The Long Turn: one minute to prepare, two minutes to speak
B1 → C1 · 50 minutes
Two Minutes Is Longer Than You Think
5 minutes
Talk about the room you are sitting in right now. Keep going until the clock stops. No preparation, no notes.
Ready when you are
2:00
How did that feel?
Most people dry up somewhere around forty seconds. That is not a language problem — it is a planning problem, and it is the whole reason Part 2 gives you a minute with a pencil first.
Ran out early
You said everything you had, then repeated yourself, then stopped and looked at the examiner.
Still going
You were interrupted at two minutes with more to say. That is exactly the position you want to be in.
What Happens in Part 2
6 minutes
The shape of it
Length: 3–4 minutes in total
You get: a card with a topic, three bullet points and a final instruction
Preparation: exactly one minute, with paper and a pencil
Speaking: one to two minutes, alone, without interruption
Afterwards: one or two short rounding-off questions
Here is a card in the standard format. Read it the way the examiner expects you to read it.
Describe a skill you would like to learn.
You should say:
what the skill is
how you would learn it
how difficult you think it would be
and explain why you would like to learn this skill.
What the examiner is listening for
Four things, each worth a quarter of your speaking mark.
1
Fluency and coherence. Can you keep going, and can the listener follow the order of your ideas? Pausing to find a better word is fine; pausing because you have lost the thread is not.
2
Lexical resource. Range, and whether the words fit. One well-placed expression beats five that nearly work.
3
Grammatical range and accuracy. Variety of structures as well as correctness. A perfectly accurate answer made only of short simple sentences has a ceiling.
4
Pronunciation. Not an accent test — the question is whether you are easy to understand. Word stress and sentence rhythm matter more than individual sounds.
What is not marked
Your opinions, your general knowledge, and whether your story is true. You can invent whatever you need.
The line most candidates miss
The three bullets are the easy part. The last line, the one beginning and explain, is where the marks live, and it is the part people rush in the final ten seconds. Plan that line first.
Why does the examiner say nothing while I speak?▼
Because this is the only part of the test where they hear you build something on your own. In Parts 1 and 3 they can rescue a stalled answer with another question. Here they cannot, so silence tells them as much as speech does.
What if I finish after one minute?▼
You will usually be asked to keep going. It is better to be stopped at two minutes than to hand back thirty seconds of silence, so build your plan to overrun slightly.
Can I change the topic to one I know better?▼
No, and it costs you marks if you drift. You can, however, choose which example you use. A card about a skill can become a card about your job, your childhood or your city, as long as the skill stays at the centre.
The One Minute
8 minutes
Sixty seconds is enough for about fifteen words of notes. Not sentences — words. Sentences get read aloud, and a read answer sounds flat and scores badly.
Four boxes, not four lines
Give each bullet a box, and give the final explain line a box of its own. Two or three words in each is plenty.
Describe a journey you remember well.
You should say:
where you went
who you travelled with
what happened on the journey
and explain why you remember it.
Take a real minute and fill the boxes for that card. Type single words.
Preparation
1:00
Where
Who
What happened
Why I remember it
Which notes would help you most?
Three candidates prepared the same card. Choose the set of notes that would produce the best two minutes.
A. "I went to Rome last summer with my sister and we had a wonderful time because the food was amazing and the weather was hot."
B. "Rome · sister · missed train, slept station · first time alone abroad, changed me"
C. "Rome. Sister. Train. Nice."
The test of a good note
A note is good if it makes you say a sentence you have not yet planned. "Missed train, slept station" forces a story out of you. "Wonderful time" does not.
Filling Two Minutes
8 minutes
Two minutes is about 180 to 200 words at a comfortable speaking speed — five small chunks. Think in chunks and you will never watch the clock, and never feel you have to rush.
Here is one answer built chunk by chunk, so you can hear what each part sounds like. The card is:
Describe an object that is important to you.
You should say:
what it is
how you got it
how long you have had it
and explain why it matters to you.
1
Open in one sentence (10 seconds). Name the thing and say where it is. Do not begin with "I would like to talk about", which wastes eight seconds and says nothing.
Say something like"The object I have chosen is an old steel watch that sits on my desk, and it belonged to my grandfather."
Not"I would like to talk about an object which is very important for me. This object is a watch."
2
Set the scene (30 seconds). Where, when, who. Concrete details buy you time and vocabulary — a year, an age, a room, a name.
Say something like"He wore it every day for about forty years, working as a mechanic, so the glass is scratched all over. My grandmother gave it to me when I finished school, in a small blue box that still smells of his workshop."
3
Tell the middle (45 seconds). What actually happened, in order. This is the part that runs long if your notes are good.
Say something like"For the first year I was afraid to wear it, so it stayed in the drawer. Then it stopped completely, and I took it to a repairer who told me the parts were no longer made. He fixed it anyway, out of curiosity, and refused to charge me. Since then I have worn it almost every day, and I have learned to wind it every morning without thinking."
4
Answer the last line (30 seconds). The explain bullet, with a reason and a consequence.
Say something like"It matters to me because it is the only thing I own that somebody used every single day of their working life. That makes me treat it differently from anything else I have — I would never replace it, even though my phone keeps better time."
5
Have a spare (15 seconds). One extra sentence held back — a comparison with now, or what you would do differently — for if you arrive early.
Say something like"I sometimes wonder what he would make of a watch that needs charging every night."
Those five chunks together run to about two minutes. Notice that nothing in them is clever — it is a watch, a drawer, a repairer. The detail is what fills the time.
