C1 Advanced · Speaking · Part 4
Argue your position on abstract questions with a live AI examiner for five minutes.
The examiner opens out the Part 3 topic into broader questions — society, change, general principles. The register lifts with it: this is the part where you are expected to develop an argument rather than exchange views on a set of prompts.
Answers should be longer than in Part 1 and supported: a position, a reason, an example. The examiner may address a question to you both, and turning it into an exchange rather than two separate monologues is rewarded. This is the last thing the assessor hears, and it is the part with the most room to show range.
At C1 the questions are genuinely abstract and often hypothetical: long-term consequences, competing priorities, whether a trend is a cause or a symptom. The language that earns the top bands here is the language of qualification — conceding, speculating, distinguishing between cases — rather than vocabulary you have prepared in advance.
Longer than Part 1 — a position with a reason and ideally an example, so roughly three or four sentences. Short answers here waste the part of the test that gives you the most room to show what you can do.
Take one anyway and argue it. You are not marked on the quality of your views, and 'some people think X, though personally I'd say Y' is a perfectly good way in when nothing comes to mind immediately.
