CAE Speaking Part 2: The Half Nobody Prepares

Every CAE candidate rehearses the one minute long turn.

Almost nobody rehearses the other thing Part 2 asks of you: 30 seconds commenting on photographs you have never seen, while the other candidate is still finishing.

That second piece cannot be scripted, and it arrives whether you prepared for it or not.

SpeakShark is free for the reacting half, three AI conversation sessions a day and no card, each capped at five minutes and four turns.

In this guide: what Part 2 actually is · the two things you produce · why describing runs out · the four skills · the 30 second comment · where it sits · what we could not verify · how we researched this · FAQ

Key takeaways

• You get three pictures and talk about two.
• You speak for one minute without interruption.
• You then comment for about 30 seconds on the other candidate's different photographs.
• The questions are written at the top of the page, so the prompt stays in front of you.
• Cambridge names four skills, and speculating is the one that fills the minute.

What Part 2 actually is

Cambridge's own description:

The interlocutor gives you three pictures and asks you to talk about two of them. You have to speak for 1 minute without interruption and the interlocutor then asks the other candidate to comment on what you have said for about 30 seconds. The other candidate receives a different set of photographs and you have to listen and comment when they have finished speaking. The questions you have to answer about your photographs are written at the top of the page to remind you what you should talk about.

Read that last sentence twice. The questions stay visible. Part 2 is not a memory test, and candidates who blank in it usually have not forgotten the task, they have run out of things to say about it.

The two things you actually produce

Most preparation material treats Part 2 as row one and stops. Row two is half the part.

The asymmetry matters because the two rows reward opposite habits. Row one rewards a rehearsed structure you can drop any content into. Row two punishes rehearsal, because a memorised opening delivered over the top of somebody else's pictures sounds exactly like what it is.

Why describing runs out in twenty seconds

Here is the most common way the minute goes wrong.

A candidate looks at two photographs and starts describing. In the first picture there is a man, he is wearing a coat, it looks like a city street. In the second there is a group of people, they are outdoors, the weather is grey.

Then the visible content is gone, and there are forty seconds left.

Description is a finite resource. A photograph contains a fixed number of nameable things, and a nervous candidate names them fast. The task is one minute, and description alone does not reach it.

The fix is structural, not linguistic. You need more than one thing to do:

1. Compare the two pictures, which doubles the material because every difference is a new sentence.
2. Speculate about what is happening, why these people might be there, what happened before the photograph.
3. Give an opinion, which is unlimited by definition because it comes from you rather than from the image.

Three wells instead of one. If any single well runs dry you move to the next, and the minute closes without a gap. Twelve daily speaking drills from B1 to C1 is a good way to make that switching automatic rather than deliberate.

The four skills Cambridge names

Cambridge states what Part 2 asks you to practise:

Talking on your own about something: comparing, describing, expressing opinions, speculating.

Notice the order does not match how candidates prioritise. Most preparation is spent on describing, which is listed second and is the least productive of the four. Almost none is spent on speculating, which is the one that can fill unlimited time.

Speculating is also a grammatical skill, not just a strategy. It lives in modals and hedges: might be, could have been, looks as though, I imagine they are, presumably. A candidate who has those to hand can talk about a photograph for a minute regardless of what is in it. Building that stock is a vocabulary job as much as a speaking one, and how to improve English vocabulary and speaking skills together covers doing both at once rather than in sequence.

The Council of Europe's global scale describes a C1 user as someone who "can express him/herself fluently and spontaneously without much obvious searching for expressions". A candidate visibly hunting for the next thing to describe is displaying the opposite. One who slides into speculation when the description runs out is displaying exactly the descriptor. CEFR levels explained for speaking unpacks what that level is measuring.

The 30 second comment nobody drills

Now the part this post is named for.

After your long turn, the examiner asks the other candidate to comment on what you said. Then the roles reverse: they get a different set of photographs, they speak for their minute, and you have to comment on pictures you are seeing for the first time while listening to somebody else talk about them.

Two demands run at once there. Listening to their long turn, and forming something worth saying about images you did not get thinking time for.

You cannot prepare content for this. You can prepare the reflex, and the reflex is the same one Part 3 depends on, so the practice compounds. Part 3, the collaborative task is built entirely on responding to another person, and the two parts reward the same training.

