Question
Describe one of your holidays.
Sample answer
In most of my holidays I go to visit my family members in my hometown. For my job, I am currently residing in the capital city of my country but my parents, siblings, grandparents, uncle and aunts are living in our hometown. So in most of my holidays I go to visit my family members. My typical holidays last for 4-5 days most of the time and sometimes I get longer holidays.
When I was a university student, I had some friends studying in the same faculty who were from my hometown. During my university study we used to go to our hometown together on our vacations but now-a-days I go to my hometown mostly alone. The journey takes about 6-7 hours by bus. Sometimes we travel by train and this train journeys usually take 8-9 hours including the stoppage. Though the journey is tiresome sometimes, but the thought of meeting my family members and the excitement of being in the place I really love wash away the tiresomeness and monotonous feeling of the journey.
The time I stay with my family members and local friends, I enjoy the moments very much. This is the town where I grew up and naturally all of my childhood & adolescence memories are related to this place. I do lots of interesting things there during my holidays: I swim in the river, take care of the garden and firm we have, collect vegetables and fruits from our garden and then make arrangement to sell those to the local sellers, sometime I catch fished, play with my friends both indoor and outdoor games, visit different places and do lots of other stuffs.
In my city life, I have to follow a strict timeline and stay at office most of the time, but in my hometown where I mostly go during my holidays, I am quite free and do whatever I feel like doing and spend time with the people I care most. That's why I prefer to go to my hometown during my holidays rather than going to other places.
Tips for answering this cue card topic:
Since you are free to talk about multiple activities that you usually do in your holidays, you can talk about many of them and this makes this cue card an easy one. You don't have to talk about a single activity that you mostly do in your holidays unless you really confident that you would be able to give a lot of details of this single activity.
Take some notes on the activities you do in your holidays and then start talking about these activities. They can be both the indoor and outdoor activities as the topic has not specified any of them.
Though the holidays are specifically the days set aside by custom or law on which people keep away the formal daily office or business works and celebrates an event or tradition of religious or cultural significance, you are not bound to describe a major festivals as your holidays. In some parts of the world holidays are treated as vacations and you can talk about your vacations as well. If you want you can also describe your activities on major festivals or religiously significant days.
Some of the common things people do on their holidays:
They put aside the office or business tasks and spend time with family members and friends.
They cook and prepare some special dishes at home or go to outside to visit famous places.
They go to their hometown and spend towns there.
They do some shopping as part of the holidays.
Some people go to visit other places or cities during their holidays.
They maintain the social relations and visit neighbors and relatives on their holidays.
People obey the religious rituals and rules if this is a religious holiday.
Your preparation for this cue card would help you answering the following cue cards also:
1. Describe one of your holidays.
2. Talk about a major festival in your country.
3. Describe a typical day off you have.
4. Describe your activity during a major festival.
