Describe a time you received good news

How to approach this cue card

This card is a straightforward past narrative, so the main risk is picking news so minor that there’s little emotional content to describe, or so major and unusual that the details feel implausible. A genuine piece of good news you can remember clearly — a job offer, an exam result, an acceptance letter, good news about a family member — gives you exactly the material the four bullets ask for.

Sequence matters here: examiners are listening for a clear order of events — how the news reached you, your immediate reaction, and who you told next — so it helps to plan these as three distinct beats rather than blurring them together, especially since “how you found out” and “how you felt” are easy to mix up if you don’t separate them mentally first.

The explain line about feelings is a strong opportunity for natural, less formal language, so don’t be afraid to describe a slightly messy, honest reaction — surprise, disbelief, an urge to tell someone immediately — rather than a flat “I was happy,” which rarely earns much credit on its own.

Vocabulary that lifts this answer

A one-minute plan

• news: what it was, background context
• how found out: method, moment
• who told: order, reactions
• how felt: honest, specific emotion

Sample answer

This is one example of how to shape a full answer here, meant to illustrate structure and level rather than to be repeated exactly.

I’d like to talk about the day I found out I’d been accepted onto a university exchange programme I’d applied for almost six months earlier. I found out through an email that arrived while I was actually in the middle of a lecture, and I remember trying to read it discreetly under the desk because I’d been checking my inbox obsessively for weeks by that point. The moment I saw the word “congratulations” in the subject line, I genuinely couldn’t focus on anything else for the rest of the class, and I think I read the whole email about four times just to be sure I hadn’t misunderstood it. As soon as the lecture ended, I called my mother straight away, since she’d been almost as anxious about the outcome as I had, and I could hear how relieved she was even before I’d fully explained what the email said. After that, I told a couple of close friends who’d been through the same application process, one of whom was still waiting to hear back, so I tried to be a little careful about how I shared it rather than seeming like I was showing off. Honestly, I felt a strange mix of emotions — genuinely over the moon, but also slightly in disbelief, since I’d half convinced myself I wouldn’t get in after such a long wait. It probably took a full day for the news to properly sink in, and I remember still smiling about it randomly for the rest of that week.

Common mistakes on this card

• Choosing news so vague or minor that there’s nothing specific to say about the reaction.
• Skipping “how you found out,” which is one of the four bullets, not an optional detail.
• Describing the feeling with only one flat adjective instead of specific, natural language.
• Losing the past-tense narrative thread by describing the news in general, present-tense terms.