Describe a time when you helped someone learn something new.
A card about helping a friend, relative or classmate learn a practical skill. The best answer shows the small adjustments you made when your first explanation did not work.
The task card
Describe a time when you helped someone learn something new.
You should say:
- who you helped
- what they wanted to learn
- how you helped them
and explain how you felt about the experience.
Now say it yourself
Record your own two minutes on this card and have it transcribed and marked against the Speaking criteria. Practising is free; the band estimate is part of Pro.
Record my answerHow long you have
- 1 minute
Preparation
The examiner hands you the card, paper and a pencil. Make notes — a few words per cue point, never sentences.
- 1–2 minutes
Your long turn
Speak until the examiner stops you at two minutes. Finishing early is the most common self-inflicted problem in Part 2.
- 1–2 questions
Rounding off
The examiner may ask one or two short follow-up questions, then moves straight into the Part 3 discussion on the same theme.
Part 2 takes three to four minutes in total. The whole Speaking test runs 11 to 14 minutes across three parts, and Part 3 that follows lasts four to five minutes.
How to approach this card
Start with the person and one clear skill: helping a cousin use a spreadsheet, showing a friend how to ride a bike, or explaining an online form to a parent. Give one reason the skill mattered to them, because that makes your help feel purposeful rather than accidental.
For 'how you helped them', tell the process in stages. You might have demonstrated it once, then let them try, then changed your explanation when they got stuck. One specific mistake and the way you responded gives the answer a natural story rather than a list of instructions.
Do not finish with only 'I was happy'. Explain whether you felt patient, surprised by how difficult teaching was, or proud when the person managed alone. The final bullet is strongest when it connects their progress to something you learned about yourself.
Ideas you can actually use
Three angles on this card. Pick the one closest to something real in your own life — invented material is what makes candidates hesitate at ninety seconds.
Small, teachable things
- A parent or grandparent and a phone, a video call, online banking, a bus app
- A colleague and a piece of software, a process, or the unwritten rules of an office
- A child learning to swim, cycle, read a clock, or tie laces
The teaching itself — this is the marks
- Your first explanation and exactly why it failed
- The adjustment: you stopped talking, you did it slower, you let them hold it, you wrote it down
- The thing you had to unlearn about your own assumed knowledge
How you felt about it
- Impatience you are not proud of, and what you did with it
- Realising you did not understand it as well as you thought
- The moment they did it unaided and you had to say nothing at all
What your one minute of notes should look like
Not sentences — a few words per cue point. This is the level of detail sixty seconds actually buys you, and it is enough to speak from for two minutes.
- WHO — my father, 71, wanted video calls to my sister abroad
- WHAT — the app + wifi + camera, not just one button
- HOW — I did it for him first (failed), then wrote 6 steps + he held the phone
- FELT — impatient at first, then genuinely humbled
Model answer
Speak your own answer first. Examiners are trained to spot memorised speeches and mark them down — use this to study structure, pacing and naturalness, never to recite.
Show the model answer
The time I always think about is teaching my father to make video calls. He's seventy-one, my sister moved abroad four years ago, and he wanted to see his grandson rather than just hear about him. What he wanted to learn sounds tiny, but it wasn't one thing. It was the app, and the wifi, and knowing which way round to hold the phone, and understanding that the little square in the corner is you. Each of those is obvious only if you already know it. My first approach was, in hindsight, useless. I sat next to him and did it for him while narrating — press this, now this — and he nodded the whole way through and couldn't repeat a single step ten minutes later. Of course he couldn't. He had watched, not done. So I changed two things. First, I made him hold the phone the entire time and I sat on my hands, which was surprisingly difficult. And second, I wrote the whole thing out on a card in six steps, in his words, not mine — he called it 'the picture button' and so did the card. We did it three times that afternoon and once more the following week. How did I feel about it? Impatient, initially, and I'm not proud of that. There's a particular kind of irritation that comes from something being easy for you, and it's entirely unearned. But what actually stayed with me was how much I had to slow down to explain something I do forty times a day without thinking. I didn't really know how it worked. I only knew how to do it, and those turned out to be very different things. He now calls my sister every Sunday without any help at all, and he has taught two of his friends. That last part is the bit I'm genuinely pleased about.
Why this works: The strongest section is the third bullet, where the first attempt is described honestly as a failure and the two specific adjustments are named — handing over the phone, writing the steps in his vocabulary. That is real teaching detail and almost no candidate supplies it. The feelings bullet admits to impatience before arriving at something more thoughtful, and the closing detail about him teaching his friends gives the answer an ending rather than a stop.
Useful vocabulary for this topic
- to break something down
To explain a difficult task in smaller, easier stages.
- step by step
Useful for describing a calm, ordered explanation.
- to give someone a hand
Informal but natural phrase for helping someone.
- to gain confidence
Describes the growing belief that someone can do a task alone.
- a patient approach
A calm way of helping when someone needs more time.
- to get the idea across
To communicate an explanation successfully.
The same phrases in a full sentence
A phrase list is only useful if you know how the words sit around it. Say each of these aloud once before you attempt the card.
- to talk someone through it
- “I talked him through it step by step, and that was exactly the wrong approach.”
- to get the hang of it
- “Once he had held the phone himself two or three times, he got the hang of it quickly.”
- to take it at their pace
- “The whole thing worked the moment I stopped rushing and took it at his pace.”
- to pick it up
- “He picked it up far faster than I expected once I stopped doing it for him.”
Part 3 discussion
After your long turn the examiner moves into a four to five minute discussion on the same theme, working from two related discussion topics with about three questions each. The first stays close to your own experience; the second widens out. Answer with reasons and examples, not one-line replies.
Helping others learn
Example questions
- 1What makes someone a patient teacher?
- 2How important is it to be able to explain things clearly?
- 3Do you think everyone can learn to teach?
Technology and older people
Example questions
- 1What difficulties do older people face with new technology?
- 2Whose responsibility is it to help them — families or the state?
- 3Do you agree that technology is designed with younger users in mind?
More on how this family of cards is discussed: People and relationships. Model answers for Part 3: Part 3 questions and answers.