Filling the Time Without Padding
How much of the allowed recording time you used is measured from the audio, and stopping early carries a hard ceiling. Padding to reach the end is not the way out of it.
Length is measured, and it is a cap
Every answer is measured against the time it was given. An answer that uses well under a third of the allowed recording time cannot score above 6 on Task Fulfilment, however accurate it was. On a sixty second task that threshold is twenty seconds. On the two ninety second tasks it is thirty.
The reason is not arbitrary. Task Fulfilment includes completeness and development, and a task you left after eighteen seconds has not been developed. The ceiling is applied after everything else, so precision and range in those eighteen seconds do not lift it. This is the clearest example of a cap you can remove with planning alone.
It is worth being blunt about how short twenty seconds is. Around 130 to 150 words a minute is a comfortable spoken pace, so twenty seconds is roughly forty five words. That is three sentences. Candidates routinely produce answers of that length without realising it, because from the inside, silence and thinking time feel like speaking time.
What a full answer actually costs in words
At a natural pace, sixty seconds is about 130 to 150 words and ninety seconds is about 200 to 230. Those are not targets to count towards while speaking, but they are useful for working out what a plan has to contain before you open your mouth.
A sixty second answer holds roughly three developed ideas: a clear opening, three points with one concrete detail each, and a closing line. A ninety second answer holds three developed ideas plus either a fourth, an objection answered, or an extended example. If your plan has one idea in it, the arithmetic already says you will stop early, and no amount of willpower during the recording changes that.
This is why planning three anchors matters more than planning good ones. Three mediocre points that each get twenty seconds will outscore one excellent point that runs out at second twenty two, because one of those answers triggers a cap and the other does not.
Padding is not the answer either
The obvious response to running short is to stretch, and it produces its own damage. Padding takes four recognisable forms and each one costs something specific.
Restating your position. Saying so that is why I think they should definitely take the job, as I said for the third time adds seconds and no content. Content and Coherence scores the quality and development of ideas, and a repeated idea is not a second idea.
Empty scaffolding. There are many different opinions about this topic and it is a very interesting question that people discuss a lot these days. That is twenty five words, about eleven seconds, and it says nothing. Two of those sentences consume a sixth of a ninety second answer.
Narrating your own process. Let me think about what else I could say here. This is worse than silence in one respect: silence is measured as a pause, but this is measured as words that carry no content, and it also reads as a candidate who did not plan.
Slowing down. Deliberately stretching your pace to make the material last is visible in the measurements. Under roughly 90 words a minute with long pauses reads as effortful retrieval and caps Listenability at 7.
The four things that legitimately fill time
Every one of these adds content while it adds seconds, which is the test of whether something is filler.
A concrete example. Naming a place, a number, a duration or a person turns an assertion into evidence. Public transport should be cheaper becomes my sister pays about a hundred and sixty dollars a month for a pass she uses twice a day, which is more than she spends on her phone and her internet together. That is fifteen seconds of new information.
A concession answered. Stating the strongest argument against your position honestly and then responding to it is both a time filler and a top band marker. It demonstrates that you understood the issue rather than picked a side.
Consequence chaining. Take any point one step further into what follows from it. If schools start later, teenagers sleep more; if they sleep more, the first period is not wasted; if the first period is not wasted, the extra hour pays for itself. Three clauses out of one idea, and they connect, which Coherence rewards.
Detail on the picture tasks. On Tasks 3, 4 and 8 the material is in front of you and it does not run out. If you are short, go back to a person or an object you named quickly and describe what they are actually doing.
Plan three anchors before you plan anything else. An answer with one idea in it runs out at roughly twenty seconds, and twenty seconds on a sixty second task caps Task Fulfilment at 6 no matter how good those twenty seconds were.
Landing near the end without being cut off
Being cut off mid word is not penalised anywhere as a separate error, and it is much less costly than stopping twenty seconds early. Still, an answer that reaches a conclusion sounds finished, and finished answers read as complete under Task Fulfilment.
The technique that works is a short closing line you can deploy from about eight seconds out, which means your last idea should be one you can abandon cleanly. Land your strongest point second to last, not last. Then keep a one sentence close ready: So overall I would tell her to try the earlier shift for a month and see how it goes. If the clock runs out before you reach it, nothing is lost, because the substance was already delivered.
The specific thing to avoid is planning a grand finish that depends on forty seconds of setup. If your answer only makes sense once the final point lands, and the final point is at second fifty eight, you are one slow sentence away from an answer that appears to have no conclusion.
Two answers, same prompt, different endings
The prompt is Task 7: should employers be allowed to contact staff outside working hours? Ninety seconds.
The short answer. I think no, they should not. Because people need rest and if you are always working you will get stressed and burnt out. Also it is not fair because you are not being paid for that time. So that is my opinion, they should not contact you. That is about fifty words, roughly twenty two seconds. Two reasons, neither developed, no example, and a close that repeats the opening. The content is not wrong. There is simply not enough of it, and the length puts a ceiling on Task Fulfilment before anything else is considered.
The full answer. The same two reasons, but the first one now contains a specific person: a friend who checks messages at eleven at night and has stopped sleeping properly in the week before every deadline. The second one now contains a distinction, between genuine emergencies and habitual after hours messaging, which lets the answer concede that some contact is reasonable and then draw a line. Then a third idea, that a clear rule helps managers as much as staff because it removes the guesswork. Then the one sentence close. That is the same argument at around 215 words, and the difference between them is not language ability. It is planning.
Put your strongest point second to last and keep a one sentence close in reserve. Being cut off costs almost nothing, but a plan whose whole meaning depends on the final sentence can be destroyed by one slow clause.
Practise it
Five questions on length, padding and what genuinely fills a recording.