Something that was difficult to use at first

IELTS Cue Card/ Candidate Task Card 402 with Model Answer:

Describe something you purchased that was difficult to use at first.

You should say:

• what it was
  
• why you purchased it
• why it was difficult to use at first

and explain how you had been able to learn to use 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.]

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Model Answer:

 

I was never really much of a fan of setting up a toaster in our kitchen and use it, mainly because it would make our small kitchen look even more crowded than already it was. But, my mother disagreed with me and asked me to buy a nice looking toaster so that she wouldn’t need to toast so many pieces of bread on a frying pan.

By the way, the majority of our family members, including me, preferred their loaves of bread to be toasted on a frying pan because doing it on a frying pan would toast them evenly from both sides. Therefore, buying a toaster wasn’t exactly a priority for us until my mother insisted on it. So, the next thing was that I went to a home appliance shop and bought a perfect-shape and nice-looking toaster to make my dear mother happy. Anyway, this toaster, I bought, was at a time when very few people in my country knew or used a toaster as it was a long ago.

But, for a first time toaster-user like me, using that toaster proved out to be a bit difficult for all of us in the beginning, mainly because loaves of bread usually come in different sizes and textures, from ultra-light and fluffy, and from dense and heavy. But, on the other hand, the toaster, I bought, had only one temperature setting, which wouldn’t always make the bread properly toasted and crispy, both from inside and outside. Another problem with that toaster was that it would get hot very rapidly which would create a big problem for us to take the loaves of bread out of it without risking little burn on our hands.

But, soon we learned to use our little toaster without any difficulty. To solve the problem of crisp issue of the loaves of bread we always tried to buy only those loaves of bread which fit perfectly inside the toaster. As far as dealing with the heat of the toaster was concerned, we just waited a little longer for it to the cooler before taking out the toasted bread.