Describe a time you helped someone.
You should say:
- Who you helped and why
- How you helped this person
- What the result was
- and explain how you felt about helping this person.
SAMPLE
Alright let me tell you about the time that I helped my girlfriend study for her IELTS test.
So this happened about a couple of months ago when she was about to retake her IELTS test after an unsuccessful attempt earlier. She failed at speaking (only 6.5), so she asked me to communicate in English for a week prior to her exam to practice. I thought it was silly at first, but went along anyway.
I struggled a lot during our first conversations as talking in another language makes me feel distant, even though I’m an English teacher. How ironic! Finally, I came to my senses and decided to treat her as one of my students. Things started to get better and I was able to detect her biggest issue in speaking: her fluency. Similar to other Vietnamese English teachers, she focuses too much on perfecting her speech: adding “big” words and avoiding grammatical mistakes, which eventually leads to a loss of fluency. I gave her few tips, one of which was to stop worrying about just saying the first thing that comes to mind, because speaking is a test of your communication skills, not your vocabulary bank. Fortunately, she began to speak more fluently and achieved 8.5 in her speaking test.
I feel pretty proud of myself as a teacher and also pretty happy for my girlfriend as she was able to speak her mind and got the score she deserved!
IELTS Speaking Part 3
1. Is it necessary to ask for advice?
Yes, we are not Mr. Know-it-all, I mean, there are always limits to our knowledge and experience in life, so I think it’s really vital for us to ask for advice from other people when we’re going to experience something new, like taking up a new hobby, for example.
2. Do young people nowadays like to receive advice?
It’s hard to tell, to be honest, I mean, it really depends. Some of them are very open to advice but some aren’t. They think they are always right and refuse all kinds of help from others.
3. Do they always follow the advice they receive?
Well, again it really depends. For instance, if they find the advice valuable, they will definitely act on it, but if they consider it to be something wrong, they will not follow it. Still there are some cases when they pretend to take the advice to please others but then never follow it.
4. Should people ask for advice only on their personal maters or even important decisions?
I think it doesn’t mater what the problem is, the important thing is whether they can sort it out themselves or not. If they can’t think of any solution then I think they definitely need advice.
