Describe a teacher who influenced you.
A strong long turn names the subject in the first sentence, spends most of the two minutes on the last bullet — the why — and arrives at a prepared final line rather than trailing off.
The question, as the examiner gives it
Describe a teacher who influenced you.
You should say
- who the teacher was
- what they taught you
- what they were like
- and explain how they influenced you
60 seconds to prepare, up to 2 minutes to speak
A band 7 to 8 answer
About 190 words at a natural pace — roughly what 120 seconds holds.
Answer it yourself first
Record your own answer first. A model you have read three times comes out with a flattened rhythm, and examiners are trained to hear exactly that. Read it afterwards for the vocabulary and the shape, not to memorise the sentences.I want to talk about Mr Fernandes, who taught me physics when I was fifteen and sixteen. He was not the most popular teacher in the school, partly because he refused to give us answers. If you asked him a question he would ask you three back, and half the class found that infuriating. What he did brilliantly was make the subject feel unfinished. He would explain something perfectly clearly and then say, at the end, that nobody really knows why this happens, and leave it there. I had never had a teacher admit that before. Everything until then had been presented as settled. He also marked work honestly, which sounds small. If an answer was lucky rather than reasoned, he said so, and if a wrong answer had good thinking in it he gave credit for that. The influence was not on my career, because I did not become a physicist. It was that I stopped assuming that the people teaching me had all the answers, and started reading around things instead of just learning them. That habit has been worth more to me than the physics ever was.
The words that earn marks
Each one links to how it is pronounced.
- physics
a consonant cluster many learners simplify
- infuriating
a five-syllable adjective with the stress on the second
- unfinished
negative prefix carrying the central idea
- settled
participle used precisely about knowledge
- reasoned
adjective distinguishing luck from thought
- credit
the exact noun in a marking context
- assuming
gerund naming the habit he broke
How a strong answer is built
- 1Name the teacher, the subject and the years.
- 2Give one distinctive thing about their method.
- 3Add a second, quieter quality with an example.
- 4Say what the influence actually was, not what it obviously might be.
Sounds to watch
The ones this answer leans on most.
Straight answers
How long should my answer to “Describe a teacher who influenced you.” be?
You get 60 seconds to make notes and then speak for up to two minutes without interruption. Aim to still be talking at ninety seconds: finishing at forty is the commonest way to lose marks on this part.
Should I memorise the model answer?
No. Record your own version first, then read the model for the shape and the vocabulary. A memorised answer changes rhythm and pace noticeably, and examiners are trained to hear it — it usually costs more than the better wording gains.
Does sayit score this answer?
It scores what a microphone can observe: an estimate from fluency and pronunciation only — not an official band, and not a mark for vocabulary or grammar.
What the band on your result means
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