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.
I'd like to talk about a furniture showroom on the outskirts of Thủ Dầu Một, in Bình Dương province, which is hands down the dullest place I've ever spent an afternoon in. This was last March. My older sister was about to get married, and my parents had decided to buy the couple a wooden sofa set as a wedding present. They needed someone to drive, so I was volunteered. I assumed we'd be in and out in forty minutes. We were there for nearly five hours. The showroom was the size of a football pitch and contained, as far as I could tell, the same sofa three hundred times in slightly different shades of brown. There was no music, no café, and the phone signal died the moment you walked past the entrance. So what did I do? I followed my mother around for the first hour, nodding. Then I sat on a display rocking chair until a salesman politely asked me not to. After that I counted the ceiling fans, of which there were sixty-four, and read the care label on a mattress from start to finish. At one point my father held up two almost identical cushions and asked, 'Which one feels more expensive?' and I honestly couldn't tell if he was joking. I think it was so boring because I had no role whatsoever. I wasn't paying, I wasn't choosing, and nobody wanted my opinion, yet I couldn't leave because I had the car keys. Boredom is really about being stuck without a purpose, and that showroom was a perfect example. The sofa, by the way, is lovely. I just never want to see where it came from again.