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

Describe an indoor game that you enjoyed as a child

: You should say

what the game was
where you played it
who played this game with you
and explain why you enjoyed playing this game

: Sample Answer

I haven’t thought about this in years. Erm, I did play games inside quite a lot as a child, everything from board games like snakes and ladders to hide and seek, but that was when I was a bit older. However, I think probably one of my favourite games – or things to play with at least – was when I was really little. Maybe about four? Let me tell you all about it

The game involved playing with a set of simple, pale wooden bricks. I’d had these for as long as I could remember, there were maybe fifty or so differently sized rectangular (cuboid) and square (cube) blocks of wood, and they were stored in a dark green canvas duffle bag which had a white rope handle. I don’t know what the wood type was, but it was pale and they were quite light, so I could manage them even with my tiny hands. The bricks provided me with hours of creativity and fun, even though they don’t sound at all promising. From an early age, I’d toddle over to the bag, find a spot on the floor at home, and just upturn all the bricks in a messy pile on the floor. The ‘game’ was simply to build things. Sometimes I might make a tower as high as I could before it toppled over. Other times I’d create creatures or whole worlds with different bricks perhaps representing a different building or animal. I just used my imagination, the bricks could be absolutely anything I wanted

Playing with bricks sounds like it might be a solitary activity. It’s true, sometimes I did just play on my own, absorbed in my own thoughts. However, sometimes I’d play with my sister too, and together we would create our own universe which we might control, or at least interact with. If friends came around we could work together to construct more complex creations. A tower might be built even higher with two minds at work trying to fathom out how to make it stable. Or we would develop each other’s ideas in the way that only small children with boundless imaginations can do. We had no limits to our creativity, and we were so small at that age that everything we saw was new and unexpected, so it was just as easy to imagine a goat as a dinosaur – both were equally unfamiliar in my world, so why not have dragons and unicorns too? It is amazing what a little rectangle of wood can represent if you have an open mind, and believe everything is possible

Why did I enjoy it? Thinking back I just remember feeling content and absorbed with this game. I suppose when you are so small, maybe four years old or thereabouts, there isn’t much you get to control in life. However, with this game, I could do whatever I wanted and in my imagination travel wherever I pleased. It was something I could do with other playmates too – though I wonder how co-operative we really were at that age. I also can still remember the sense of satisfaction of building an enormous tower of bricks that was even taller than me… and then the seemingly endless joy of knocking it all down again and watching the many bricks scatter across in all directions! I don’t think I’ve ever felt quite so powerful since

I don’t remember exactly what age I was when I outgrew playing with such simple bricks, but I do feel a bit nostalgic when I look back at that time. Nowadays children’s construction kits are much more sophisticated, with models coming with instructions on how they should be built. I wonder if we have lost a little there, a construction kit with a picture showing how the finished model is ‘supposed’ to look, might help you build a replica of an existing building perhaps, but your imagination might use the same materials to create a whole new world! I know which I would prefer to do