a positive experience you have had when you were a teenager.

You should say:

• what it was
• when you had it
• how you had it

and explain why this experience was positive for you.

Sample Answer 1:
Life is a great journey and in our life, we are bound to experience new things almost every day. Experiences we have in our teenage years often shape our future personality and perspective of life. As a teenager, I have had many experiences and many of them are quite positive and remarkable. For this cue card topic, I would like to describe one such positive experience that I had when I was fifteen years old.

In my early teenage years, I had to struggle a lot to cope with the changes – both physical and psychological; (may be most of the teenagers go through this phase!). When I turned to my 15th year, I was already having a different view of the world and most of my struggling was almost gone. My parents and my younger brother helped me a lot to overcome these teenage complexities. I started feeling the benefits and responsibilities of growing up and I was learning many new things including the importance of family bonding and the necessity of utilising the time properly. I was very happy to be able to eliminate my sufferings and psychological issues. I was in my grade 9 at that time and my father wanted me to take some serious and important extra-curricular activities. He discussed the importance of such activities and asked me what attracts me besides collecting stamps and playing football. I told him that I would be interested in joining a local philanthropic society that mostly helps the deprived children and homeless people. My father was quite surprised to hear that and finally appreciated my decision and arranged my involvement with this society. I was with this society that worked for less privileged children and poor people in our area. I had been an active member of this society for about two years until my family had to move to a new city.

These two years were incredibly positive years for me. I had no idea how talented many poor kids were and how few small bits of help could assist the poor people to change their fates until I got involved with this society. We had our limitations and could not do everything for those less fortunate people and children but the little we did was showing a remarkable progress. We had been able to send many children to government funded schools and many of those kids showed outstanding performance. Until I worked with those unfortunate children, I had no idea that many of them had a better experience of life than we had! That was a very a shocking yet a positive experience for me. I learned many things from my involvement with this society that I would never have learned from anywhere else.

This is fairly an outstanding experience for me as it had shaped my future character and vision of life. Now I feel quite proud that I had decided to work for those less privileged segment of the society and had spent times to do something better for them. I also thank my father who is a great person and a great mentor for letting me join this philanthropic society. He actually allowed me to start a new journey in my life that had a great impact in my later life.

Sample Answer 2:
Passing the childhood in a village was the greatest blessing for me. In fact, I received my first positive experience from that place located in Peshawar, Pakistan. I helped a dog to be free from a trap set by the hunters.

The event took many years ago; when I was a teenager. I used to play with my friends near the jungle. A good number of people went into the jungle to hunt wild animals. So, they used different types of traps to catch the animals. On a day, I found a dog was screaming and I went nearer to that animal. The left leg of the dog was entrapped with the trap and also the bone was broken for the pressure created by the trap. I removed the trap and took the dog to a hospital in the locality. Actually, there were no veterinary institutions nearby and one the other side the dog was having serious pain. It was the positive experience for me.      

I was a teenager at the time of the event. Being a village, most of the cases, we all passed our times in out of home activities. I used to be the part of a group of teenagers. All of us played different games and sports in the evening in the local field. Besides, each of the boys was wild and wicked. So, I can say that the teenage was the best time of my life. But the experience with the ill-fated dog was a memorable one for me. I have never done such a good task before. Rather, I have participated in many mischievous activities with my friends. Sometimes, I had to endure pressure from my parents for participating in such activities. But this was a quite different experience for me.    

We were playing some sort of local outdoor sports and running was the key feature for the sport. So, I ran and hide inside the jungle with two of my friends. Suddenly, we heard a noise and started seeking the source of the noise. Gradually, we discovered that a dog was entrapped in a trap and it was unable to shout loud. It might have lost all of its strengths to shout. So, I asked my friends to assist me in freeing the dog. One of them denied that he was unable to touch a dog. So, I took the help from the other one. It was not possible for me to remove the dog’s leg from the strong trap. After removing it from the trap, we took it to the hospital. The dog’s left leg was broken into two pieces.

It was a positive experience for me. In fact, for the first time, I did a positive work. The doctor cared for the dog and praised me and my friend for bringing it to the hospital. All the other activities I took part in were mischievous and also were aimed to harm anyone or to damage anything. This was the only task so far that was to save something. Considering the issue, it was really a positive one for me. After that experience, I felt a different sort of satisfaction inside my mind. Hence, I tried to do increase the number of such activities.

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 positive experience you have in your life.
2. Describe a valuable experience you learned.
3. Describe a memorable event from your childhood.

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