IELTS Cue Card: Describe a person who solved a problem in a smart way with Band 8 Sample Answers

You should say:
Who this person is
What the problem was
How he/she solved it
And explain why you think he/she did it in a smart way

(Who this person is) I had the chance to meet Lisa, a student at one of the most prestigious (admired and respected by people) universities in the world – the National University of Singapore, who I think is the most creative person I’ve ever got to know so far. I met Lisa during an outreach programme in my country.
She was in the same group with me, meaning that we worked together a lot. We were mainly in charge of (are responsible for ) teaching activities.

(What the problem was) As we had to teach two classes comprised of (=include) two different age groups, we struggled a lot in planning lessons since there was a big gap in the level of English proficiency (a high degree of skill or ability in something) of students in each class.

(How he/she solved it) Since we received some negative feedback from the students on our lesson plan as some wanted to play games while some others were interested in studying, Lisa came up with (think of) an idea of sticking papers around the walls as children were required to find a paper that had a word and another paper that had a photo of that word and combine these two together.

(And explain why you think he/she did it in a smart way) This fulfilled (=to reach a particular standard) requirements of both kinds of students and no adjective describing effort would suffice (to be enough). I could not be any more appreciative (showing that you are grateful) of what Lisa did to boost the efficiency of the class. Never would I forget that night when we had to revisit (to think or talk about sth again) the lesson plan and discuss the right direction in vain (without success), literally without a clue what was going on next. It turned out that our effort paid dividends (causes good results at a time in the future) as the next team followed our directions and were able to nail it (succeed to do sth).

Do you think children are born smart or they learn to become smart?
To the best of my knowledge ( based on what I know​/​ believe), children are born smart, and we actually have a term “child prodigy” (a child who is very skillful at sth which usually only adults can do) to refer to these outstanding (extremely good or smart) children. Historically, many people started to show their extraordinary capabilities at such a young age. For example, Mozart demonstrated his excellent piano skills when he reached the age of 3 before astonishing (=surprising) many European royal families with his ability to compose a sonata (a piece of classic music for an instrument) at the age of 10. That being said, normal children can definitely acquire a decent (good enough) level of expertise (special skill or knowledge) in a field thanks to proper training and practice.

2. How do children become smarter at school?
As mentioned previously, children can definitely become smarter at school if trained properly. How much smarter school children become depends on the educator’s curriculum, syllabus as well as teaching method. Moreover, their peers can also exert an influence on boosting a child’s intellectual growth as they can cooperate with each other in learning activities.

3. Why are some people well-rounded and others only good at one thing?
Well, the fact that some people show expertise in many fields and many subjects depends on their earlier education at school. Some schools do not categorise their students into streams specialising in one field, such as science or humanities, while requiring students to learn all the subjects at the same time. These children are more likely to become well-rounded (including a good balance of different subjects). Other schools, however, place their focus on students’ most special abilities, and thus distribute them to different streams in which they’ll only focus on their unique skills.

4. Why does modern society need talents of all kinds?
As society and the global economy become more and more diverse each day, they require an increasing number of talents in all fields. For instance, prior to the invention of the internet and information technology, society did not even think that it would need someone competent at coding or analysing data. I opine that in the future, society will even need more talents in more fields.