Describe a time when you helped a child
You should say:
- When it was
- How you helped him/her
- Why you helped him/her
And how you felt about it.
Take-note
| When it was | + when being a teaching assistant + around Mother’s Day |
| How you help him/her | + assist with an art project |
| Why you helped him/her | + to help her complete the project |
| How you felt about it | + had a blast – really happy |
Sample Answer
I’d like to talk about a time when I helped a first grader with her artwork project from an art and craft class. I was a teaching assistant at that time, and in this class, each student would use their creativity to create a piece of artwork on a specific topic. That time was around Mother’s Day, so the kids were required to create greeting cards to give to their moms.
I was assigned to assist Quynh Anh, who was a really talented girl at art. Even though she was only 6 years old at that time, she’d been able to express her imagination so vividly and uniquely through art. The project of making cards for her beloved mom truly excited her because not only was it her favourite kind of craft work, but she believed it would mean a lot to her mom. She cheerfully told me that the ideas had been in her mind for the whole week, and she wished it would be a surprise to her mom.
Quynh Anh brought to the class a basket full of crafty stuff for the project. She started with a piece of yellow card paper and folded it in half. Then she cut a strand of pearl ribbon and asked me to help make it into a tie bow so she could stick it to the card. She continued to hand write the card title and some lines of wishes. To give it some more touch of sparkle, Quynh Anh sprinkled some glitter to the title.
After half an hour, we finished the card with glue, color and glitter all over our hands and some on our faces too. Yet, I truly had a blast working with the girl and couldn’t help a grin thinking about the joy her mom would have had receiving the card.
IELTS Speaking Part 3: Helping others
1. How is online help different from real-life help?
I think the two kinds of help differ in many ways. The main one is that helping someone over the Internet lacks the emotional touch in it. Even when you try to convey it through words, that still won’t be enough to fully reflect all of your intentions.
On the other hand, in-person help is, in many cases, constrained by geographical aspects, so sometimes it’ll be impossible to deliver the help timely. Take the case of someone who is in need of consolation. If you want to offer that person a hug as a gesture of comfort in such a situation, you definitely won’t be able to do that if you live in another city.
2. Should schools be responsible for teaching students how to cooperate?
To me, cooperating is an important skill and requires a process of learning. Thus, schools are among the most ideal places for students to acquire this sort of skill, so it goes without saying that the responsibility belongs to these institutions too. Schools provide students an environment where they have the opportunity to give and take help from each other.
It can range from something familiar like helping a classmate with solving a math problem, to something at a more personal level such as offering emotional support during stressful time of studying or when any family problem happens.
3. What are the differences between help from friends and help from family?
I think there are great distinctions in the two types of help, one of which is on the matter of giving back. What I mean is that we might not feel that much of an obligation to return the help to a family member because it seems to be in the nature of family, which is to give a hand to the other member unconditionally. However, it wouldn’t always be the case with a friend because we might instinctively feel obliged to do something in return, at least as a gesture of giving thanks.
