C2 Proficiency Speaking collaborative task practice

• Inviting, responding to and developing a partner’s contribution.
• Disagreeing without either conceding immediately or shutting the discussion down.
• Speculating aloud about hypothetical situations and consequences.
• Negotiating towards an agreed decision within a time limit.
• Managing turn-taking, including interrupting politely and yielding gracefully.
• Extending a point with reasons, examples and consequences rather than repeating it.
• Using discourse markers so your partner and the examiner can follow your reasoning.
• Range of structures in speech: conditionals, hedged modality, comparison.
• Handling prompts you find uninteresting without visibly running out of ideas.
• Reaching a decision genuinely rather than announcing one at the last second.

1. Step 1: 1

   Open by framing, not by answering

   Shall we take them in order, or start with the one that looks hardest? A framing sentence buys thinking time, demonstrates interactive control, and stops both candidates talking at once in the first ten seconds.

2. Step 2: 2

   Speak in claim plus reason plus consequence

   Three-part turns are the unit of C2 speech. I would rule this one out; the cost falls on the same people twice, and we would end up with a scheme nobody trusts. Anything shorter sounds like a list.

3. Step 3: 3

   Hand the turn over explicitly

   Does that match your experience? Would you go further than that? Naming what you want from your partner earns interactive marks and protects you from monologuing.

4. Step 4: 4

   Disagree in two moves

   Concede something real, then object specifically. I can see why that is attractive in the short term, but it assumes the funding continues. Flat contradiction and instant agreement are both weak.

5. Step 5: 5

   Build on rather than restart

   Picking up your point about the volunteers signals that you were listening and gives you a running start. Examiners are explicitly looking for development of the other candidate’s ideas.

6. Step 6: 6

   Keep a hypothetical register available

   If it were to run for a second year, we would have to find the staff somewhere. Unreal conditionals and hedged modality are the structures this task is built to elicit, so use them deliberately.

7. Step 7: 7

   Watch the clock and steer to the decision

   About a minute before the end, say so: we should probably decide. Reaching a genuine agreement, or a clearly stated disagreement, completes the task; being interrupted mid-discussion does not.

8. Step 8: 8

   Recover from a blank with a strategy phrase

   That is a harder one than it looks. Let me think about it from the other side. Filling a pause with a functional sentence is better than silence and far better than an English word you are unsure of.

• Not thisAgreeing with everything your partner says.

  ThisAgreeing where you agree and testing the rest.

  Constant agreement ends the discussion and gives you nothing to say. Interactive communication is assessed, and it needs friction.

• Not thisDelivering a prepared speech regardless of what your partner says.

  ThisResponding to the specific point just made before adding your own.

  A monologue in a paired task lowers the interactive mark however good the language is, and it damages your partner’s chances too.

• Not thisThat is a good idea. Yes. I agree. OK.

  ThisThat would work for the evening sessions, though I am less sure about the mornings, when the same rooms are already in use.

  Minimal responses give the examiner nothing to assess and leave the conversation to your partner.

• Not thisAnnouncing a decision in the last five seconds without discussion.

  ThisFlagging the need to decide a minute early and negotiating it.

  The task asks you to reach a decision together. An unnegotiated verdict does not complete it.

• Not thisInterrupting by simply talking over your partner.

  ThisCan I come in there? or Just before you move on ...

  Interruption is fine at C2 and expected in real discussion, but the way it is done is part of what is being assessed.

• Not thisFalling silent when you have no view on a prompt.

  ThisSaying why it is hard to judge, then taking a position provisionally.

  Silence is unassessable. A sentence about the difficulty of the prompt is itself a contribution, and it usually generates the idea you were missing.

shall we start with

framing move to open the discussion

that is a fair point, but

concede then object

I take your point about

acknowledge a specific argument

would you go further than that?

invite your partner to develop a position

picking up on what you said

build explicitly on a previous turn

can I come in there?

polite interruption

I am not entirely convinced that

hedged disagreement

where I would differ is

locates disagreement precisely

suppose for a moment that

introduces a hypothetical

that rather depends on

makes agreement conditional

on reflection

signals a considered change of mind

shall we say, then, that

moves the pair towards the decision

if push came to shove

if a decision had to be forced

to play devil’s advocate

argue a case you do not hold in order to test it

the sticking point

the issue preventing agreement

we seem to be agreed on

summarises common ground before the remaining choice

40 original questions. The first 10 are open to everyone. Answers are checked in your browser and never sent to us, so you can share this page with a class as it is.

• Previous: Listening multiple matching40 questions
• Next: The long turn40 questions
• All C2 Proficiency listening & speaking topics5 task types
• C2 Proficiency preparationFree C2 Proficiency (CPE) practice for every paper: Reading and Use of English, Writing, L