Describe a piece of equipment or tool you often use at home

IELTS Cue Card # 193 – Describe a piece of equipment or tool you often use at home

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Last Updated: Sunday, 18 April 2021 15:44

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

Describe a piece of equipment or tool you often use at home.

You should say:

• what it is
• how you use it
• why it is important to you

and explain how this piece of equipment works.

Model Answer 1:
Carrying a knife has been a time-honoured tradition for men throughout history. The Roman invention of the folding pocket knife was a significant technological innovation in its day, making a knife safer to carry and easier to conceal.  Even today, a knife remains an essential tool for everyday life.

But, I am certainly not going to talk about carrying a knife. But, rather, I want to talk about a knife – a pocket knife that is – that I use often at my home. By the way, I didn’t buy this knife on my own, but rather it was given to me by an Engineer cousin of mine.

It is about 6 inches long and has a metallic handle. I wouldn’t describe it as a heavy knife, but I wouldn’t call it lightweight either. In fact, I feel that the knife was made with a lot of consideration and plan behind it so that people could feel it and also use it easily. By the way, the blade of the knife is also curved with some unique but nice design so that at the first look, it doesn’t quite look like a real knife but just a souvenir for the purpose of home decoration.  

Anyway, this knife is an important tool since I can use it to do a lot of things. For example, I use it to cut tape, cut string, cut trailing threads on clothing, open boxes and packages, cut/strip wires, prepare food like fruits and vegetables, open mail/envelopes, open food packaging, cut paper in the absence of scissors, cut zip ties, and remove tags from new clothing. Sometimes, I use it to unscrew nails also when I don’t have access to any screwdriver.

This knife is rather simple to work with. All one needs to do is pull its blade from inside the hiding place of its handle before using it. One would also need to run its blade across an object, instead of actually pushing it against the object, in order to cut it properly. However, its blade also requires sharpening on a regular basis for the knife to work properly.

Sample Answer 2:
We have many tools and equipment in our house, and I use them for different purposes. Some of them we can’t do without, and some of them are for decoration purpose only. And the tool I would like to talk about today for this topic is a vacuum cleaner that I use for cleaning furniture’s, carpet and many other things in my house.

I clean my house once or twice a week and mostly on days off. Cleaning the whole house and the furniture is very time-consuming and tedious. But the vacuum cleaner that I use makes it easy for me to clean the house, especially for cleaning the dust on the carpet.

This machine is very handy and I find it important to keep our house neat and clean. Our house is just beside the main road and that makes it more prone to dust. Before purchasing the vacuum cleaner, it was a very tiresome and tough task for us to clean the house. But this has become a lot easier after I started using this tool.

The vacuum cleaner is electronic equipment that requires an AC current. After plugging in, I turn on the power switch and use the long handle that sucks all the dust and small particles. I place the front of the machine towards the dust and it gulps the dust and they are then placed in a dustbin. Undeniably, a vacuum cleaner is an important tool for me as it does an important task in our home.

Similar Cue Card Topics

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

1. Describe a tool you own.
2. Describe a useful device you have at your home.
3. Describe an important device or tool you have.
4. Describe a useful possession you have.