Cue Card Sample

IELTS Cue Card # 172 – Describe a good quality you admire in your friends

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

Describe a good quality you admire in your friends.

You should say:

what quality it is
how this is a good quality
how you feel about having this quality

and explain why you like this quality among your friends.

Model Answer 1:
Having friends in our life is important because they complement us in many ways. Therefore, it is also equally important that we choose our friends carefully, based on certain qualities. One such quality, which I really admire in my friends, is positive thoughts and attitude.

Actually, carrying positive thoughts and attitude is such a rare and precious quality that one would need dozens of pages to highlight its importance. It is these positive thoughts and attitude of a person that motivate him to achieve and accomplish all sorts of things in life. I used the phrase “all sorts of things” here to underscore the fact that while common people tend to do take care of only the so-called important tasks seriously in life, the people with positive thoughts and attitude take even the so-called little and unimportant things seriously, in addition to the things that are deemed generally important.

So, I must say that I am really glad that almost all of my friends carry this great quality in them because they have helped me get through a lot of challenges in my life. By the way, I didn’t understand the importance of this rare and gifted quality, until I started my second job when my boss told me that he couldn’t care any less about my performance at my job as long as I was trying my best to carry a positive attitude in me. In fact, he even lectured me once for a good 30 minutes to teach me about how to remain positive. And, it was after that little valuable lecture that I started to become selective in picking my friends.

Well, I like this great quality in all of my friends because they always bring out the best in me, even when things look rather bleak for me, in order to face the tough challenges in this modern and complicated world. Besides, my friends with this rare quality in them always make me happy and smile by helping me understand the fact that life is too short to remain sad and unhappy.

Sample Answer 2:
I expect my good friends to have several important qualities, and among them, “truthfulness” is the feature I admire the most. So, for this topic, I would like to talk about how this important quality makes our friendship stronger, and how its absence can ruin it all.

In my opinion, the most significant quality that makes the bond among friends stronger is truthfulness. If a friend tells me the truth, no matter what, I would stick to his/her friendship. Trustworthiness can exist only if the truthfulness persists between two friends.

I sometimes evaluate others in the way I judge myself. For instance, I would tell the truth to my friends and I know this would make them rely on me and have faith in me in the long run. Similarly, I want my friends to always tell the truth even the truth is not always pleasant to hear. I believe that lies can never make friendship strong, and if a friend finds out that his/her friend has lied to him/her, their bond would become shaky.

I believe that a good friend should never lie to his/her friends and thus the truthfulness among friends strengthens their trust, reliability, dependency and confidence. For all these reasons I like this quality and I expect my friends to possess it.

Part Three – Details Discussion:

Q. What type of qualities you prefer to make friends?
Answer: The two most important qualities that I always prefer are “a positive mentality” and “honesty” among friends. If someone has these two qualities, I will become his/her friend easily. Apart from that, I look at the way he or she makes a conversation, criticise others and behave with others. Finally, I would also look for common interests between us as I believe having common interests and similar views make friendships stronger.

Q. Do you have many friends? How much time do you spend with friends?
Answer: I used to have quite a large number of friends during my college years. Nowadays I have comparatively fewer friends, but they are very close to me. I have 4 close friends and many other good friends whom I really like to discuss, talk and spend time with.

As I have got busy these days, I spend around 5 to 6 hours with my friends weekly. Sometimes, it is as high as 10 hours a week.

Q. What is more important to you – your family or your friends?
Answer: I would say that family comes first. However, that does not mean that my friends have no special place in our life or heart.

My family is my first connection, and I love all of my family members. They, especially my parents, have done a lot for me. They are, in fact, still sacrificing for the betterment of my life. This is unique and could not be expected from anyone else.

On the contrary, friends are important to make our life meaningful and truly happy. We need friends to enjoy our time with them, discuss important events with them, share things that we would often hesitate to share with others and so on. Good friends are like great comfort and support in life.

Q. Why we admire some people while we do not like others?
A. I think there are no specific laws and rules for admiring or disliking someone. However, from my experience, I can say that we generally like someone who we find helpful, amiable and talented. People who are selfless and work for the greater good of society are often cherished by us. For instance, I have neither met Thomas Alva Edison nor Mother Teresa. But I admire both of them for the things they have done for humanity.

Then we often revere our parents due to their great sacrifices for us and this admiration comes naturally. Sometimes we are helped by people who we never expect to help us and we develop an admiration for them.

On the contrary, disliking comes mostly from someone’s behaviours, actions and way of life. For example, if someone behaves rudely, we immediately dislike him or her. I guess we have a natural tendency of reacting depending on someone’s attitude towards us. We can also hate a corrupted person and a person who is quite selfish and harmful to others.