IELTS Cue Card/ Candidate Task Card # 66
Describe a handmade gift that you gave to someone.
You should say:
- what gift it was
- whom you gave it to
- how you made it
and explain why you chose to give this handmade gift to that person.
[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.]
Model Answer:
I never had the gift, and I still don’t have it now, of becoming an “artist” or make some kinds of “gifts” with my own hands, even under the best of the circumstances. Therefore, it was only natural for me to buy the gifts from a shop if I ever needed to give it to someone. But, I had to make an exception when I gave a “handmade” gift to one of my favourite teachers, in order to bid him a farewell, about 10 years ago.
The gift, I made, was a “mango tree”, with mango fruits hanging from its branches. But, to do that, I needed to collect the necessary materials, such as bendable wire, leaf-making papers, strong glue, colour spray and some round-size bamboo sticks. I used the bendable copper wire to make branches while used bamboo sticks to make tree trunks. In the beginning, the idea seemed to be an easy one, but when I actually started to do the real works of making the gift with my own hands, it seemed like a real challenge for me. Soon, I figured out that it would take me much longer than I had initially anticipated. So, instead of trying to make the “original” gift in one sitting, I started to work on making some “prototypes” and kept experimenting on them until I was reasonably satisfied. Finally, after spending about 8 working hours over a 3-day period of time, I finally made my “dream” gift, which was about 2 feet tall and 1 foot in width. The tree also had 6 “trunks” and 12 small branches. Of course, to give a nice finishing touch to my “mango tree”, I also needed to make about 20 small-size, unripe mangoes, sticking out nicely with the branches.
I chose to give this handmade gift to my teacher because I wanted to make his “farewell” a really memorable and exceptional one. Besides, this favourite teacher of mine really enjoyed eating mangoes, so I thought that this particular gift would make him really happy, and it indeed made him smile in the end.