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

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