IELTS Speaking Sample Questions # Childhood Toys

No childhood is complete if you don’t have toys to play with. Being such an obvious thing in the lives of children, it is very likely that you may get some questions related to toys in Part I of the IELTS speaking section. This time we are having a look at some of the questions and their possible answers.

Did you played with toys when you were a child?

Yes, of course. I enjoyed playing with toys as a kid. I remember playing with bey blade with all my gang and having those chats about whose beyblade was the best.

What other kind of toys did you liked to play with?

I loved playing cards, the ones with WWE or a sportsperson in it. We used to collect those cards and then exchange cards, play with them. I still remember, once we had a competition for who has the highest number of cards and I won in it.

In you country, do boys and girls play with the same toys?

If you look at it at a larger scale, no they don’t. Most girls prefer, barbie dolls or the other outdoor games like Kho-kho or i spy. With boys, it is more about video games and collecting cards or playing cricket outside. However, I think there are both sets of people. Some girls prefer video games and bey blade as well while some boys do love kho-kho as well.

Do you think toys help children to learn?

Definitely yes. There is so much one can learn if it is done right. So, with toys they learn to invent new games. They learn how to play in a team and then how to be competitive as well. These are big words but I think it is these games that help the children realise, once they grow that in life it is the small things that bring the biggest happiness.

I am a little sceptical about it. I think it is not only toys that help but there are so many things that teach a child. More importantly, it is not about toys or games, but about how they play it or with whom they. A pack of card is of no use if the child has no one to play with.

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IELTS Listening Sample Questions # Computer Effects

We are living in a world that is surrounded or entirely dependent on computers. Be it the coffee shop that we go in or the big enterprises that tend to rule the world, computers have made their presence felt everywhere. However, there are many people out there who believe, that computers although have made our lives easier, have made people dumb. This time we are listening to a BBC 6 minute audio that revolves around the question of are computers making us dumb!!

Listen to the audio below and answer the following questions in NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS.

  1. What is the short for application?
  2. What is the computer program for a specific purpose called?
  3. Which verb is used to talk about linking or joining one thing to another?
  4. When was  the first desktop presented by Olivetti in New York?
  5. Which word means that the computer has stopped working suddenty?
  6. What is the ability to do something well because you have practised it well called?
  7. What is the natural ability to do something called?
  8. Which word describes our ability to imagine and understand what other people might be feeling?
  9. What is the full form of GPS?
  10. Which software helps in avoiding making spelling mistakes when typing  on a computer?
  11. What was the first digital computer called?
  12. What was the initial price of the world’s first digital computer?
ANSWERS
  1. app
  2. application
  3. to connect
  4. 1965
  5. crash
  6. skill
  7. talent
  8. empathy
  9. Global positioning system
  10. spellchecker
  11. Programma 101
  12. US$3200

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IELTS Reading Vocabulary # Katherine Johnson

SOURCE : NASA

Being handpicked to be one of three black students to integrate West Virginia’s graduate schools is something that many people would consider one of their life’s most notable moments, but it’s just one of several breakthroughs that have marked Katherine Johnson’s long and remarkable life. Born in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia in 1918, Katherine Johnson’s intense curiosity and brilliance with numbers vaulted her ahead several grades in school. By thirteen, she was attending the high school on the campus of historically black West Virginia State College. At eighteen, she enrolled in the college itself, where she made quick work of the school’s math curriculum and found a mentor in math professor W. W. Schieffelin Claytor, the third African American to earn a PhD in Mathematics. Katherine graduated with highest honors in 1937 and took a job teaching at a black public school in Virginia.

When West Virginia decided to quietly integrate its graduate schools in 1939, West Virginia State’s president Dr. John W. Davis selected Katherine and two male students as the first black students to be offered spots at the state’s flagship school, West Virginia University. Katherine left her teaching job, and enrolled in the graduate math program. At the end of the first session, however, she decided to leave school to start a family with her husband.

She returned to teaching when her three daughters got older, but it wasn’t until 1952 that a relative told her about open positions at the all-black West Area Computing section at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics’ (NACA’s) Langley laboratory, headed by fellow West Virginian Dorothy Vaughan. Katherine and her husband, James Goble, decided to move the family to Newport News to pursue the opportunity, and Katherine began work at Langley in the summer of 1953. Just two weeks into Katherine’s tenure in the office, Dorothy Vaughan assigned her to a project in the Maneuver Loads Branch of the Flight Research Division, and Katherine’s temporary position soon became permanent. She spent the next four years analyzing data from flight test, and worked on the investigation of a plane crash caused by wake turbulence. As she was wrapping up this work her husband died of cancer in December 1956.

The 1957 launch of the Soviet satellite Sputnik changed history—and Katherine Johnson’s life. In 1957, Katherine provided some of the math for the 1958 document Notes on Space Technology, a compendium of a series of 1958 lectures given by engineers in the Flight Research Division and the Pilotless Aircraft Research Division (PARD). Engineers from those groups formed the core of the Space Task Group, the NACA’s first official foray into space travel, and Katherine, who had worked with many of them since coming to Langley, “came along with the program” as the NACA became NASA later that year. She did trajectory analysis for Alan Shepard’s May 1961 mission Freedom 7, America’s first human spaceflight. In 1960, she and engineer Ted Skopinski coauthoredDetermination of Azimuth Angle at Burnout for Placing a Satellite Over a Selected Earth Position, a report laying out the equations describing an orbital spaceflight in which the landing position of the spacecraft is specified. It was the first time a woman in the Flight Research Division had received credit as an author of a research report.

