CELPIP Speaking: The Eight Tasks

The big picture

• CELPIP Speaking (8 tasks)
  • Advice & experience — Give advice; describe a personal experience
  • Describe & predict — Describe a scene; make predictions
  • Persuade & handle — Compare/persuade; a difficult situation
  • Opinions & unusual — Express opinions; describe an unusual scene
  • Prep then speak — Short prep, then record your answer

Eight recorded tasks, prep then speak

Speaking has eight tasks, each with a short preparation time and then a recording time — you speak into the microphone, there's no examiner. The tasks include Giving Advice, Talking about a Personal Experience, Describing a Scene, Making Predictions, Comparing and Persuading, Dealing with a Difficult Situation, Expressing Opinions, and Describing an Unusual Situation.

Describe a Scene & Describe an Unusual Situation

For the picture tasks, describe what you see systematically — location, people, actions, details — filling the whole time. In 'unusual situation', you also explain what's odd or what might be happening. Keep a steady flow; naming details fluently is what scores.

The opinion & persuasion tasks

For Giving Advice, Comparing and Persuading, Expressing Opinions, use a clear mini-structure: state your position, give reasons with examples, and address the other side. Sound natural and confident — the goal is real communication, not memorised phrases.

Fluency and clarity beat a perfect accent

Human raters reward clear, natural, fluent speech that fully addresses the task — not a particular accent or big vocabulary. Don't go silent: if you lose your thread, rephrase and continue. Use the full recording time.

Test yourself before you move on

Re-reading a note feels like learning and produces almost none. The retrieval below is what actually builds the memory, so cover the map above and answer these from memory — out loud or written down, not in your head, because "I know this" is the feeling that fails under exam pressure.

1. Without looking: what is Advice & experience, and how does it connect to CELPIP Speaking (8 tasks)?
2. Without looking: what is Describe & predict, and how does it connect to CELPIP Speaking (8 tasks)?
3. Without looking: what is Persuade & handle, and how does it connect to CELPIP Speaking (8 tasks)?
4. Without looking: what is Opinions & unusual, and how does it connect to CELPIP Speaking (8 tasks)?
5. Without looking: what is Prep then speak, and how does it connect to CELPIP Speaking (8 tasks)?

Anything you could not produce is the part of this note you have not learned yet — regardless of how familiar it felt while reading. Re-read only that node, then re-test the whole set. Testing the whole set matters: recalling one idea in isolation is easier than recalling it among 5 competing ones, which is the situation the exam actually puts you in.

When to come back to this note

Spacing is not a scheduling detail, it is the mechanism. Meeting this material again just as it starts to fade forces the effortful retrieval that consolidates it, which is why a note reviewed four times across three weeks outlasts the same note read four times in one evening. The built-in scheduler resurfaces these questions at widening intervals for exactly that reason — the prompt arriving when you feel you have half-forgotten is the system working, not failing.

A practical rhythm for CELPIP Speaking (8 tasks): today, again tomorrow, then after three days, then after a week. If you fail a review, shorten the next interval rather than re-reading the note end to end — the failure identifies the gap precisely, and re-reading everything wastes the diagnosis.

Then apply it under pressure. Knowing a concept in isolation and using it in a timed paper are different skills, and only the second is examined. There are 210 free CELPIP practice tests here covering 4,020 questions — counted from the test files, not estimated. Take a full timed CELPIP mock →