[The examiner asks the candidate about him/herself, his/her home, work or studies and other familiar topics.]
Topic: Traffic where you live
Q. How do most people travel to work where you live?
A. In my city, most of the office-goers take either the public bus or the metro rail to travel to and from their workplace. Some affluent executives have their own cars and chauffeurs and they use their private cars to commute.
Q. What traffic problems are there in your area? [Why is that?]
A. The roads in my city are congested and busy during the office hours and the increasing use of private cars by the rich makes is worse. Some people do not follow the traffic rules and increase the misery of all commuters. I believe, all the roads in our city should be transformed into four-lane roads and more people should ride bicycles than driving cars.
Q. How do traffic problems affect you?
A. Every day I travel about 25 kilometres to reach my office and then take the same route to get back home. The unbearable traffic jam kills more than 2 hours of my personal time a day. Without any traffic congestion, it should take me only 35 minutes to reach the office, but it often takes me more than one and a half hour. I could have better utilised the time with my family or friends. Bad traffic on the road often bores me and after I reach home, I feel tired on such a day.
Q. How would you reduce the traffic problems in your area?
A. I would increase the number of public buses and enhance their facilities so that more people take buses instead of driving their own cars. Apart from that, I would enhance the roads and engage more traffic police so that traffic rule violators are detected and brought to justice. Finally, I would increase the number of metro rails in the city and offer some incentives for the office-goers who would use bicycles.
[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.]
Describe a game or sport you enjoy playing.
You should say:
and explain why you enjoy playing it.
Cue Card Answer:
Some people call it the “sport of the kings” since it was usually played by the kings in its early years. But, I like to call it the “king of sports” apparently because I just enjoy watching it and playing it. I am talking about “cricket”, a game loved by billions and played by many around the world.
Having learnt to play the sport during my early childhood, I just love to play cricket with my friends and community members whether it is in a big stadium or a small street in my neighbourhood. However, on a professional level, this “once upon a time” elite’s sport is played in a big stadium between two rival teams, consisting of eleven players in each.
The modern-day cricket, which involves batting and bowling in turn for both the teams, is played in three different formats: one is called “Test” cricket which is played over a period of five days at maximum; the second format is called “One Day International” which takes approximately from eight hours to eight and a half for a fifty overs match. Oh, in case if you didn’t know, it takes six balls to be bowled in order to complete the quota of a full over. Finally, the third format is called the “T-20” which consists of 20 “overs”.
In all three formats of the game, a team, batting first against the bowling side, will have to let the other team bat as well. Similarly, a team, bowling first against the batting team, will have to let the other team to bowl as well for the allocated number of overs, barring some unintended interruptions. Of course, I like to play the limited versions of the game that include One Day International and T-20 since I just don’t have an abundance of time available to watch or play a marathon 5-day test, as the kings and the elites did ages ago.
Now, why I enjoy playing cricket? Well, I like to play it because it’s just not the king’s game or the elite’s game, but it is also the “game of gentlemen” since cricket involves almost no or very little physical touch with members of the opponent team. Besides, cricket is my favourite game because no other sports stimulate my mind and brain as playing this great game does since it involves a great deal of mental calculation, mind games, and planning, along with a fair amount of physical fitness as well, to beat a worthy opponent. I have learnt to love and appreciate the thrill and joy of playing cricket also because of its glorious nature of “uncertainty” as it is just not possible to predict the result of a game until the last ball is bowled. Finally, I enjoy playing cricket since it helps me keep my body in shape and healthy, which matters to me more than anything.
Discussion topics: Children’s games
Q. How have games changed from the time when you were a child?
A. In my childhood, most of the time we used to play outdoors with other children and classmates. We were not up to win a game, rather running, shouting and enjoying were our main objectives. We often invented our own rules for a game and parents scarcely intervened during our playtime. We had many large fields, parks and places to go to and play and we oftentimes mimicked our seniors to learn a new game.
These days, children are more interested in playing computer games and many popular games from our time are no longer played. Parents often look after their offsprings in the field and games are more competitive than our time.
Q. Do you think this has been a positive change? Why?
A. I don’t think that it is a positive change except for the fact that children have their parents to look after them when they play outdoors. First of all, the games were more enjoyable and thoroughly entertaining in our time. We did not have to bother too much about the rules and most of the children were fit due to their extensive physical movements. I can’t recall a single friend of mine who was obese. However, I must say that we did not have different types of equipment to play in our time compared to today’s children. Considering the sedentary lifestyle children these days have due to their inclination to video games, the trend is negative.
Q. Why do you think children like playing games?
A. Playing games with friends and family is thoroughly entertaining and children like it today as they always had. All sorts of games and sports have been invented to entertain us and the enjoyment increases significantly when we participate in it. During the play time, a child can run, shout, compete with others and their parents actually allow them to do all these. So it is more enjoyable for children. Besides, having others to play with help them break the monotony on life for a while and they extremely like it.
Discussion topics: Games and competition
Q. Do you think competitive games are good or bad for children? In what ways?
A. I think I have mixed feelings about it. To begin with, competition in a game encourages a child to perform his best and outwit the rivals to become the winner. This nourishes their talent and inspires to do excellent to achieve something. Such competitive games often teach them that everything is not for granted and they have to fight to become a champion.
However, I also believe that children should be taught to be cooperative rather than encouraging them to compete all the time. Otherwise, they would end up becoming more prejudiced than helpful.
Q. How can games sometimes help to unite people?
A. Most of the popular sports engage teamwork and they can’t be won by an individual’s effort. Thus such games and sports teach us how we should work together to achieve something important. Besides, such a game competition often brings nations together which foster a healthy relationship among countries. When our national team performs at a big stage, we forget our social differences, political rivalry and come closer to cheer up as a nation. This has great importance in maintaining regional and global peace, I believe.
Q. Why is competition often seen as important in today’s society?
A. The world has more than 7.5 billion people and a limited resource for all of them. So in every stage of our life, only the best are rewarded today. We have to go through a huge competition throughout our career and life and this is why we are expected to be able to compete and win. Since so many people are expecting to achieve the same thing in the modern era, we can’t survive and perform our best without being competitive and diligent.
This post was last modified on 19th April 2019 11:38 am