Cue Card # 31: Describe a meeting you remember going to

IELTS Cue Card/ Candidate Task Card # 31

Describe a meeting you remember going to at work, college or school.

You should say:

• when and where the meeting was held
• who was at the meeting
• what the people at the meeting talked about

and explain why you remember going to this meeting.

[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:

I was never really very much fond of any meeting, especially if it involved other fellow staffs of mine, as they accomplish very little or almost nothing. So, when one day, on a late evening, I was asked by our senior manager to attend a meeting in our local office along with my other fellow staffs, I became annoyed and agitated, to say the least.

The “request” (more like an “order” if it comes from your manager) came just when I was about to get ready to leave my work for the day. But, no matter how vexed and agitated I sounded, I knew that I needed to attend the meeting as I didn’t want to lose 10% of my next month’s paycheck!

The meeting called for a general discussion session among our office staffs on how to increase our company’s “online sales” rather quickly. Being a leading candy producing company, we all knew that it was not exactly a very difficult of a task for us if we were to do it according to a clearly laid-out plan and policy. But the problem was that the top management of our company, we all concurred at the meeting, wasn’t exactly very eager to change its “sales policy” even at a time when our main competitors were changing their policies and benefiting from them.

Anyway, even though the meeting lasted for only about 50 minutes with no significant decision made on how to increase online sales, I will remember it as a real confidence-booster for me as I realized for the first time that my company actually values my opinions. After all, it was me who brought up this issue at company annual meetings several times in the past.

Then, suddenly one day, few weeks after that meeting took place, a meeting which I will remember for a long time to come, I was offered a position at the request of my senior manager to work at our company head office with a greater role and bigger paycheck. I remember going to this meeting still to this day also because I, for the first time, succeeded in delivering a speech in front of my peer staffs in that office without trembling and sweating due to extreme nervousness which, up until then, was a matter of great embarrassment for me.