Cue Card # 186: When you participated in a team sport

IELTS Cue Card/ Candidate Task Card # 186

Describe a time when you participated in a team sport.

You should say:

• when it was
• what sport it was
• who you played this sport with

and explain how you felt about participating in this team sport.

[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 have played several team sports, like football, hockey, badminton, and volleyball, while growing up as a young boy, but for some reason, volleyball seems to have stuck with me. So, since I enjoy playing volleyball more than other team sports, I guess that I will just go ahead and talk about it.

The last time, I played this great sport was about 6 months ago, during the winter time. Of course, it is not a “season-specific” sport in my country – meaning people in my country play this sport around the year. But, for whatever reason, where I live, we have developed a habit of enjoying this sport more during the winter evenings. Is it possible that we feel more energetic during the wintertime?! Who knows!

Anyway, interestingly enough though, although the standard rule of this game says that each team can have only 6 players, most of the time, we play with at least 9/10 players on each side, apparently because we don’t want any of our friends and neighbours to feel left out! But, even then, we always have to leave at least 10 other people, wanting to play with us, on the sideline!

Of course, to accommodate those extra players in both teams, we have to make our volleyball court a bit bigger than its normal and standard size, but we don’t really mind it at all because, after all, we all want to enjoy the game! Besides, the bigger size of the court also means we have more rooms to manoeuvre ourselves for a better display of our volleyball playing skills!

Anyway, the play continued for a good one and a half hours, but as long as we were on that volleyball court, we enjoyed each and every minute of it. We sometimes laughed, we sometimes shouted at our teammates, and of course, we got aggressive as well. But, in the end, we all felt very positive about our physical abilities and volleyball-playing skills, and we didn’t even feel exhausted!