How CELPIP Speaking Is Scored

By CELPass Editorial Team · 3 min read · Updated 2026-10-13

Before you practise any task, it helps to know what the people scoring you are listening for. This lesson explains the format of the Speaking section and the four dimensions raters use.

The Speaking section in one minute

CELPIP Speaking is the last section of CELPIP-General and takes about 15–20 minutes. You speak into a headset microphone; there is no examiner in the room. It starts with an unscored practice task, then eight scored tasks. Each task gives you a preparation timer (30 or 60 seconds) and a speaking timer (60 or 90 seconds), and the recording stops when the speaking timer ends.

Task	What you do	Prepare	Speak
1	Give advice to someone you know	30 s	90 s
2	Talk about a personal experience	30 s	60 s
3	Describe a scene in a picture	30 s	60 s
4	Predict what will happen next in the same picture	30 s	60 s
5	Choose one of two options, then persuade someone	60 s choosing + 60 s	60 s
6	Deal with a difficult situation	60 s	60 s
7	Give and support your opinion	30 s	90 s
8	Describe an unusual object or situation	30 s	60 s

CELPIP Speaking format

The four rating dimensions

Trained raters listen to your recordings and score them on four dimensions. Your answers across all eight tasks together produce one Speaking level from M to 12, which matches the same CLB level.

Content/Coherence: your ideas are relevant, developed with details or examples, and in a logical order the listener can follow.
Vocabulary: you use words that are precise and suited to the situation, with some range rather than the same few words.
Listenability: the listener can understand you without effort. Pronunciation, rhythm, pauses, self-correction and grammar all affect this.
Task Fulfillment: you do what the task asks, for the right listener, in the right tone, and you use the time well.

What this means for every answer

The four dimensions point to the same habits. Answer the exact question you were given, speak to the person named in the task, give two or three ideas with a detail for each, and keep talking steadily until you have finished your last point. You do not need to fill every second, but a 30-second answer to a 90-second task rarely shows enough to score highly.

Accent is not a dimension. Raters care whether they can understand you easily, not whether you sound Canadian. Lesson 9 covers the delivery habits that matter more than accent.

Key points

Eight scored tasks, each with its own preparation and speaking timer.
Four dimensions: Content/Coherence, Vocabulary, Listenability, Task Fulfillment.
One weak dimension, such as ignoring the listener, can hold back an otherwise good answer.
Accent is not scored; being easy to understand is.

Exercise

Match each problem in an answer to the dimension it hurts most.

You give advice to your manager in very casual language with slang.
You use "good" and "nice" in almost every sentence.
You stop for four or five seconds several times to find words.
You list five reasons with no example or explanation for any of them.

Show answers

Task Fulfillment: the tone does not suit the listener named in the task.
Vocabulary: there is little range or precision.
Listenability: long pauses make the answer hard to follow.
Content/Coherence: the ideas are not developed.

Practise with free questions

Free questions in the CELPIP format, with answers and no account needed. Try a few now, while the lesson is fresh.

All lessons in this course

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