Describe a Hobby You Enjoy
A Band 8 model answer for the IELTS Part 2 cue card 'Describe a hobby you enjoy', with the tense range that makes it work and Part 3 questions about free time and leisure.
Cue Card
Describe a hobby you enjoy.
You should say:
- what the hobby is
- how you got into it
- how often you do it
And explain why you enjoy this hobby.
The hobby cue card looks easy, and that's the danger — easy topics make people lazy, and they give short, generic answers like 'I like football because it's fun and healthy.' The thing that separates a Band 6 answer from a Band 8 one here isn't the hobby itself; it's how much specific, personal texture you can add, and how naturally you move between when you started, what you do now, and how you feel about it.
This model answer is around Band 8. The hobby is ordinary — gardening — but the speaker makes it interesting by being honest and specific, and by drawing out a slightly surprising reason for enjoying it.
Model Answer
Band 8A hobby I've really come to love is growing vegetables — I've got a small balcony garden, nothing ambitious, just a few pots, but it's become a genuine passion over the last couple of years.
I sort of fell into it by accident, actually. During a long, fairly boring stretch when I was stuck at home, I bought a single chilli plant on a whim, mostly to have something living in the flat. It survived, somewhat to my surprise, and that small success got me hooked. I started adding tomatoes, herbs, some leafy greens, and now my whole balcony is covered in pots and I'm constantly running out of space.
I tend to it pretty much every day, even if it's just for a few minutes — checking on things, watering, pulling off dead leaves. Weekends are when I do the proper work, the repotting and the planting, and I'll happily lose an entire morning to it without noticing.
The reason I enjoy it so much surprised me, honestly. I assumed it would be about the food, but the vegetables you grow yourself are a tiny fraction of what you could just buy, so it's clearly not that. What it really gives me is patience and a sense of progress you don't get from much else in modern life. Everything else I do is fast and digital and instantly reversible, whereas a plant grows on its own schedule and there's absolutely nothing you can do to rush it. There's something deeply calming about that. And there's a real, simple joy in eating something you watched grow from a seed — it reconnects you to where food actually comes from in a way I think a lot of us have lost.
Why This Answer Works
- It moves fluidly across time frames — how it started (past), what the routine is now (present), how it feels (timeless reflection). That natural blending of tenses is exactly what the grammar criterion rewards.
- It subverts the obvious reason. The speaker expects to enjoy gardening for the food, then realises it's actually about patience. That little twist makes the answer feel like genuine thinking rather than a prepared script.
- The detail is specific and slightly self-deprecating — 'constantly running out of space', 'somewhat to my surprise' — which keeps it sounding like a real person, not a textbook.
- The closing connects a small hobby to a bigger idea (slowness in a fast, digital world) without losing the personal warmth. That blend is the signature of a high-band Part 2 answer.
Key Phrases to Steal
“I sort of fell into it by accident”
An idiomatic way to describe starting a hobby unintentionally.
“that small success got me hooked”
Natural phrasing for becoming passionate about something.
“I'll happily lose an entire morning to it”
Conveys absorption and enjoyment in a vivid, natural way.
“a plant grows on its own schedule”
A simple personification that carries the whole reflection.
“it reconnects you to where food actually comes from”
Links the personal hobby to a broader observation.
Part 3 Follow-Up Questions
Why are hobbies important for people?
I think they serve a need that work and obligations simply don't. A hobby is one of the few things you do purely because you want to, with no external pressure or measurement attached, and that sense of freedom is genuinely restorative. They also give people an identity beyond their job — somewhere to feel competent and absorbed — which becomes more and more valuable as life gets busier and more performance-driven. In a way, hobbies are where people get to be themselves.
Do you think people have less free time now than before?
Curiously, the data suggests we actually have a similar amount, but it certainly doesn't feel that way, and I think that's the more interesting point. Our free time has become heavily fragmented and colonised by screens, so instead of one solid block we can really sink into a hobby, we get scattered minutes that get swallowed by scrolling. So it's less that we have less free time and more that we've become worse at protecting it and using it deliberately.
Should children be encouraged to have hobbies?
Definitely, and I'd argue it's one of the more underrated parts of a childhood. Hobbies teach children persistence, how to handle frustration, and the deep satisfaction of slowly getting good at something — lessons that transfer to almost everything later in life. My one caveat would be that it has to come from genuine interest; the moment a hobby becomes another scheduled, high-pressure activity engineered to look good on a university application, it loses most of its real value.
Now Try It Out Loud
Reading a model answer is one thing — saying it under pressure is another. Practise this exact cue card with our AI examiner and get instant band-score feedback.