Describe something expensive you have purchased recently

IELTS Cue Card # 166 – Something expensive you have purchased recently

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IELTS Speaking Part 2: IELTS Cue Card/ Candidate Task Card.

Describe something expensive you have purchased recently.

You should say:

• what it is and when you have purchased it
• whether you saved money for that
• where you purchased it from

and explain why you purchased it.

Model Answer 1:

I don’t really like to purchase any expensive item unless I have a very valid reason to do so. Of course, people would choose to define expensive differently, but I am not really debating here as to what really should be considered as expensive and what shouldn’t be. Instead, I am here to talk about an expensive item that I have purchased recently.

It is a branded perfume, and I bought it (more like “forced” to buy it) about a couple of months ago when I was visiting a new perfume store with one of my friends in my hometown. By the way, I do like to use different kinds of perfumes because the same scent or fragrance, if used for a long period of time, loses its appeal to me. So, I try to buy affordable perfumes at a more regular interval instead of spending a fortune in buying some expensive perfumes.

So, after visiting the new perfume store, I found that it was selling a lot of perfumes at a discounted price, apparently, in an effort to make the store popular with customers. However, I noticed that even though the perfumes were selling at a discounted rate, I felt that they were still expensive. But, my friend thought otherwise and convinced me to purchase a certain perfume. I had never really bought this kind of perfume up until that day nor was I too sure about saving any money, but one thing was for sure that the perfume would last for a considerably longer period of time.

Well, I purchased the expensive perfume, mainly because my friend had convinced me to do so. Of course, I also went along with his idea because I felt that it was a very nice perfume, and it would help me to change my taste in perfume for a little while.  Finally, I bought it also because I wanted to build a good rapport with the new store so that if I would ever go back to that store again in the future, it would offer me a better price.

Sample Answer 2:

Thank you for this nice topic that asks me to share one of my recent purchases that cost me a good amount of money. So, an expensive item that I’ve recently purchased is a Sony Vaio laptop which cost me around 2000 USD. As a student, this is quite expensive, I would say.

The laptop I bought is the latest-generation i7 laptop and it came with the original Windows 10 operating system. I bought it 2 months ago from a branded computer outlet, and they gave me 2 years’ service warranty.

I had to save money to buy it. My previous laptop was getting old and slow, and I needed a new laptop with a better configuration to do most of my works without any hassle. I finalised my budget after comparing the prices and brands of different laptops almost 6 months ago, and I started saving money from then.

My father gave me 1000 USD, half of the total cost of the laptop, and the remaining half came from my savings. I saved the money from the amount I earned from my part-time jobs over a period of 5 to 6 months. Thus I saved the amount required to purchase the laptop in my bank account and withdrew the whole amount before I purchased it.

I was so happy to have this new laptop even though it cost me more than I could afford as a student. As my old laptop could not support the workload I needed to be done and was taking too much time even to start up, I needed a new laptop that would work faster and had a better configuration. So, I purchased it.

Similar Cue Card Topics

Your ability to talk about this Cue Card Topic would enable you to talk about the following Cue Card Topics as well:

1. Describe something you bought this year.
2. Describe a memorable gift you ever received.
3. Describe a valuable possession you have.
4. Describe an expensive gift you received.
5. Describe a gift you gave to someone.
6. Describe a gift you gave to your friend.