Speaking
Describe a friend who is important to you is probably the single most frequently used Part 2 cue card, and it is worth preparing carefully because the same material will answer a card about a relative, a colleague, a neighbour or somebody you admire. The model answer below is built almost entirely on evidence, and it makes a virtue of not being able to explain the friendship neatly.
Describe a friend who is important to you
You should say:
and explain why he or she is important to you.
Before you read any further, do the task properly. One minute of notes, two minutes of speaking, recorded. A model answer is far more useful once you have produced your own and can hear the difference.
Read this aloud once you have recorded your own attempt, ideally recording the model as well. Listen back to both and compare your pace and your intonation rather than your vocabulary. The gap is usually smaller than candidates expect on words and larger than they expect on delivery.
I would like to talk about somebody I have known for a long time. He actually used to be my next-door neighbour, but I did not really get to know him until we ended up at the same school. We were in the same English class in high school, so I suppose I have known him for — it must be seven years now.
He was always a much better student than I was. He let me copy his homework more than once, though I would not say that is how we became friends. To be honest, it is difficult to say exactly why we are friends at all. We do not share the same interests, apart from basketball. He is perfectly happy to spend an entire evening playing games while I would far rather watch a film. I am something of a television addict, if I am honest about it.
Despite all that, he is a genuinely straightforward person. He is honest and direct, sometimes more direct than people expect, and that means we can have interesting conversations about almost anything without either of us being careful. As I said, he was always a better student and he seems to know a great deal about the world, so we can talk for hours without running out of things to say.
That matters to me, but if I had to add another reason, I would say it is that he is very generous. I do not particularly mean with money. I mean that he is a giving person who goes out of his way to make other people feel comfortable, and there are not many people I would say that about. That is probably the real reason he is important to me, and I imagine we will still be friends a long time from now.
It is difficult to say exactly why we are friends at all. That admission is more truthful than a list of shared interests and it produces a concession structure that runs through the rest of the answer.
Setting out what they do not have in common makes the eventual explanation land harder. It also gives the speaker two things to describe rather than one.
I do not particularly mean with money. I mean that he is… Correcting and narrowing your own meaning is a strong signal of lexical control and takes only a second to do.
The final clause shifts to the future and closes the answer without summarising it. Cue cards about people are past-heavy, so the future form at the end is doing real work.
Take the structures, not the content. An answer copied wholesale is audible within a sentence, and examiners hear memorised material constantly. These patterns can be attached to anything.
Describe a relative you get on well with.
and explain why you get on.
Describe someone you have known for a long time.
and say how the friendship has changed.
Describe a colleague or classmate you like working with.
and say why you work well together.
Describe a person you would like to know better.
and explain why you would like to know them better.
Quick question, 10 seconds
Where do you want to study or move to?
When are you planning to go?
How far along are you?
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