Speaking
Describe a teacher who inspired you belongs to the largest family of Part 2 cue cards: the ones about a person. Cards about a friend, a relative, a colleague, a neighbour or someone you admire are all answered the same way, so the structure below is worth more than the content. Notice how much of the answer is evidence rather than adjectives.
Describe a teacher who inspired you
You should say:
and explain why they inspired 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.
It might sound like an odd choice, but the teacher who really gave me something to aim for was my language school teacher. I had only been in the country a few months when I met him, and I was nervous about more or less everything. He was my first teacher here, and he made the whole environment welcoming through very small things. There were fourteen of us in that class and by the end of the first lesson he had learned all our names, which struck me as impressive given that we came from a dozen different countries and none of the names were easy for him.
He taught me general English to begin with, covering all the ordinary parts of learning a language, and he had a talent for explaining difficult grammar in a way that stuck. He used a lot of clear examples rather than terminology. When I moved up to the IELTS class he taught me writing, which I found very difficult at first, and I improved much more quickly than I expected because he pushed us hard. He was quite strict, in fact. He had no tolerance at all for students who did not bother.
Teaching is not something I have any interest in doing myself, but he would be a good model for anybody who was thinking about it. He was always prepared, and every lesson had a clear point to it, so we came out of the room feeling we had achieved something rather than simply attended.
When he was preparing us for the writing test, he broke the whole thing down into parts — how to write an introduction, how to reach a conclusion, which parts of a sentence carry the most weight — and it became far less mysterious than I had assumed it was. The most inspiring thing about the way he taught, though, was that he made us understand that the only route to improvement was practice. Nothing else. I think it is because of him that I decided to sit this test at all, partly to prove to myself that I had improved and partly to prove it to him.
The answer does not say the teacher was welcoming and stop. It says he learned fourteen names in one lesson. Specific evidence is more convincing, easier to talk about, and produces better grammar than a list of qualities.
He was quite strict, in fact. He had no tolerance at all for students who did not bother. A slightly complicated portrait is more interesting than an entirely admiring one, and the contrast structure comes free with it.
The fourth paragraph contains a long sentence held together by a parenthetical list. Being able to sustain a sentence like that without losing control of it is a clear marker of a higher band.
The reason the teacher inspired the speaker is that they are sitting the test. Ending on a consequence rather than a restatement is the strongest way to finish any Part 2 answer.
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 someone you admire.
and explain why you admire them.
Describe a person who has influenced your career.
and say how they influenced you.
Describe a good manager or team leader you have had.
and say what made them effective.
Describe an older person you know well.
and say what you have learned from them.