Part 2 — Long turn

Describe a person who has influenced you

IELTS Speaking practice questions in the real exam format and timing.

Questions

Question 160s to prepare · 120s to speak

Describe a person who has had an important influence on your life. You should say: • who this person is • how long you have known them • what kind of person they are and explain why they have influenced you.

Model answer

Written by 8020 teachers. Do not memorise it — take the structure and the way ideas are developed, then speak about your own life.

The person I'd like to describe is my secondary school geography teacher — Mr Hung. I've known him in the sense of having studied under him for about two years, though I haven't seen him since I left school. He was the kind of teacher who treated every question as worth taking seriously, even when the question wasn't very good. I remember asking him something fairly obvious once about climate patterns, and instead of just answering, he turned it into a fifteen-minute discussion about why the question mattered — which was, well, actually far more useful than the direct answer would have been. What kind of person is he? Unhurried, I'd say. He was never visibly rushed, never cut anyone off. In a school where most teachers seemed to be managing a timetable more than teaching a subject, that was unusual enough to notice. He influenced me because he changed how I thought about learning itself. The subject he taught — geography — I'd considered fairly dull before his class. By the end I was reading about it voluntarily, which hadn't happened with any other subject. He'd somehow made it feel like a set of genuine questions about the world rather than a syllabus to memorise. More broadly, I think the lesson I took from him was that the way you approach something matters as much as the subject itself. I still catch myself trying to find the question behind a question rather than just answering the surface thing, which is very much his influence.

Vocabulary you can use today

treat something as worth doing
coi điều gì đó xứng đáng được làm — trang trọng và tự nhiên hơn 'take seriously'
turn something into something
biến X thành Y — diễn đạt sự chuyển đổi linh hoạt
voluntarily
tự nguyện, không ai ép — đối lập hoàn hảo với 'for homework'
manage a timetable more than teaching
quản lý thời khoá biểu hơn là dạy học — phê bình tế nhị, ghi điểm ở P3
the question behind a question
câu hỏi ẩn sau câu hỏi — hình ảnh ghi nhớ tốt
which is very much his influence
đây rõ ràng là ảnh hưởng từ ông ấy — kết bài tự nhiên

Common traps for Vietnamese speakers

Bám đúng 4 gạch: ai → biết bao lâu/thế nào → người thế nào → vì sao ảnh hưởng. Ý thứ tư phải chiếm nửa bài vì đó là điểm giám khảo chờ nghe nhất. Tránh câu mở "I would like to talk about..." — bắt đầu thẳng vào người hoặc ký ức. Giám khảo nghe hàng trăm bài mở bằng mẫu câu đó và nó không tạo ấn tượng đầu. Chọn người có câu chuyện cụ thể. "My teacher was kind" không có gì để nói tiếp. "My teacher turned a bad question into a fifteen-minute discussion" là câu chuyện.

/ɪ/ trong influenced, visited, thinking/θ/ trong thought, three, throughâm cuối /d/ trong noticed, treated, considered/ʌ/ trong unhurried, subject, discussed

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