Cue Card # 206: A significant achievement in your life

IELTS Cue Card/ Candidate Task Card # 206

Describe a significant achievement in your life.

You should say:

• what it is
• when you achieved it
• what you had to do to achieve it

and explain why you consider it a significant achievement in your life.

[You will have to talk about the topic for one to two minutes. You have one minute to think about what you are going to say. You can make some notes to help you if you wish.]

Model Answer:

Depending on how one defines significant achievement, I can’t really claim that I have had very many of them except a very few, and today I would like to talk about one of them.

This significant achievement came on my way about 15 years ago, when I passed my secondary school certification exam (after 10 years of schooling) with almost an average of 85% marks on 10 subjects while I was actually a 70-80% marks student, at best. Not only that but also I got hit by a very dangerous and debilitating para-typhoid fever just one month prior to that very important exam.

Because of that fever, I became so weak at one point that I had to “pant” only after taking some 30-odd steps, and that too after walking at a slow speed. Besides, I couldn’t even write for more than 5 minutes at a stretch because of the numbness in my fingers. Seeing my health condition in that miserable state, all of my family members and relatives advised me not to appear for the test because they all thought that I would definitely fail the test.

But, I wasn’t to give up so easily. In fact, this was for the first time that I felt that I was going to achieve something glorious which wouldn’t be possible for me under normal circumstances. So, I gave my all to study and memorize things as best as I could, and for that, I even stopped communicating with my family members unless it was absolutely necessary. I also took the strategy of “studying 30 minutes and then sleeping the next hour” to save my energy. On top of that, I also stopped watching TV and listening to music for almost a month, which were two of my favourite things to do.

Anyway, it was certainly a very significant achievement for me since it gave me a chance to study at a very good college in my country which probably otherwise wouldn’t be possible. Besides, it also gave me a much-needed boost in my confidence level which I was very much lacking up until that point.