CELPIP Speaking Practice Questions (Test 5)
Eight CELPIP speaking practice questions, one for every part of the 2026 format, from part 1 to part 8. Sit them on the official clock and get expert feedback against the four criteria with a CLB estimate.
One naming note before anything else, because it confuses people every day. Paragon calls the eight pieces of this section Tasks. Half the candidates in Canada call them Parts. They are the same eight things in the same fixed order, so CELPIP speaking part 1 and Task 1 are one and the same, and nothing on your screen will depend on which word you use. This page uses both so that it matches whichever one you searched for.
Below are eight CELPIP speaking practice questions, one per part, all written for Test 5 and used on no other test here. Test 5 is rated Medium, and its distinguishing feature is that several parts ask you to choose between two defensible things and then defend the choice.
CELPIP speaking part 1: Giving Advice
Part 1 is where the section opens, and it hands you the longest speaking window in the test: 30 seconds to prepare, 90 seconds to speak. Only part 7 matches it. That length is a trap as often as a gift, because 90 seconds of thin advice sounds worse than 60 seconds of good advice, and there is no way to stop early and look decisive.
On this test, part 1 is not the gentle warm-up it usually is. Your close friend has been offered a place in a two-year training program overseas. Taking it means leaving her mother, who is ill and has nobody else nearby. The program will not offer her a place again. She wants your advice.
Notice what that does. You cannot answer it with a list of tips, because the two goods are genuinely in conflict, and any advice worth 90 seconds has to acknowledge the cost of the path it recommends. That is the difference between part 1 answers that score and part 1 answers that fill time: an advice answer needs a recommendation, a reason, and an honest word about what it costs.
A workable shape for the 90 seconds: name the tension in one sentence, commit to a recommendation, give two reasons with something concrete under each, deal with the obvious objection, close by handing the decision back to her. Say the first sentence out loud during your 30 seconds of preparation. The most common way to lose part 1 is spending the opening 15 seconds looking for a way in.
The rest of the CELPIP speaking practice questions: parts 2 to 8
A time someone trusted you with something important: a key to their home, a secret, a job only you could do. Sixty seconds is one story told properly, not three summarised.
A busy airport check-in hall. An agent passes a boarding pass to an elderly man in a brown cap. At the next desk a woman kneels beside the scale, suitcase open, moving folded clothes into a backpack while the agent points down at the weight. A father pushes a pram in the rope queue, a mother pulls a boy back from a stack of luggage carts, a man in a grey suit tries to skip the line and a staff member in an orange vest points him to the back.
What happens next in that same airport picture. You get no new image, so the overweight suitcase and the queue-jumper are the evidence you have. Both are mid-transaction, which is why they are there.
One volunteer day for twenty staff. Plant trees along two kilometres of riverbank, everyone working together, tools and lunch provided, cancelled in heavy rain, and fifteen years before the trees shade anything. Or pack hampers for four hundred families at the food bank, indoors, any weather, six hours of the same task standing, work that regular volunteers already do every week. Then the other supervisor proposes building a wheelchair ramp at a seniors' residence instead: it lasts twenty years, but a certified carpenter must supervise, the city must approve the plan, only six can work at once, and the lumber costs $1,900 from your budget.
You manage a print shop. Two hundred invitations went out with the wrong date. Your employee says the customer approved the sample; the customer says she never saw one. Reprinting costs you a full day. Either tell the customer you will not reprint for free, or tell your employee you are reprinting at the shop's expense.
Should employers be allowed to look at what their employees post online? Ninety seconds. Pick a side in your first sentence.
A flea market, no photographs allowed. A green cast-iron hand-cranked machine the size of a bread box: the red wooden crank has snapped off and lies beside it, the dial is cracked from corner to corner with its red needle bent up off the face, a brass spring has burst out through the glass window, and one hinge on the wooden lid is snapped so the lid sits crooked. Call your friend Nadia, describe it, and ask her whether it can be repaired.
Every part, at a glance
| Part / Task | Prep | Speak | Picture? |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Giving Advice | 30s | 90s | No |
| 2. Personal Experience | 30s | 60s | No |
| 3. Describing a Scene | 30s | 60s | Yes, a scene |
| 4. Making Predictions | 30s | 60s | Same picture as part 3 |
| 5. Comparing and Persuading | 60s + 60s | 60s | Yes, the options |
| 6. Difficult Situation | 60s | 60s | No, text only |
| 7. Expressing Opinions | 30s | 90s | No |
| 8. Unusual Situation | 30s | 60s | Yes, one object |
The clock resets at every part and preparation cannot be skipped. Each part is scored on all four official criteria, Content and Coherence, Vocabulary, Listenability and Task Fulfillment, and your level is a product of all eight parts together. The report returns expert feedback per criterion plus an estimated CLB level from 1 to 12.
Working through these questions
- Do not drill part 1 in isolation and call it preparation. It is the part people rehearse most and the one that carries the same weight as the other seven.
- On part 3, give a spatial frame first, left desk, next desk, queue, right side, then fill it. The airport hall punishes a random tour.
- On part 5, the ramp is the emotionally strongest option and it is not yours. Concede its appeal, then dismantle it on the details: six people working while fourteen wait, and $1,900 of your budget.
- On part 6, both branches force you to disappoint someone who is partly right. Say the decision plainly, then explain. Burying it under apology reads as evasion under Task Fulfillment.
- On part 8, describing the damage is the answer, not a detour. Nadia can only tell you whether it is repairable if you tell her precisely what is broken. Then ask her.
Free, on the official clock, with expert feedback and a CLB estimate.