Skip to main content
Log in / Sign upSign in

CELPIP Speaking · free template

CELPIP Speaking Task 2: Talking about a Personal Experience

CELPIP Speaking Task 2 gives you 30 seconds to prepare and 60 seconds to tell a short personal story - a memorable trip, a celebration, a time something went wrong.

A good answer is a story, not a list: set the scene in a sentence, tell what happened in order, and end with how it felt or what it taught you. The framework below is that arc, sized for one minute of speech.

Preparation
30 seconds
Speaking time
60 seconds
Format
Tell a short story from your own life

The template

  1. Set the scene

    When, where, who. Two sentences at most.

    “Two summers ago I was volunteering at a food bank in Halifax.”

  2. Narrate

    One event, told in order. Resist summarising a whole period.

    “One afternoon the delivery failed and we had ninety people already queuing.”

  3. Reflect

    Say what it changed. This is the part candidates skip.

    “I learned that improvising calmly matters more than having a plan.”

A real prompt, with model answers

This is a free exercise from the Speaking Task 2 question bank, shown with its scored model answers - the same responses learners compare against after submitting. Read the prompt, try answering with the template above, then see how the three levels differ.

Speaking Task 2 prompt

A First Day at a New Job

Talk about your first day at a new job.

Maybe you can talk about a summer job you started as a student, your first day at an office after training, or a day you began work at a new location.

What happened, how did you feel during the experience, and why is it memorable to you?

Basic responseestimated CELPIP level 5

Okay, so, my first day of new job. It was a grocery store in Surrey, two years ago. Um, I was very nervous because my English was not so good in that time. The manager, she show me the cash register, and I make many mistake with the produce codes. One customer she wait long time and she was a little angry. But my coworker, he help me, he is very kind. In the morning I feel bad, I want to go home. In the afternoon it is better. It is memorable because after this day I know I can do this work. Now I still work there and I train the new people also.

What works: The response answers all three parts of the question and gives a clear, concrete situation with real detail.

What holds it back: Frequent tense and agreement errors and very simple sentence patterns limit the range on display.

Good responseestimated CELPIP level 8

I'd like to talk about my first day at a warehouse job in Burnaby, about three years ago. I got there twenty minutes early because I was worried about the bus, and honestly I just stood outside the door for a while before going in. The supervisor gave me a safety vest and paired me with a guy who had worked there for years. We spent the whole morning scanning boxes, and I kept forgetting which aisle was which, so I had to ask him the same question maybe four times. At the start I felt pretty nervous, and a bit slow compared to everyone else, but by lunch I was much more relaxed because the team was friendly and nobody seemed annoyed with me. It's memorable because it was my first job in Canada, and it taught me that asking questions is normal here, not something to be embarrassed about.

What works: Clear chronological organization with natural connectors and a specific, believable set of details.

What holds it back: The vocabulary stays fairly general and the feelings are described in plain terms rather than with much precision.

Excellent responseestimated CELPIP level 11

So the day that comes to mind is my first day at a dental clinic in Victoria, where I'd been hired as a receptionist. I'd been out of work for almost a year at that point, so the whole thing felt like a bit of a test I'd set for myself. The office manager handed me a headset and a printout of about forty appointments, and within ten minutes the phone was ringing constantly. I completely blanked on how to transfer a call and ended up cutting someone off mid-sentence, which was mortifying. What I felt was this odd mix of panic and stubbornness. I remember thinking, I am not going to let one dropped call decide how this goes. By the afternoon I'd more or less figured out the booking system, and I was even chatting with patients about the rain while they signed in. It stays with me because that was the day I stopped thinking of myself as someone looking for work and started thinking of myself as someone who had a job. That shift in my head mattered far more than anything I actually did at the desk.

What works: Natural idiom, varied sentence structures and a genuine reflective conclusion that goes beyond the surface of the event.

What holds it back: The closing reflection runs slightly long, so a speaker could risk being cut off before finishing the final point.

Put the template to work

Reading a structure is the easy half. Rehearse Speaking Task 2 against the real clock with exam-style prompts and instant feedback.

Practice Speaking Task 2

Speaking Task 2 - common questions

Does the story have to be true?
No. Raters score language, organization and delivery - they cannot and do not check facts. A borrowed or invented story you can tell fluently beats a true one you struggle to describe. Many strong candidates prepare two or three adaptable stories in advance.
What tense should I use?
Simple past for the events ("we drove", "I lost"), past continuous for background ("it was raining"), and present perfect only if you connect the story to now ("I have been careful ever since"). Consistent past-tense control is one of the clearest grammar signals this task sends.
What if I finish before the 60 seconds end?
Add the reflection layer: how you felt, what changed afterwards, whether you would do it again. One rehearsed closing pattern ("Looking back, …") reliably absorbs the last ten seconds without padding.