What actually helps:

• Speak to something that answers you, so you are reacting rather than reciting. Role play scenarios for speaking practice and an online speaking partner are the two realistic routes.
• Practise agreeing and extending, not just agreeing. "Yes, and the second one especially, because..." is a comment. "Yes, I agree" is a pause with words in it.
• Practise commenting on things you did not choose. Any prompt you have not read in advance works, and a free daily session is enough volume to build it.
• Get comfortable being brief. Thirty seconds is short, and overrunning into the examiner's next instruction is worse than stopping early.

If nerves rather than language are what stops you here, why your English speaking is not improving and online methods to build confidence in English are the more useful reading. For the underlying habit, a 30 day plan to improve speaking and free methods to raise fluency set a cadence you can actually keep, and speaking exercises for adult learners suit anyone fitting this around work.

Where Part 2 sits in the test

The whole Speaking test runs 15 minutes per pair of candidates, or 23 minutes for a group of three. There are two examiners: Cambridge says one conducts the test and the other "listens to what you say and takes notes", and one of them could be examining remotely.

Part 2 is the only part where you speak at length alone, which is why it feels like the hardest one and why it gets the most rehearsal. That rehearsal is not wasted. It is just incomplete, because it stops at the boundary of your own minute.

If you came up through B2 First, what Cambridge B2 First speaking involves is a useful comparison point for how much the long turn changes. The closest analogue in another exam is the IELTS cue card, and how to speak for two minutes without freezing transfers well, since holding a solo turn is the same skill at a different length.

What we could not verify

We have not reproduced the assessment criteria. Cambridge publishes its own scales and we are not paraphrasing band descriptors, because misquoted descriptors are a real risk and we have had to repair one before.

We have not published sample picture sets. Cambridge publishes sample tests, and its own material is the right source for actual task content.

We could not confirm how much thinking time you get before the long turn begins, beyond Cambridge's statement that the questions are written at the top of the page.

We are not stating pass rates or average scores by part. We found no figure we could attribute.

How we researched this guide

The Part 2 description, the three pictures, the one minute, the 30 second response, the note that the other candidate receives a different set of photographs, the written questions at the top of the page, the four named skills, the other three parts and the 15 and 23 minute totals all come from Cambridge English's C1 Advanced exam format page, read directly in a browser.

We quoted the task description in full rather than summarising it, because the sentence about the other candidate's different photographs is the one that summaries drop. Every shortened version of Part 2 we found in preparation material described the long turn and omitted the reciprocal comment, which is precisely the half this post exists to flag.

The C1 descriptor comes from the Council of Europe's global scale rather than a preparation site's summary of it, because the exact phrase "without much obvious searching for expressions" is the argument.

Cambridge notes that the formats are the same for both the digital and paper-based exams, so this applies whichever version you sit.

Practise speaking, from SpeakShark

SpeakShark is an AI English speaking practice app, and it is our pick for the half of Part 2 that nobody drills. A worksheet can hand you two photographs. It cannot say something unexpected that you then have 30 seconds to respond to, which is the exact demand of the reciprocal comment. You talk, the AI answers what you actually said, and you get speaking feedback while the conversation is still going. The free tier gives basic feedback; the detailed pronunciation and grammar breakdown is on Premium.

Being straight about the limits: a free session runs five minutes with four turns, which suits daily practice of the component skills rather than simulating a full 15 minute paired exam.

Start free with three sessions a day and no card. Paid sessions run ten minutes with unlimited turns. Limits are on the pricing page, and how it works walks through a full session.

We are a speaking improvement tool. We are not an exam preparation provider, and we are not affiliated with Cambridge English, the IELTS partners, Pearson or any exam board. For test format, booking and official practice material, go to the exam body directly. Use SpeakShark to make your spoken English stronger, and use official material to learn the test.

• Site: speakshark.com
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• Free tier: 3 AI conversation sessions per day, no card

Sources

• Cambridge English, C1 Advanced exam format: the Part 2 task description, timings, the four skills, the other three parts and the note that digital and paper formats match
• Council of Europe, CEFR Table 1, common reference levels global scale: the C1 descriptor, including "fluently and spontaneously without much obvious searching for expressions"

FAQ