CAE Speaking Part 2 sample questions with answers. If you want to print them or save in PDF, click the red icon at the bottom of this page.
Examiner: Here are your pictures. They show people helping others. Compare two of the pictures and say how important the people’s help is and how difficult might it be for them to provide that help?
- How important is the people’s help?
- How difficult might it be for them to provide that help?
Candidate A: I’d like to take the top right photo and the one at the bottom. Both show us people helping others get somewhere, but that’s about the only thing in common between them. While the top photo shows us a kind of a sports competition where people have to clear an obstacle, the other one shows a disabled person in a wheelchair who is helped by another individual. It must be quite important for the team at the sports event to help each other to continue the race, but not nearly as vital as in the situation with the other picture, where the handicapped individual heavily relies on their helper’s assistant.
Talking about how challenging it is to to provide help, I’d like to say that the situation with the sports competition is likely to be over in an hour or so, while the person pushing the wheelchair is likely to be doing that for years to come. Without a doubt, this makes the situation much more difficult for them.
Short-turn question: In which picture do people get most satisfaction from helping others?
Candidate B: The doctors from the top left photo are sure to feel immense satisfaction from having helped patients in need. Being a surgeon you probably have to invest emotionally into every single operation, so the positive outcome almost guarantees to satisfy the doctor responsible for it.
Examiner: Here are the pictures. They show people communicating with one another. Please compare two of the pictures and say why the people might have chosen to communicate in this way and what might be the advantages of communicating like that?
- Why might the people have chosen to communicate in this way?
- What might be the advantages of communicating like that?
Candidate B: I’d like to compare and the bottom picture and the top right one. Both pictures show us people, who are outside and in the middle of some sort of a conversation. However, one shows us a conventional face-to-face communication, while in the other the talking is done with the help of an electronic device which looks like a tablet. The young man with the gadget might have chosen to communicate like this because their interlocutor is far away. The young couple, on the other hand, probably prefers the more close and old-fashioned approach to communication.
Talking in person is probably easier, as there is no middleman in the form of technology, such as the device itself, the internet connection that can be unreliable, things like that. On the other hand, using your gadget might enable you to get in touch with people many hundreds or thousands miles away – that’s no mean feat too!
Short-turn question: Which picture shows the most effective way of communication?
Candidate A: It’s probably the tried and true telephone conversation from the first picture. Almost any person in the world nowadays is just a phone call away, so having a conversation with them is as effortless as pressing the dial button. That’s pretty effective in my book!
Click to download this CAE Speaking Part 2 Worksheet in PDF. Don’t forget to switch to landscape mode when printing!