Describe A person who gave a clever solution to a problem
Describe a person who gave a clever solution to a problem.
You should say:
• Who the person is
• When you met this person
• What the problem was
• And explain why you think it was a clever solution
You will have to talk about the topic for 1 to 2 minutes. You have 1 minute to think about what you are going to say. You can make some notes to help you if you wish.
I’d like to talk about Zoe, my undergraduate dorm mate who I met on my first day of freshman year in 2019. Back in our second year, the student film club I joined was arranging a campus film festival, but we hit a major bottleneck: the school auditorium was fully booked for that whole week by different department events, even though we had already promoted the event and got over 400 registered attendees. Cancelling would have ruined our reputation and wasted the sponsorship we’d secured. Then Zoe, who was also a club member, proposed an ingenious solution. She reached out to the campus logistics team to rent the idle repurposed shipping containers next to the sports field for free, as they were barely used for extracurricular events. She then coordinated a cross-sector collaboration: we borrowed portable projectors and audio equipment from the computing department, and partnered with a nearby bubble tea shop to provide free mini drinks for attendees in exchange for logo exposure. We also added a small entry requirement: each guest had to bring one used children’s book to donate to rural primary schools. The event was a massive hit, and we outperformed our original goals by collecting over 500 books and getting positive feedback from both attendees and the school management. I think it was incredibly clever because she turned a crisis into an opportunity to add more social value to the event, with almost no extra cost.
cross-sector collaboration /ˈkrɒs ˈsektə(r) kəˌlæbəˈreɪʃn/:跨部门合作
undergraduate /ˌʌndəˈɡrædʒuət/:本科生
social value /ˈsəʊʃl ˈvæljuː/:社会价值
bottleneck /ˈbɒtlnek/:瓶颈,难题
auditorium /ˌɔːdɪˈtɔːriəm/:大礼堂
outperform /ˌaʊtpəˈfɔːm/:胜过,优于
ingenious /ɪnˈdʒiːniəs/:巧妙的,有独创性的
idle /ˈaɪdl/:闲置的
