Michigan's Five English Exams Ranked by Speaking Time

Michigan Language Assessment publishes five English exams for test takers, each with its section timings in the open.

Line those timings up and one column tells a story none of the individual pages tell. Speaking is zero per cent of one exam and about seventeen per cent of another, and the order does not follow the level ladder.

SpeakShark is free for the component that varies most between these exams, three AI conversation sessions a day with no card.

In this guide: all five · the speaking column · who is in the room · the digital divide · choosing · limits · method · FAQ

Key takeaways

• Michigan-EPT has no speaking section, so speaking is zero per cent of it.
• ECPE gives speaking 30 of 180 minutes, about 17 per cent, the highest of the five.
• MET spans the widest level range and gives speaking the smallest share of any exam that has one, about 6 per cent.
• Only ECCE and ECPE put a human examiner in the room, and only ECPE puts other candidates there.
• Every published total reconciles exactly against its section timings.

All five exams in one table

MET Go! also comes in a 3-skill version at 90 minutes, which drops speaking entirely.

The speaking column is not a ladder

The obvious expectation is that harder exams talk more. Read the CEFR row and the speaking row together and that expectation only half survives.

It holds at the top. ECCE at B2 gives speaking 15 minutes, ECPE at C2 gives it 30. Double the level ceiling, double the speaking.

It breaks in the middle. MET reaches C1, higher than MET Go!'s B1 ceiling, and gives speaking a smaller share than MET Go! does. Ten minutes of 155 is about six per cent. Seven to ten minutes of 100 is about seven to ten per cent. The exam aimed at children devotes proportionally more of itself to speaking than the exam aimed at adults seeking visas.

And it collapses at the bottom. Michigan-EPT covers A1 to C1, the widest range of all five, and contains no speaking at all.

So speaking share is not a function of difficulty. It is a function of what the exam is for and how it is delivered, which is a more useful thing to know when choosing one.

Who is in the room changes everything

The minutes understate the difference, because the five exams are not doing the same activity for those minutes.

• Michigan-EPT: nobody. There is no speaking component.
• MET Go!: warm up questions then four structured speaking tasks.
• MET: structured onscreen speaking tasks. No examiner present.
• ECCE: one examiner, one test taker, four stages, described as a structured task based conversation.
• ECPE: two certified examiners, two or three test takers, five stages, described as semi structured.

Read that as a ladder and it is a clean one, unlike the minutes. Nobody, then a machine, then a machine, then a person, then a room of people.

The jump from ECCE to ECPE is the one that changes the skill being tested. Talking to an examiner who is working through stages is a performance you can rehearse. Talking to two other candidates who want a different outcome is a negotiation you cannot. We covered exactly what that costs candidates in ECCE against ECPE, and Cambridge's published examiner scores show the same effect at other levels in Cambridge speaking criteria by level.

The split runs along delivery, not difficulty

Sort the five by delivery rather than by level and the pattern gets cleaner still.

The digital and on demand exams are Michigan-EPT, MET Go! and MET. They can be sat when you want, they lean on automated or onscreen components, and none of them puts an examiner in front of you.

The paper exams with fixed sittings are ECCE and ECPE, offered in May and December only. Both are lifetime certificates, and both put humans in the room for speaking.

That is the real division in Michigan's range, and it has a practical consequence. Flexibility and human assessment trade off against each other. If you need a result next month, you are choosing an exam with no examiner. If you want the exam with the richest speaking assessment, you are waiting for May or December.

MET partly buys its way out of that trade with a policy rather than a format: results typically within five days, and a retake of a single section rather than the whole exam, which is what makes MET for Australian visas and MET for US nurse licensure workable when one section falls short.

Which one you actually need

Work backwards from what the result has to do, not from your level.

• Someone else is placing you into a class or a group. Michigan-EPT. Its results are stated to be for the administering institution's internal use only, so it is not a credential you can take elsewhere. Details in our Michigan-EPT guide.
• You are at school and the exam is being run by the school. MET Go!, at A1 to B1, on paper or computer, with the audio played twice.
• You need a recognised result soon, for a visa, a job or a licence. MET. On demand, four skills, more than 2,000 recognising organisations.
• You want a lifetime B2 certificate. ECCE, in May or December.
• You want a lifetime C2 certificate. ECPE, same sittings, and the only one where you speak with other candidates.