In 1962, as NASA prepared for the orbital mission of John Glenn, Katherine Johnson was called upon to do the work that she would become most known for. The complexity of the orbital flight had required the construction of a worldwide communications network, linking tracking stations around the world to IBM computers in Washington, DC, Cape Canaveral, and Bermuda. The computers had been programmed with the orbital equations that would control the trajectory of the capsule in Glenn’s Friendship 7 mission, from blast off to splashdown, but the astronauts were wary of putting their lives in the care of the electronic calculating machines, which were prone to hiccups and blackouts.

As a part of the preflight checklist, Glenn asked engineers to “get the girl”—Katherine Johnson—to run the same numbers through the same equations that had been programmed into the computer, but by hand, on her desktop mechanical calculating machine.  “If she says they’re good,’” Katherine Johnson remembers the astronaut saying, “then I’m ready to go.” Glenn’s flight was a success, and marked a turning point in the competition between the United States and the Soviet Union in space.

When asked to name her greatest contribution to space exploration, Katherine Johnson talks about the calculations that helped synch Project Apollo’s Lunar Lander with the moon-orbiting Command and Service Module. She also worked on the Space Shuttle and the Earth Resources Satellite, and authored or coauthored 26 research reports. She retired in 1986, after thirty-three years at Langley. “I loved going to work every single day,” she says. In 2015, at age 97, Katherine Johnson added another extraordinary achievement to her long list: President Obama awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom, America’s highest civilian honor.

WORDMEANING
handpickedselect carefully with a particular purpose in mind.
breakthroughsa sudden, dramatic, and important discovery or development.
remarkableworthy of attention; striking.
curiositya strong desire to know or learn something.
brillianceintense brightness of light.
vaultedprovide (a building or room) with an arched roof or roofs.
historicallywith reference to past events.
curriculumthe subjects comprising a course of study in a school or college.
mentoran experienced and trusted adviser.
enrolledofficially register as a member of an institution or a student on a course.
analyzingexamine (something) methodically and in detail, typically in order to explain and interpret it.
turbulenceviolent or unsteady movement of air or water, or of some other fluid.
compendiuma collection of concise but detailed information about a particular subject, especially in a book or other publication.
foraya sudden attack or incursion into enemy territory, especially to obtain something; a raid.
trajectorythe path followed by a projectile flying or an object moving under the action of given forces.
orbitalrelating to an orbit or orbits.
spaceflighta journey through space.
researchthe systematic investigation into and study of materials and sources in order to establish facts and reach new conclusions.
complexitythe state or quality of being intricate or complicated.
worldwideextending or reaching throughout the world.
communicationsthe imparting or exchanging of information by speaking, writing, or using some other medium.
networka group or system of interconnected people or things.
hiccupsan involuntary spasm of the diaphragm and respiratory organs, with a sudden closure of the glottis and a characteristic gulping sound.
blackoutsa period when all lights must be turned out or covered to prevent them being seen by the enemy during an air raid.
authoredbe the author of (a book or piece of writing).
extraordinaryvery unusual or remarkable.
civiliana person not in the armed services or the police force.
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IELTS Speaking Sample Questions # Toys

Toys have always been and shall always remain the most important thing for children. Be it a barbie doll or a car, they kids love them and enjoy playing them. Although, however, toys have surely changed with time. Where one time, children played with toys like cars or bikes, they now prefer PX4 or for that matter watch game of thrones. This time we are looking at some sample questions that can be asked in the IELTS section 2 of speaking.

Describe a childhood toy that was special to you.

You should say :

  • what it was
  • who gave it to you
  • how you played with it

explain why it was special for you.

SAMPLE ANSWER

I have had many toys in my childhood during the different phases of life. Be it barbie dolls or the cars or for that matter the Kitchen set!! However, among them all, the one that I preferred was my teddy bear. There were so many times in childhood that I felt like talking to someone and it was my teddy bear I always find my solace in.

I think just like most other kids even I found it funny. I remember, my mother got me a teddy bear for my birthday. It was so different from other stuffed bears. It was so much more fluffy and it was huge. Also, the colour , well I was in love with that bear. He was just like a friend I would talk to and have fun with. There have been endless stories that I have shared with him. And then he has been there when I used to cry.

There were so many days I had a fight with my mother or my brother and when nothing worked out, I used to simply go out and vent my anger into the bear. Apart from it, me and my friends used to bring their teddy bears along with them and we used to have fun laughing and fighting with or dressing up our bears.

I think the one reason I was in love with the teddy bear was because it made me feel at home. There were no fears with it, no chance of any scolding. It could keep all my secrets and I could just carry on with life, enjoying every bit of it.

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