Talking About a Personal Experience
Sixty seconds is room for one story told properly, not three summarised. The prompt always has two halves, and the second one is where most answers stop short.
The task and the shape of the answer
Task 2 is Talking about a Personal Experience: 30 seconds of preparation, 60 seconds of recording, text only. The prompt names a category of event rather than a specific one. A time you waited a long time for something. A time you helped a stranger. A time you made a mistake at work. The story is entirely yours to supply.
Sixty seconds is about 130 to 150 words, which is one event narrated with a clear turn in it and a reflection at the end. It is not room for context, background, three related incidents and a moral. A candidate who spends twenty seconds explaining who everybody is has a third of the answer left for the thing that actually happened.
Almost every Task 2 prompt has two halves: what happened, and how you felt about it or why it mattered. Narrating the events perfectly and then stopping has answered half the question, and completeness is a named factor of Task Fulfilment. Budget the last ten to fifteen seconds for the second half before you start.
Why a small story beats a big one
The instinct is to reach for the most dramatic thing that has ever happened to you. That instinct is wrong, for three reasons that all show up in the recording.
Big stories need setup. A story about a serious illness or an emigration needs you to establish a situation, several people and a timeline before anything can happen, and that setup eats the sixty seconds. A small story needs one sentence of context. Two winters ago I waited about five hours at a passport office in Mississauga. Everything the listener needs is now in place.
Big stories also invite vague language. Significant events tend to get described in abstractions, because the feeling is larger than the detail: it was a very difficult time and I learned a lot about myself. Small stories are made of specifics, and specifics are what Vocabulary rewards. The number on your ticket, the phone battery dying at two percent, the particular moment the woman at the desk said they were closing in ten minutes.
Finally, a small story has a natural shape. Something ordinary, something goes wrong, something resolves, and you felt something you did not expect. That fits sixty seconds almost exactly.
The five beat structure
Beat one, about eight seconds: name the event and anchor it. When, where, how long. Two winters ago, at a passport office, about five hours. A time anchor and a place anchor in the first sentence give the listener somewhere to put everything that follows.
Beat two, about fifteen seconds: set it up with one concrete detail. Not a list of adjectives. One thing the listener can see. They handed me ticket number 214 and the board was showing 61.
Beat three, about fifteen seconds: the turn. Every story worth telling has a moment where it changes direction. My phone died. They called my number while I was outside. The woman ahead of me had the same problem and knew the answer.
Beat four, about ten seconds: the resolution. What actually happened in the end, stated plainly rather than dragged out.
Beat five, about twelve seconds: why it mattered. The second half of the prompt. This is not a decoration and it is not a moral. It is the part that most answers drop, and it is scored under completeness.
Tense, and the one shift that sounds advanced
The events go in the past tense, sustained and accurate, and the reflection at the end shifts into the present. That single shift is what a high band Task 2 answer sounds like, and it is worth building deliberately.
I waited about five hours, my phone died at two percent, and they called my number while I was outside looking for a socket. Past throughout, including the past continuous for the background action. Then: What I take from it now is that I am much worse at waiting than I thought I was, and I have started bringing a book to anything official. Present, and the shift marks the transition from narrative to reflection without needing a signpost like in conclusion.
A past experience narrated entirely in the present tense is a control problem, and grammar and sentence structure sit under Listenability. It is also surprisingly common under pressure, because the present is the easier tense to sustain. If you know you drift, put the word past at the top of your notes next to your three anchors.
Budget the final twelve seconds for the second half of the prompt before you start speaking. Narrating the events and stopping answers half the question, and completeness is a named factor of Task Fulfilment.
Does it have to be true?
Nothing in the task asks for verification and nothing checks. What is scored is the language and the completeness of the answer, not your biography. So the honest guidance is: choose the version of events that gives you the most to say, with a clear turn in the middle and something worth reflecting on at the end.
That said, invention has a practical cost that pure truth does not. Made up stories tend to be thin on the kind of specific detail that lifts Vocabulary, because you have to invent the ticket number as well as the story. Adapted truth is usually the best of both: a real event, with the boring parts removed and the timeline tightened.
Preparing four or five flexible stories in advance is the highest return preparation for this task. A mistake, a long wait, a first time, a return to somewhere, a moment of nerves. Between them those will cover most prompts with light adaptation. The one rule is that you must actually adapt them, because relevance is scored, and a memorised story bent to fit the wrong prompt is audible.
Two endings, same story
The prompt asks about a time you waited a long time for something, and how you felt about it.
Ending A. So finally they called my number and I got my passport and I went home. It was a very long day and I was very tired and frustrated. That is my experience of waiting a long time. This narrates the resolution, states two obvious feelings as adjectives, and then signs off by restating the prompt. It answers the second half in name only, and it uses about twelve seconds to say nothing new.
Ending B. They called me back in at ten past four and the whole thing took four minutes. What actually annoyed me was not the waiting, it was that nobody told us anything for five hours, and I think that is the part I would change. Now I notice it everywhere, at the doctor's, at the bank, and I have become the person who asks how long it will be.
Same event, same length. The second one names a feeling that is specific rather than generic, distinguishes between two things that could have been frustrating, and connects the event to the present. That is the reflection the prompt asked for, and it is also where the abstract language in the answer lives.
Prepare four flexible stories in advance: a mistake, a long wait, a first time, a moment of nerves. Then adapt them to the prompt in front of you rather than reciting, because relevance is scored and a bent story is audible.
Practise it
Five judgement questions on choosing a story, shaping it and finishing it.