Describe a piece of technology you find useful

這張題卡的準備方式

這張題卡（cue card）要看你能不能精準地描述一樣有功能的東西，重點在準確，不在感情。焦點是實用性，所以現在式、頻率的說法和表示目的的子句（「I use it to…」、「it allows me to…」）自然會成為回答的主體。考官想看的是具體的日常細節，而不是籠統的功能清單。

最容易下手的角度，是你每天真正依賴的科技產品，因為這樣「how often you use it」就能簡單又誠實地回答，「what you use it for」也自然會帶出好幾個具體的例子，而不只是一句模糊的話。避免選一個聽起來很厲害、但你幾乎不用的東西，因為後面的要點很快就會暴露你缺少真實的細節。

分配時間時，「what this technology is」要簡短，再把真正的時間花在「how often」，尤其是「what you use it for」上，因為列出兩三種具體而不同的用途，通常是最容易自然填滿時間的方法，最後再用一個清楚、實際的理由說明它為什麼實用。

讓回答更出色的詞彙

1分鐘準備計畫

在1分鐘的準備時間裡，可以寫下：

• What: device/app, brief description
• How often: daily/weekly, specific routine
• What for: 2-3 concrete uses
• Why useful: honest, practical reason

範例回答

以下是這張題卡完整回答的一種寫法，用來示範結構和程度，不是要你照背。

I’d like to talk about the notes and calendar app on my phone, which honestly might sound like an unglamorous choice, but it’s genuinely one of the pieces of technology I rely on most heavily. I use it multiple times a day, realistically — it’s rarely more than an hour or two before I’m checking or updating something in it. What I actually use it for varies quite a bit: mostly it’s keeping track of university deadlines and appointments, but I also use it for smaller things, like shopping lists or quick reminders to message someone back, which sounds trivial but adds up to a lot of daily use. What makes it useful, I think, is less about any single advanced feature and more about how it streamlines something I used to be genuinely bad at, which is remembering things without writing them down somewhere reliable. Before I started using it properly, I’d regularly forget deadlines or double-book myself, and switching to a single, consistent system pretty much solved that problem within a few weeks. It’s also fairly user-friendly, so setting reminders or moving things around takes seconds rather than becoming its own chore, which matters because I’d never stick with something that felt like extra work. If I’m honest, it’s not the most exciting example of technology I could have picked, but in terms of genuinely making my daily life more organised, it’s probably done more for me than any other single app or device I own.

這張題卡的常見錯誤

• 選了一項聽起來很厲害的科技產品，卻說不出多少關於日常實際使用的具體內容。
• 只列出一種用途，而不是兩三種，讓「what you use it for」這一項太短，撐不起來。
• 給出「it’s very useful」這類籠統的理由，卻沒有具體說明它解決了什麼問題。
• 完全忘了提到使用頻率，讓「how often」這一項等於沒有回答。