Describe an Important Decision You Made
A Band 8 model answer for the IELTS Part 2 cue card 'Describe an important decision you made', with a breakdown of the narrative tenses and Part 3 discussion questions.
Cue Card
Describe an important decision you made.
You should say:
- what the decision was
- how you made it
- what the result was
And explain why it was an important decision.
Decision cue cards are really storytelling cue cards. They want a small narrative with a before, a turning point, and an after — which means they're the perfect place to show off a range of past tenses: past simple for events, past continuous for background, and past perfect for what had already happened. Mixing those naturally is a hallmark of Band 7 and above.
The model answer below tells a real-feeling story about turning down a 'safe' option. It's around Band 8, and the tense variety is doing a lot of quiet work.
Model Answer
Band 8The most important decision I've made was probably turning down a stable office job to go freelance, about four years ago. At the time it felt almost reckless, but looking back it completely changed the direction of my life.
The background was that I'd been working at a fairly large company for a couple of years. The salary was good, the hours were predictable — on paper it was exactly the kind of job everyone tells you to hold onto. But I was quietly miserable. I was doing the same tasks every day and I'd stopped learning anything new, and I remember realising that if I stayed, I could see exactly what my life would look like in twenty years, and that terrified me more than the uncertainty did.
I didn't make the decision impulsively, though. I spent about three months saving up a financial cushion, taking on small projects on the side to test whether I could actually find clients, and talking it through with people I trusted. Once I'd proven to myself that the work was there, I handed in my notice.
The result was rocky at first, I won't lie — the first six months were genuinely stressful and there were a couple of moments where I wondered if I'd made a huge mistake. But after that it stabilised, and now I earn more than I did before and, more importantly, I actually enjoy what I do.
It was such an important decision because it taught me that security and the right choice aren't always the same thing. I'd spent my whole life assuming the safe option was automatically the smart one, and that experience completely rewired how I weigh up risk. I'm far more willing now to bet on myself, and almost everything good that's happened since traces back to that one choice.
Why This Answer Works
- The tenses do exactly what the question wants. Past perfect ('I'd been working', 'I'd proven') sets up background; past simple drives the events; and the answer slides between them without ever sounding forced. That natural mixing is a core Band 7-plus signal.
- It has a genuine arc — a frustrated before, a deliberate decision process, a difficult middle, and a positive resolution. Stories with real shape are far more engaging than a flat list of facts.
- It resists the easy 'happily ever after'. Admitting the first six months were rough ('I won't lie') makes the whole thing believable, and believability is what stops you sounding rehearsed.
- The closing reflection is abstract and transferable — a lesson about security versus the right choice — which is precisely the kind of development that lifts the response above a simple anecdote.
Key Phrases to Steal
“looking back, it completely changed...”
Reflective framing that signals a considered, mature answer.
“on paper it was exactly the kind of job...”
An idiomatic contrast between appearance and reality.
“I won't lie”
A spoken discourse marker that adds honesty and natural rhythm.
“rewired how I weigh up risk”
Vivid, figurative collocation — strong lexical resource.
“almost everything good that's happened since traces back to...”
Links past decision to present outcome elegantly.
Part 3 Follow-Up Questions
Do you think young people are good at making decisions?
It varies enormously, but I'd say young people tend to be bolder rather than necessarily better. They're often more willing to take risks, which can lead to brilliant decisions older, more cautious people would never make — but the flip side is they sometimes lack the experience to foresee consequences. So I wouldn't say they're worse decision-makers, just that they make a different kind of mistake. Boldness and wisdom rarely peak at the same age.
Is it better to make decisions quickly or to take your time?
I think it genuinely depends on the stakes. For small, reversible decisions, speed is a virtue — agonising over what to have for lunch is just wasted energy. But for big, irreversible ones, deliberation pays off, because the cost of getting them wrong is so much higher. The mistake a lot of people make is applying the wrong speed to the wrong decision: rushing the important ones and overthinking the trivial ones.
Should people rely on advice from others when making big decisions?
Up to a point, yes. Other people can spot blind spots you can't see yourself and offer perspectives you'd never have considered, which is invaluable. But there's a danger in outsourcing the decision entirely, because nobody else has to live with the consequences the way you do. So I think the ideal is to gather plenty of advice and then ultimately trust your own judgement — use others as a sounding board, not as a substitute for your own thinking.
Now Try It Out Loud
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