Whichever you choose, the speaking share tells you how much of your preparation time that section deserves relative to the rest. At ECPE it is a sixth of the exam. At MET it is a sixteenth, and it is still the section a certified rater listens to rather than a machine scoring a checkbox.

Speaking is a conversation problem rather than a study problem, which is why role play scenarios and a daily speaking partner move it faster than a workbook. Test your speaking level free before you book, CEFR levels for speaking explains the scale, and MET speaking tasks and timing covers the specific section. For comparison outside Michigan, Linguaskill and Aptis are the closest equivalents we have written up.

What we could not verify

The speaking shares are our arithmetic, not Michigan's. Michigan publishes section timings and totals. The percentages, and the observation that they do not follow the level ladder, are ours.

MET Go!'s speaking share is a range, not a figure. Michigan states 7 to 10 minutes, so the share is 7 to 10 per cent of 100 minutes, and we have not narrowed it.

We did not verify fees for any of the five. Michigan directs test takers to centres or a pricing page, so nothing here compares cost.

Difficulty is not what this compares. Two exams giving speaking the same share can be worlds apart in what they ask for in those minutes, and a share tells you about weighting, not about standard.

We did not include OET or GSI. Michigan's site lists them alongside these five for test takers, and they sit outside the scope of a like for like comparison of its own English exams.

How we researched this guide

Every timing comes from Michigan Language Assessment's own exam pages, opened in a browser and read on screen rather than through a summary.

Before using any total we checked it reconciles against its own sections, because a comparison table built on unreconciled figures quietly hides a missing component. All five reconcile: 25 plus 35 is 60, 30 plus 30 plus 30 plus 10 is 100, 45 plus 35 plus 65 plus 10 is 155, 30 plus 45 plus 75 plus 15 is 165, and 45 plus 50 plus 55 plus 30 is 180.

One methodological note that changed the result. We first pulled several of these pages programmatically in a single pass. Some returned rich text and others returned a few thousand characters of navigation, and the thin ones looked exactly like short pages rather than failed extractions. Opening those in a browser produced full format sections that the pull had missed. Every number in the table above comes from the browser rendered version, and we ran a control first by checking that a page we had already read on screen produced identical facts when pulled in code.

Michigan's server returns 403 to ordinary automated requests for these pages while serving them normally to a browser, so a failed command line fetch of a source link below says something about the request rather than about the document.

Practise speaking, from SpeakShark

SpeakShark is an AI English speaking practice app, and the table above is the argument for using something like it. Across Michigan's range, speaking is between zero and seventeen per cent of the exam, but it is one hundred per cent of what happens after the exam, in the job, the ward or the classroom the certificate was for.

You talk, the AI answers what you actually said, and you get speaking feedback while the conversation is still running. 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, so it is daily practice rather than a simulation. It is one on one, which suits MET and ECCE far better than it suits the ECPE room with two other candidates in it.

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 session. Sign up here if you want the part no exam gives you much time to prove.

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
• Support: speaksharksupport@gmail.com
• Free tier: 3 AI conversation sessions per day, no card

Sources

• Michigan Language Assessment, MET: the 155 minute total, per section timings, CEFR A2 to C1, digital on demand delivery and the recognising organisations figure
• Michigan Language Assessment, MET Go!: the 100 and 90 minute totals, the A1 to B1 range, the audience, per section timings, the four structured speaking tasks and the audio played twice statement
• Michigan Language Assessment, Michigan-EPT: the 60 minute total, 80 questions, the listening and reading only format and the internal use statement
• Michigan Language Assessment, ECCE: the 165 minute total, per section timings, CEFR B2, paper format, May and December sittings and the one examiner four stage speaking format
• Michigan Language Assessment, ECPE: the 180 minute total, per section timings, CEFR C2 and the two examiner five stage group speaking format
• Council of Europe, CEFR Table 1, common reference levels global scale: the level scale all five report against

FAQ