The rescue moves
When you feel yourself running dry before the examiner stops you, any of these will buy you thirty seconds without sounding like padding.
What made it unusual was...Looking back on it now...I should probably mention that...It reminds me a little of...If the same thing happened today...
Put the chunks in order
These five sentences come from one answer, in the wrong order. Number them 1 to 5 in the boxes.
Sentence
"So that is why I still think of it as the week I grew up." — position
Sentence
"It was a train journey from Rome down to Naples, two summers ago." — position
Sentence
"Halfway there the train stopped and we were told it would not move again that night." — position
Sentence
"I was travelling with my sister, who had never been out of the country before." — position
Sentence
"The reason it stayed with me is that I had to make every decision myself for the first time." — position
1 — "It was a train journey from Rome down to Naples, two summers ago." (opening) 2 — "I was travelling with my sister, who had never been out of the country before." (scene) 3 — "Halfway there the train stopped and we were told it would not move again that night." (middle) 4 — "The reason it stayed with me is that I had to make every decision myself for the first time." (the explain line) 5 — "So that is why I still think of it as the week I grew up." (close)
Language for the Long Turn
9 minutes
Three things make a long turn sound fluent rather than rehearsed: tenses that move, phrases that signal where you are, and one or two expressions the examiner does not hear all day.
Tenses that move
A flat answer stays in one tense. A strong answer shifts — background, event, reflection, present.
One gear
"We went to Rome. We stayed three days. We saw the Colosseum. We ate pizza. It was good."
Four gears
"We had been planning it for months. On the second night the train broke down, which meant sleeping on a platform. Looking back, I have never felt so far from home. I still tell that story."
Signposts
These tell the examiner which chunk you are in, and they give you half a second to think.
The thing I remember most clearly is...To give you some background...Anyway, what actually happened was...The reason I have chosen this is...If I am honest...
Complete the answer
One word in each gap. The words are not given to you — work them out from the sentence.
Background
"We been planning the trip since Christmas."
Event
" halfway there, the train came to a stop."
Consequence
"The station was closing, meant we had nowhere to wait."
Reflection
"Looking on it, the whole thing was quite funny."
Present result
"I have forgotten the sound of that empty platform."
1. had · 2. About / Roughly / Almost · 3. which · 4. back · 5. never
One expression, used well
You do not need ten idioms. You need one or two that fit the story and sound like you: it was touch and go for a while, we were completely stranded, in hindsight. An idiom that does not fit costs more than it earns.
Which Answer Scores?
7 minutes
Same card, three candidates. Read each opening and decide which one the examiner marks highest — then find out whether you agree with the reason.
Describe a person who taught you something important.
You should say:
who the person is
what they taught you
when this happened
and explain why it was important to you.
A. "I would like to talk about a person who taught me something important. This person is very important to me. She taught me many important things. It was a long time ago and it was very important for my life."
B. "My grandmother taught me to cook, though what she was really teaching me was patience. I was about eleven, and I wanted everything to be ready at once. She used to make me stand and wait while the dough rose, which felt like a punishment at the time."
C. "My grandmother. She taught me cooking. It was in 2015. It was important because cooking is a useful skill and nowadays many young people cannot cook, which is a problem in modern society."
What is wrong with A?▼
It repeats the wording of the card back to the examiner. Forty words in, nothing has been said. "Important" appears four times, which tells the examiner the candidate has no other word for it.
What is wrong with C?▼
It answers all three bullets in nine words and then escapes into a general opinion about society. That is a Part 3 answer, and here it leaves ninety seconds to fill with nothing personal left to say.
Why does B work?▼
It reframes the question in the first sentence — cooking, but really patience — which gives the whole two minutes a spine. Then it gets specific fast: an age, a kitchen, dough rising. Specific detail is what keeps a long turn alive.
Full Practice
12 minutes
Real conditions. Press the button, get a card, one minute of notes, then talk until the clock stops.
Describe a place you often go to relax.
You should say:
where it is
how often you go there
what you do there
and explain why it helps you relax.
Press start for one minute of preparation
1:00
Bullet 1
Bullet 2
Bullet 3
The explain line
While you speak, watch for three things
Did you reach the explain line before the clock stopped? Did your tenses move, or stay in one gear? Did you use a specific detail — a name, an age, a number, a place — in the first twenty seconds?
The rounding-off questions
After the long turn, the examiner asks one or two short questions on the same topic. Short answers are fine here, but not one-word answers.
Do you go there alone?Has it changed much?Would you recommend it to a visitor?
Review
5 minutes
What to take away
1
Notes are words, not sentences. Fifteen words is a full minute's work.
2
Plan the last line of the card first. That is where the marks are.
3
Four chunks: open, scene, middle, explain — plus a spare sentence in your pocket.
4
Be specific in the first twenty seconds. A name or a number beats an adjective.
5
Being stopped at two minutes is a good outcome. Aim to overrun.
Test yourself
Cover the page and answer these out loud.
How long is the preparation, and what should be on the paper?▼
One minute, and about fifteen single words arranged in four groups — one group per bullet, one for the explain line.
Why is "I would like to talk about..." a weak opening?▼
It repeats the card, costs several seconds and delivers no information. Name the thing and place it instead.
You have forty seconds left and nothing planned. What do you say?▼
Reach for a rescue move: Looking back on it now..., What made it unusual was..., or If the same thing happened today... Each one opens a new sentence you have not used yet.
Before the next lesson
Record yourself on two cards from the practice tab. Listen back once, with a pen, and mark the moment you started to run dry. That moment is the thing to fix.