CELPIP Speaking Task 2: Talking about a Personal Experience
Task 2 asks for one story from your own life: thirty seconds to prepare, sixty to tell it. The commonest failure is telling three stories badly instead of one well. Here it is inside a free full speaking test.
CELPIP Speaking Task 2, Talking about a Personal Experience, is the second of the eight tasks. The prompt gives you a category, offers a few examples of what would qualify, and asks for a story of your own. Sixty seconds. One story.
What Task 2 is really scoring
Narrative control. Past tenses held consistently, events in an order a listener can follow, and the emotional or evaluative beat the prompt asked for. Almost every Task 2 prompt asks for three things, and the third one, why it mattered, what you learned, how you felt, is the one candidates run out of time for.
The fix is arithmetic rather than language. Sixty seconds is about 140 spoken words. That is roughly four sentences of setup and events and two of reflection, which means the story you choose has to be small.
The Task 2 prompt on this test
Speaking Test 12 asks you to talk about a time when you tried a food or took part in a custom that was completely new to you, at a wedding, a festival, or a meal at someone else home, and to say what happened and how you felt about it.
That prompt is unusually kind, because the second half is built in: how you felt is the thing being asked about rather than an extra you have to remember. Use it to practise landing the reflection inside the minute.
How to answer Task 2
- Choose small. One meal, one afternoon, one conversation. A whole trip does not fit in sixty seconds.
- Open with when and where in one sentence, so the listener is oriented before anything happens.
- Keep the tense steady. Simple past for the events, past continuous for what was going on around them.
- Reserve the last fifteen seconds for the reflection. Start it deliberately, with something like what surprised me was.
- Do not apologise for your memory or restart. Self-correction is heard under Listenability and a clean run of ordinary sentences scores better than a stalled interesting one.
The 8 questions on Test 12
Your niece starts her first part-time job next week and is nervous about it. She has asked what she should expect and how she should behave during her first week. Give her your advice.
Tests: ninety seconds of concrete advice for somebody with no experience to build on.
Talk about a time when you tried a food or took part in a custom that was completely new to you, at a wedding, a festival, or a meal at someone else home. Tell your listener what happened and how you felt about it.
Tests: one small story with a reflection landed inside the minute. Both halves are named in the prompt.
Describe the picture to someone who cannot see it. It is a laundromat on a rainy evening, with customers loading machines, folding laundry and waiting by the windows.
Tests: placement and the present continuous, in a scene with three simple zones.
In this picture, what do you think will most probably happen next? It is the same laundromat.
Tests: hedged futures. The rain outside and the machines inside give you two independent predictions.
Choose between a wheeled hard case and a soft backpack for a two-week trip. Your cousin is suggesting a large duffel bag instead. Persuade her that what you chose is more suitable.
Tests: the three-screen mechanic on an everyday choice, so the marks are entirely in how the reasons are built.
The bus company moved your mother departure two hours earlier and told nobody, so she reached the station to find the bus gone and the next one not until tomorrow. She is waiting there now. You are at the ticket counter of the same company in your own town.
Tests: complaining effectively on somebody else behalf, with a specific remedy asked for rather than just an objection.
Do you think that children should be given pocket money every week? Explain your reasons.
Tests: ninety seconds on a small question, which makes filling the time the actual difficulty.
At a school fundraising sale in a church basement you pick up a bright yellow plastic gadget made of three nested bowls with a red side lever and a black suction base. Photographs are not allowed. Call your friend Ozan and ask whether your daughter would use it.
Tests: circumlocution on a modern object, plus the closing question, which is scored.
CELPIP Speaking format: where Task 2 sits
| Task | Preparation | Speaking time |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Giving AdviceAdvise one named person on a decision | 30 sec | 90 sec |
| 2. Talking about a Personal ExperienceTell one story from your own life | 30 sec | 60 sec |
| 3. Describing a SceneDescribe a picture to someone who cannot see it | 30 sec | 60 sec |
| 4. Making PredictionsSay what happens next in the same picture | 30 sec | 60 sec |
| 5. Comparing and PersuadingChoose in a silent 60 sec, then argue for it | 60 sec | 60 sec |
| 6. Dealing with a Difficult SituationPick a listener, then resolve it | 60 sec | 60 sec |
| 7. Expressing OpinionsTake a side on a general question | 30 sec | 90 sec |
| 8. Describing an Unusual SituationDescribe an unnamed object, then ask | 30 sec | 60 sec |
| Total | 8 tasks | About 15 min |
How Task 2 is scored
On the same four criteria as the rest: Content and Coherence, Vocabulary, Listenability and Task Fulfillment. Task 2 is where Listenability is most exposed, because a narrative that keeps restarting is audible in a way that a description does not have to be. Your report bands each criterion and gives an estimated CLB level.
Free, all eight tasks recorded on the exam clock, with expert feedback.
FAQs
What is CELPIP Speaking Task 2?
Task 2 is Talking about a Personal Experience. The prompt names a category and some examples, and you tell one story from your own life. Thirty seconds of preparation and sixty seconds of speaking.
How long should the Task 2 story be?
Sixty seconds is roughly 140 spoken words, so about four sentences of setup and events and two of reflection. That means choosing a small story: one meal, one afternoon, one conversation, not a whole trip.
What is the Task 2 prompt on speaking test 12?
A time when you tried a food or took part in a custom that was completely new to you, at a wedding, a festival, or a meal at someone else home, including how you felt about it.
Can I invent a story for Task 2?
Nothing is fact-checked, but an invented story is usually harder to tell fluently than a real one, and hesitation is heard under Listenability. Use a real memory and simplify it rather than building something from nothing in thirty seconds.
What is the most common Task 2 mistake?
Running out of time before the reflection. Most prompts ask for three things and the last one, how you felt or what you learned, is the one that gets cut. Reserve the final fifteen seconds for it deliberately.