Family/Friends IELTS Speaking Part 2 Cue Card Questions with Answers

I am going to talk about a time when I was proud of my sister. A few years ago my sister graduated from university and became a qualified midwife. She achieved an excellent score in her degree and had worked hard to achieve it. Before her degree, my sister was a nanny and had two children of her own. The hours were long and badly paid. When my nephew was at school, my sister decided to retrain. She applied for a midwifery course and was accepted. The reason I am so proud of her is that she struggles with dyslexic so she found some of the writing tasks challenging. She never gave up and kept trying to improve her grades. One day she sent me a message, she got a top mark on one of her essays. I was so excited for her. I helped sometimes to check the spelling or flow of her writing but the hard work she put into it got the result. At the same time as studying, she was bringing up young children. On the day of the graduation, my sister was beaming with pride. We all went to the ceremony and had a party to celebrate. Now she has been working at a hospital for five years. She helps women give birth and looks after the newborn babies. She has been promoted and is now in charge of a ward. She even had time to have another baby.

1. Who is this person?
   I am going to talk about my friend Fiona. Fiona and I were very close friends in college. She was one of the very first few people I had met, there. We met during orientation, and we both had the jitters. We were also very excited to start this new chapter of our lives. We bonded over our similar tastes in music and films.
2. How had you lost contact?
   While we were joined at the hip at university, our lives took different paths, what with work opportunities and our own personal lives. After we graduated, we kept in touch for a year or two thanks to social media platforms, but the frequency of communication gradually faded. We did not have a falling-out or anything of the sort. We were just busy with our own individual lives.
3. How did you get back in touch with him/her?
   Not long ago, I went through some old boxes in the attic and I found pictures of us. It was quite moving to reminisce the good old days, and I had this gut feeling that I should reach out and see how she was doing. I used a messaging system on social media and got a very quick response. We had a phone chat shortly after that, and we decided we would keep in touch on a more regular basis. And so we have been doing!
4. And how do you feel about him/her?
   I am so happy I contacted her. When we talked on the phone, it was like we had never been apart. She is an extraordinary person and I am so grateful I know her. She is very responsible and grounded, and it is extremely easy to talk to her

1. Who is he/she?
   . I am going to talk about my friend John. John and I met at university, at the very first student union event I had been to. John was studying linguistics at university and he was very enthusiastic about that subject. He was very academically successful, and his work was often selected as an example to follow for new students starting their first year of the same course.
2. What was it he/she did?
   I remember it was during the last year of his degree, and John had achieved unusually high scores. He had conducted such in-depth research for his assignments, that he was invited to speak at a very prestigious annual language conference. It was quite out of the ordinary for bachelor students to do so, but he was a remarkable student, whose research dissertation had uncovered some ground breaking discoveries. It was a momentous opportunity for him, and I could not have been happier for him.
3. What was the reason you were proud of him/her?
   When he told me the news, my jaw dropped in amazement. I was particularly proud of him because I knew how hard he had worked to get there. He was so impassioned with the subject, and I was pleased to hear that other people had recognised it and given him such an incredible opportunity.
4. And has seeing his/her success had an impact on the person you are today?
   I often think about John when I feel I am at a loss. It happens sometimes that certain modules in my course do not stimulate me enough, or certain coursework is too challenging, but when I think of John’s achievement, it helps me regain confidence in myself and in my love for the subject. He is a good example of someone who has followed his passion wholeheartedly, and didn’t back away from the challenges on the way.

1. What is it?
   I would like to talk about a small red leather covered book, which contains the Complete Works of William Shakespeare. In its days, it was a very expensive volume because it was carefully translated into Spanish by a well known scholar. Printed in a very thin paper, its content is priceless, as it includes complete translations from English – on the left – into Spanish –on the right. This makes the book handy and of use, even though nowadays one can very easily find all the information it contains on the Internet.
2. When did you borrow it?
   It was a long time ago, in the year 1990. I was finishing my degree and one of my teachers kindly lent it to me for a project I was writing about Hamlet, its characters and their plot arches. I instantly fell in love with its pages, its design and shape, so my teacher decided, out of the blue and to my great surprise, I was the one to keep that book when I finished my project. [esln1] I still remember how overwhelmed and thankful I felt when he  told me I could keep it.
3. Who did you borrow it from?
   The teacher’s name is Mrs. Martha Grant and she was a great influence to me. I always had every intention of returning the book, but I feel she never had any desire of keeping it. It can be seen as part of a’didactic or educational’ inheritance and I do keep the book in a very special place in my book shelves.