Describe an event/time when someone you believed betrayed you.
You should say:
- when it was
- who the person was
- what happened
and explain how you felt about it.
[You will have to talk about the topic for one to two minutes. You have one minute to think about what you are going to say. You can make some notes to help you if you wish.]
Model Answer 1:
Feeling betrayed is certainly not a great feeling and if this betrayal comes from someone you trust, it is even worse. But this is life, and bad things happen to us whether we like it or not as the scars of treachery are still fresh in my mind. I would like to thank you for this topic and share my experience when someone I trusted stabbed me in the back.
It was about five years ago when I felt betrayed by none other than my long-time friend Andrew, whom I thought I knew for more than 15 years. I can still vividly remember the day when he asked for our motorcycle (my family owned a motorcycle back then) as he “supposedly” needed it to run for some “errands”, ensuring me that he would be back in 10 minutes. Having complete faith in him, I gave the motorcycle to my friend, who lived only a 10-minute walk away from me, without notifying my parents.
I waited for 10 minutes, but my friend was yet to come. I waited for another 20 minutes, but still no sign of my friend. My father started to ask me about the motorcycle, but I, still having faith in my friend, told them that my “friend” would be back in 30 minutes. When there was no sign of my friend even after 30 minutes had passed, I became worried and a bit annoyed at the same time. However, my “friend” did arrive after six straight hours, but he arrived with a broken motorcycle that required a lot of works to get fixed. When confronted, my friend said that he wasn’t at any fault and that the accident had taken place because of another person’s fault. However, later on, I found out that he had taken the motorcycle far beyond the distance he was supposed to travel with another guy. I also found out that it was because of his fault that the accident had taken place as he was riding motorbike real fast. In other words, he lied to me the whole time.
Not sure why he lied to me, but I felt really bad and sad not because of the broken motorcycle, but because I felt that I was duped by a person whom I have always tried to help. Having seen the “deceit” in him, I kept wondering myself about how many times he might have lied to me in the past, or how many times he may have taken advantage of me by lying to me! What was even worse that I chose to lie to my parents because I wanted to save a “so-called” friend who turned out to be a plain “lair” later on! Needless to say, after that terrible incident, I promised to myself that I would never let myself in a position again where I would feel “betrayed” and “deserted”.
Model Answer 2:
I believe deception and betrayal are more widespread today than in the past. It is a shame that it has become so common today, which used to be considered an unmentionable sin in the past. Unfortunately, I have been cheated a number of times by others but for the sake of this topic, today, I will share the worst incident when I got stung by a close friend of mine whom I believed. That was shocking and unexpected for me and the bitter feeling still lingers.
In 2017 when I was doing my post-graduation, we needed to submit a software project for 100 marks in the final term. At that time, almost everyone from my class was assisting companies of their choices to complete an internship or working hard to make a project for the final submission. I couldn’t do an internship with any of these companies as it required some strong recommendations, which I did not have. So, I decided to complete a software project on my own with the help of the internet. And I finally did that. I painstakingly finished the project and spent many sleepless nights to complete it.
I had a friend in my class, who was in the same situation as mine, and she was struggling with it. Just for humanity’s sake, I would not expose her. She belonged to a poor family and didn’t even have her own laptop. I decided to help her by submitting my individual project as a group project. For this purpose, I gave her all my work details so that she could revise it before the final submission and presentation date.
Regrettably, that was one of the biggest mistakes in my life, as she betrayed me, and submitted my project as her own individual project a week prior to the submission date. That was unexpected and an act against morality. I was deceived so badly that I lost faith in helping others. I was trying to help her and she stabbed me in the back as a reward! I was so crestfallen and dismayed that I felt helpless and depressed for a couple of days.
But luckily I had the blueprints of that project in my email and laptop. So, I was able to prove to my professors that I actually prepared that project. That was tough for me and took a great deal of effort but I was happy to find that deception did not win over morality and humanity.
[Written by – Sharuti Sharma]