Speaking exams
The DELE B2 oral is a structure, not a topic
The B2 speaking paper has three tasks and lasts about fifteen to seventeen minutes with the examiner, after twenty minutes on your own to prepare the first two. You may take notes and consult them, but you are not allowed to simply read them out. The topics are unpredictable. The three shapes are not, and that is what you practise.
The three tasks
Twenty minutes alone first
You prepare tasks 1 and 2 on your own and may write an outline to consult. Write structure, not sentences. An examiner can hear a read paragraph immediately, and reading it back is explicitly not allowed.
Task 1: solutions to a situation
You speak for about two minutes on the advantages and disadvantages of some proposed solutions, then discuss it with the examiner. Around six or seven minutes in total. You are not asked to be right, you are asked to weigh things.
Task 2: a situation from a photograph
You imagine and describe what is happening in a photograph for about two minutes, then talk with the examiner about your own experience of that topic. Five to six minutes. Invention is expected here, not accuracy.
Task 3: survey data
A conversation with the examiner about the results of a survey, giving your opinion on them. Three to four minutes, and the only task with no preparation, which is why it is worth practising most.
Test format as published by the exam board on their own site, checked August 2026. Formats are revised from time to time and vary by grade or module, so confirm the current rules with the board before you sit it. ConvoLive is not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by any examining body.
Two phrases that carry the whole exam
Weighing something, for tasks 1 and 3
La primera opción tiene la ventaja de que es más barata, pero el inconveniente es que llevaría mucho más tiempo. Por eso me parece que la segunda sería más razonable, aunque cueste más.
Advantage, drawback, conclusion. That single frame answers task 1 completely and reappears in task 3. It also shows the connectors an examiner is listening for, which is half of what B2 is assessing.
Speculating, for the photograph
Parece que están esperando a alguien. Puede que sea una reunión de trabajo, o quizás estén celebrando algo. Yo diría que se conocen bien, porque están muy relajados.
Task 2 rewards hedged guessing, and hedging is grammar: parece que, puede que, quizás, yo diría que. Three of those in two minutes does more for your mark than any vocabulary you could have memorised.
Where candidates lose it
Writing the speech out in the twenty minutes
The rules allow notes and forbid reading them out, and the difference is obvious to anyone listening. A written paragraph read aloud also has none of the hesitation and self-correction that a B2 examiner is actively looking for.
Treating task 2 as a description
Listing what is in the photograph runs out after forty seconds and shows none of the structures being assessed. You are asked to imagine a situation, which means inventing who these people are and what happened just before.
Going quiet in task 3
It is the only unprepared task, so it is the one that catches people. You do not need an opinion about the survey, you need to react to a number and say why it does or does not surprise you.
How to practise it
Because the three shapes repeat and only the topic changes, this exam rewards rehearsal more than revision. Take any photograph and speculate about it out loud for two minutes. Take any decision and weigh two options for two minutes. Do each one four times on different material. What you are building is the reflex of producing Spanish structure at speed, which is the thing that deserts people in the room.
What this will not do for you
This will not mark you. There is no B2 verdict, no breakdown against the assessment criteria, and nobody to tell you your connectors were thin. It does not supply content either: a fluent argument with nothing in it still fails. What it can do is make producing Spanish structure at speed feel ordinary, so the twenty minutes of preparation go on thinking rather than on panic.
Rehearse it out loud
Free, and the first run can be as bad as it needs to be. Nobody is listening.
- Practise speaking
- Other exams
- IELTS Speaking Part 2
- DELF