August 23, 2021 - IELTS BAND7

IELTS Cue Card Sample Answer # Book That Influenced You

August 23, 2021 IELTS Research

Describe a book that had a major influence on you.

You should say :

what the name of the book and the author is

how did you get to know about it

what is the main story of it

explain why it played such an important role in your life

Whenever I get time I try to read books ranging from fiction to non fiction and then travel books to sometimes autobiographies. But, the book that tremendously influenced me in my college life was “Archies comic books”. The characters of Archie Comics were written by John L. Goldwater. The comics have a very long history, starting from around 1939 up till present.

The story of the comic revolves around Archie, Betty, Veronica, Jughead, Josie, Kelvin and lots more. It is all about the lives of an average teenager, what are the problems they face, the kind confusions they have to tackle, how they balance their work and their studies and then what is it about love and friendship. There are so many more emotions with archies that one feels as if it is all happening in front of you and you can relate to it. So, we all have friends and family and then people we are jealous of and then things we do just for ourselves. There is this fight for making a career out of ourselves and a desire to be loved.

However, what influenced me the most and made me take decisions I won’t have taken other wise, was the character of Betty. She is friends with everyone and is a loving daughter and sister. She likes to help the homeless, read to the senior citizens, and rescue wounded animals and birds. She loves cooking, playing sports and make her own clothing. She runs small business here and there and then she loves animals. She does all of it, no matter how much trouble it causes her. Apart from all of this, she is a above average in academics.

And then she loves Archies and is best friends with Veronica. This character of her inspired me to be something. I mean she had it all, she was good in studies, had friends, was doing things and having good life. It was then that I realized that we all can have good lives. And just because I am studying does not mean I cannot have a job and then just because I have work does not mean I cannot have friends. Betty’s character allowed me to open up to all new possibilities. I remember, taking up a job and working on it. And that job has helped me a lot. I now try to be involved in more extra-curricular activities and make sure that whatever I do is par excellence.

She also taught me to be happy and enjoy life and in the midst of everything do things for oneself. There are lot of things that people learnt from Archies but for me it was the Betty’s character that just changed the way I looked at things.

After the cue card are the follow up questions. So, if there is a cue card like this, you can have follow up questions as given below –

How often do you read books?

I love reading books and read them almost every day. I have dedicated some time for reading books and ensure that I get to read a novel or may be magazine during that time.

How books can impact on a man’s life?

I believe it depends on how and what kind of books you are reading. So, may be a book or child abuse has no affect on someone who had a very nice past but may be someone who had felt it, could just relate to it and do things to make one’s life better. In that way, books make an impact. Because they allow you to figure out unanswered things about yourself and may be motivate in so many ways. So, if you read a book by Gandhi, you would most probably prefer saying the truth and then if you a read a book by kalam, you would just go out and give your best.

Name some of the famous writers of your country?

Our country has got some good writers and the ones people are crazy about would be Chetan Bhagat, Durjoy Dutta, Ravinder Singh, Rashmi Bansal, Aruna Nair and few others. It was Chetan Bhagat who started writing novels which struck to the minds of people and the language was such that more and more people started reading novels. Apart from these, some of the great writers of our country include, Premchand, Harivansh rai bachan, Arundhati roy, Vikram Seth, R.K Narayan and more.

Have you ever thought about writing a book?

Yes, but I think I have left it to the quote that I read. It was like ,” If it does not comes out of you automatically, if it is not something you feel like doing again and again, there is no point of doing it”. And about writing book, it will be like that. I will write a book but only when it is straight from my heart, when I would just not stop to write it and the only thing in my mind would be that book.

How reading books is different from watching movies?

Movies have more impact in a sense, that you can see exactly what the characters are doing and for someone who cannot relate well to the characters by reading, audio and video are better things to do.