Describe a book you bought for someone as a gift

IELTS Cue Card/ Candidate Task Card 424 with Model Answer:

Describe a book you bought for someone as a gift.

You should say:

• what type of book it was
  
• whom you gifted the book
• from where you bought it
  

and explain why you decided to give this book as a gift.

[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 am not sure if other people like books as a gift item, but I sure do. In fact, I have bought at least a dozen of books so far in order to offer them as gifts to my friends and loved ones, and today, I would like to talk about one of those books.

The book, I would like to talk about here, is written on the story of an awesome adventure. Interestingly, enough though, I never really bought an adventure type book as a gift prior to that because frankly speaking, the details of most adventure books were a bit too much boring to me. In other words, there is very little room for imagination when I read a book on an adventure story.

But, the book, I am talking about here, wasn’t like that since it portrayed the intriguing story of a poor boy who had to go through some great risks and challenges to conquer the tallest mountain in his country. The poor boy did such a thing to prove to his government that he was strong and healthy enough to enlist as a soldier in the army of his country. Before climbing to the mountain peak, the poor boy was denied admission to the army training college because they thought that he was short and weak for the army training course. By the way, I bought that book from a local bookstore to offer it as a gift to a struggling nephew of my friend, in order to motivate him to study even harder.

To be frank, I decided to give this book as a gift, mainly because I liked the theme of the book which suggests that a person can be strong, both physically and mentally, even if he/she doesn’t have an imposing physical built. I chose this book as a gift also because I wanted to motivate a child, who was struggling academically, to try and study even harder, just as the book suggested.