Describe an Occasion when You Wasted Your Time: Cue Card Topic for IELTS Exam

To give a brief about the IELTS exam, it is conducted by IDP and British Council. It has 4 sections: reading, writing, speaking, and listening. You are given in a total of 2 hours and 45 minutes to complete this exam. IELTS is used by many institutions and universities abroad that allow foreign candidates to study or work in their country. As most of the countries use English as a language to communicate, it becomes important for them to assess that the person to their company can understand English, can write it, can read it, and can speak the English language.

Talking about the speaking section, in particular, is 15 minutes and it is easier than the other if you practice it well and understand its structure. In this article, we will make you understand how to write the answer for cue card topics such as:- “Describe an occasion when you wasted your time”.

Do’s and Don’ts for the IELTS Exam Speaking Section

Like any other exam, you have to understand and make yourself acquainted with all the tips and things to avoid for the exam. You should practice these do’s and don’ts in your sample test so that during your interview you don’t forget any of these and you don’t waste time pondering upon what points to say and what not to say. So, read the points below to have better clarity to achieve a good score in the speaking section

 Do’s

• Focus on using a wide range of grammatical structure
• Use idioms
• Correct pronunciation
• Use voice modulation and articulation
• Use pause

 Don’ts 

• Avoid using high vocabulary
• Avoid fillers like:- And, umm, like, so
• Don’t have a monotone
• Don’t Memorise answers from sample papers

Keep these points in mind, will make your task easy and gives you direction to focus on rather than wasting your time on things that are to be avoided.

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Introduction- Describe an Occasion when You Wasted Your Time

To initiate you can tell the examiner what value time has for you and are a frequent time waster or you give utmost importance to it. After describing this, you can move further to describe Where you were when you were wasting your time and when the situation happened.

Answer

“ I consider time as of utmost importance. To manage your time,  well I also prioritize my work so that no time of mine is wasted. And I try my best to make others also understand this because time never stops for anybody, and if you don’t move with the time you will lag behind losing the race. But out of human tendency, there are instances where I Procrastinate and in this procrastination, I waste a few hours of mine. But I consider it okay because it is not frequent nor is it out of habit. I’ll tell you about the occasion when I wasted my time. I wasted my time when I did not get what I wanted. The instance is from 2 years back when I was longing for a thing that I loved.

Main Body-  IELTS Exam Sample Topic Describe an Occasion when You Wasted Your Time

After initiating the topic, you can move further by telling what you did at that time, and how you were feeling.

Answer:

“ I am a person that does not like things easily but when I do I work hard to get it. So this time, it was the same, I was looking forward to achieving a thing, but at last, I failed to achieve it due to some reason. Because of it, I was feeling gloomy and doing nothing at that time. I lost my concentration for that day and felt like I had no energy left to do anything else. Hence, I decided to do nothing for a day and take a rest. I needed this rest because I was not ready to do anything else at that point in time. I did nothing as decided and I just sat, slept, and ate food, I repeated these tasks for the whole day.”

Closure

While you end your speech you can mention were guilty of wasting your time or how it affected you. You can also elaborate on why you think that it was a waste of time.

 Also Read: Describe a Performance You Recently Watched: IELTS Cue Card Sample Question

Answer

“ Doing nothing was a good decision for me because if I had continued any of my work it would have been a disaster. And as it is said, it becomes mandatory for a person to take breaks in between heavy schedules. I didn’t feel guilty about wasting my time that day, because I felt that I was mentally relaxed after that day. The pressure I had on myself to achieve that thing, I got some space from it. It affected me in a positive way. But still, I think this was a waste of my time because I could have taken a rest for a few hours instead of taking the rest for the entire day. But I am happy, with the choice I make and feel relaxed now.

Follow up Questions from IELTS Exam Cue Card Topic

After you finish your speech, to better understand you the examiner asks a few follow-up questions from you. It can be generic or it can be related to what you expressed in your speech. It is advised that you should read the follow-up questions given in the sample paper, as you get an idea about what questions you can be asked. But if you are planning to memorize the answers for these cue cards then, you should not memorize them as the examiner is looking for an authentic answer and not the copy-paste one.

IELTS Exam Cue Card Follow up Questions

• How do you manage your time?
• What is your general routine of the day?
• How can children be taught about managing their time?
• Do you think relaxing is wasting time?
• When do you prefer to relax and when do you prefer to waste your time?

Conclusion

Scoring in the speaking section of IELTS is equally important as other sections are. So, to score good marks in the section, you need to keep in mind what points to follow while speaking, what not to speak, and on what basis you will be assessed. Follow the structure given above for the sample IELTS exam cue card topic- Describe an occasion when you wasted your time.