Cue Card Sample

IELTS Cue Card # 154 - Describe one of your long-time friends

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

Describe one of your long-time friends.

You should say:

  • when you first met this friend
  • what he/she is like
  • how you two keep in touch with each other

and explain why this friendship is important to you.

Follow-up Questions:
-   How do people make new friends?
-  What do you think makes people have a long-term friendship?
-  Does it make things easier in a friendship if you have similar interests?


 

Model Answer 1:
I must say that I have been lucky to have a number of great friends around me. While I met some of them just recently or a few years ago, some others have remained friends to me for a long, long period of time. In fact, some of them have continued to be my friends from my early high school days, and today here, I would like to describe one of those friends from my high school days.

The friend I have in my mind is Nayeem Seikh. He used to attend the same grade as me in the same high school we attended more than 15 years ago. If I remember correctly, I talked to Nayeem for the first time when I requested him to look after my backpack (I used the backpack to carry my books) for a while, as I wanted to leave the school premises for a while to grab some snacks for myself. He gladly agreed, and it was from that time that our decade-long friendship started.

Well, I have known Nayeem as one of those most gentle and humble guys I have ever met. He is more on the quiet side, and that probably what makes him such an intelligent person. And, it is because of his intelligence, I have sought advice from him in the past on numerous occasions.  In fact, I seek advice from him, over the phone or through letters, still today even though he lives in another city which is almost 300 kilometres away from mine. Of course, it’s not like I contact him only when I need his advice, but rather, I call him or email him every once in a while just to say “hello”.

Anyway, my friendship with Nayeem is important to me because we have a lot of history and good memories together. Besides, I am blessed that there is hardly any friend around me, who understands me as good as my good friend Nayeem, which means that I can talk to him freely about any stuff. Finally, this friendship is important to me also because I can always rely on him for any kind of advice or consultation.


 

Model Answer 2:
I have many, many friends, and among them, there are a few friends whom I have known for a really long time. One such friend is (...say the name of your friend...), and he/she has many distinctive characteristics that I venerate about him/her. I've known this friend since my childhood and I value our friendship so much.

He/she comes from a middle-class family, and he/she has a natural talent for learning new things very quickly. I met him/her for the first time in our high school when he/she sat beside me. He/she had some distinguishing characteristics and that's why I started observing him/her closely out of curiosity. Later we became good friends.

Though he/she was very talented, he/she did not tend to hold on to something for a long. He/she was perhaps one of the most talented students in our class, but because his/her priority to do almost everything that he/she liked, he/she did not have notable academic results.

I liked the fact that he/she was active in many extra-curricular activities and he/she was good at them. He/she was a good chess player, an excellent math whiz, a great puzzle solver, a tactical badminton player and a great computer programmer. Everybody thought he/she would become either a renowned mathematician or an engineer. But to everybody's surprise, he/she completed his/her graduation in History. After he/she finished his graduation he/she learned more programming and computer designing and started his/her career in Information Technology. I know that he/she is a good programmer and designer and in he/she is doing well in his/her profession.

These days we mostly chat online or talk over the phone and can hardly manage time to meet and talk in person. I think I have talked to him/her in person around a couple of months ago.

He/she is a close friend of mine and though we do not spend much time together these days, we have a strong bond and we value our friendship. I know how talented and creative he/she is. I like his/her honesty, talent, truthfulness, boldness, bravery, and for his/her unquenchable thrust for knowledge and freedom.


 

Cue Card Answer 3:
James is more than just a friend to me. He is, in fact, my best buddy and a brother I never had!  I like to spend time with him more than any other friend. For this topic, I would like to describe him and my friendship with him.

I met him in grade 6 in my junior school. On the first day of our class in grade 6, he sat beside me, and when I noticed that he was busy with something hidden in his desk, I became curious about him. Next week we exchanged storybooks, and that was the beginning of a long-term friendship. We are still good friends.

These days, he works in a consultancy firm as an executive. He is also planning to settle in Canada with his family. And I am planning to complete my Master's degree in a reputed university in the UK.

We still try to meet each other in our free time and discuss different issues and plans in our life. These discussions include, but not limited to, our family, politics, works, technology, films, music, sports, and our plans for our future. We had been in touch with each other even when we were in different colleges and worked in different cities. Thus our friendship grew stronger despite the time and distance.

We respect each other, criticise each other - when applicable, and try to help each other. Respect and trust, in my opinion, are two vital aspects of a solid friendship, and we never had any issue with those. I never need to hide anything from him as I can be quite myself around him. Interestingly, we can comfortably continue conversations without any hard feelings even when we have contrasting views on something.

On numerous occasions, we did exciting things that our parents would not probably allow us to do as young boys. For instance, we once collected frogs of various species in a large box and then freed them after a week. On another occasion, we visiting a very old building to find hidden treasures. We were young and carefree.

In our life, we make many friends. While some remains with us temporarily, a few of them stick with us for a long. James is one such friend who had been with me for a couple of decades. I believe that good friends are like family members who would comfort us, guide us, encourage us, and help us in our difficult times. James is such a friend to me and whom I can completely trust.


 

Similar Cue Card Topics

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

1.    Describe a good friend you have.
2.    Describe a helpful person you know about.
3.    Describe one of your childhood friends.
4.    Describe a friend you know from your school.
5.    Describe a friend you like to spend time with.

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