C1 Advanced (CAE) Speaking Part 2: The Long Turn

The format, and the clock

The examiner gives you three pictures and a question printed above them, tells you to choose two, and starts the minute. When you finish, your partner gets a short question about your pictures — then you swap, and you answer a short question about theirs.

A minute is longer than it feels. Roughly how it breaks down:

Choosing takes five seconds, not fifteen. Pick the two you have most to say about — not the two you find most interesting, which is a different thing and invisible to the examiner.

Comparing, not describing

The instruction is to compare, and this is where most of the marks go missing. Describing each picture in turn — first this one, then that one — is not comparing, and it produces two short monologues rather than one answer.

The fix is structural: keep both pictures in view in every sentence. “Whereas the first shows…, in the second…”. “Both appear to be…, though the second seems…”. If a sentence mentions only one picture, it is probably description.

The jump from B2: speculate, do not catalogue

This is the real difference between the C1 long turn and the B2 one, and it is not a matter of harder vocabulary. At B2 the printed question tends to be answerable from what you can see. At C1 it asks about what you cannot see: why the people might be doing this, how they might be feeling, what may have led to it, what could happen next.

Nobody can answer that with certainty, and you are not meant to. The task is built so that the language of informed guessing is what gets assessed — which is exactly the language B2 candidates rarely need.

Speculation language, graded by confidence

• Fairly confident: they may well be…, presumably…, it looks as though…
• Hedged: I imagine…, my guess would be that…, it could conceivably be…
• About the past: they might have just…, something must have…
• About cause: presumably because…, which would explain why…
• About feeling: there is a sense of…, the atmosphere strikes me as…

Varying the confidence level across the minute is worth doing. Five sentences all beginning “maybe” reads as one structure repeated; moving between must have, may well and could conceivably reads as range.

Comparison linkers worth having automatic

• Similarity: much like…, in both cases…, equally…
• Difference: whereas…, by contrast…, the more striking difference is…
• Degree: considerably more…, nothing like as…, markedly…

If you lose your thread

It happens, and silence costs more than recovery does. Three things that work:

• Go back to the question. Re-read it aloud in your own words — “so, as to why they might be doing this…”. It buys three seconds and puts you back on task.
• Switch pictures. If one has dried up, move to the other and compare back.
• Speculate forward. “What I imagine happens next is…” opens a new line from anywhere.

What does not work is apologising or narrating the problem. Fillers in English (well, I suppose, having said that) are far better than a pause, and they count as language.

The question about your partner’s pictures

Around thirty seconds, and it is genuinely short — two or three sentences. The mistake is treating it as a second long turn and being cut off, which reads as poor task awareness. Answer the question asked about their pictures, add one reason, stop.

Practising it

Part 2 rewards practice more than any other part of the Speaking test, because it is the least natural thing you will be asked to do: speak alone, to a clock, uninterrupted. Doing it twice is not enough to stop the minute feeling long — and that feeling is what makes candidates rush and then run out.

You can drill it at C1 Advanced Speaking Part 2 practice — speak into the microphone or type, and the answer comes back marked against the assessment scales. For the surrounding parts, see the C1 Speaking test explained and Parts 3 and 4, or start from the C1 Advanced exam preparation guide.