How To Begin Any CELPIP Speaking Task Answer

I just feel like I'm being rude or too direct if I don't start by saying hello or how are you or thank you for asking me for my opinion or my advice. I would never start like that in a regular conversation. So why do I do anything different on the CELPIP? Have you ever felt like you had to spend some time properly thanking the person you're pretending to talk to on the CELPIP?

Or that you felt like you needed to inquire about their day or their family first before you get into the real part of your answer? Opening your CELPIP speaking task answers effectively can literally Be the runway your answer takes off on, or the muddy, overgrown pathway that you get stuck on. And I'm not just trying to be dramatic here.

The way you open your answer, the words you decide to use to get yourself started, can easily make or break you. They can make you in that they can help you efficiently get to the point. And getting to the point quickly helps you to build momentum and will allow you the opportunity to express your main ideas and then provide supporting details for each of them.

They can slow you down and break you too. If you spend too much time trying to get your answer started, you're only stealing from yourself. And that you'll quickly discover that you don't have enough time to discuss your main ideas and talk about each of them effectively because your time is already nearly up.

In today's episode, I'll share with you some easy to follow tips that will help you open any CELPIP speaking task with ease and confidence. Are you ready? Then let's get started.

 

📍 Well, hello there and welcome to the Speak English Fearlessly podcast. This is the podcast for motivated English learners who want to speak English fearlessly and learn practical tips and strategies to conquer the CELPIP exam.

I also love to feature encouraging interviews with regular people. People just like you, who are working towards becoming fluent in English, so we can learn from their experiences together. Who am I? My name is Aaron Nelson, and I've been an English teacher for over 16 years, and I now help students prepare for the CELPIP exam through online classes.

If you're just joining us, thank you so much for downloading this episode today. If it's your first time here, thank you for stopping by and for listening. I hope you enjoy the episode and that you'll come back again next Tuesday. If you are a regular listener, you know what I'm going to say to you.

I'm so glad that you're here. Thank you so much for coming back again and again. I love that you are here. I hope for new listener and old listener that this episode is useful and helpful and that it

provides great information that will help you grow and develop your skills in English and for the CELPIP exam. So let's get right into what we're talking about today. Like I mentioned in the introduction, the way you open your CELPIP speaking task answer is absolutely vital. Your words need to create something.

They need to create momentum. In other words, strong forward motion, strong forward movement that help you immediately begin talking about your topic. A common challenge I see students facing with their openings are that they feel at first, like they need to be overly polite and flowery with their words for lack of a better way to describe it.

They feel rude if they don't say hello to their person first, or they feel like they're being too direct if they don't nicely ask how their person is feeling or doing or how their family is before they begin talking about their topic at hand. Now, to be fair, it is kind and it is very polite to do those things

when you have a regular conversation with someone. Just this morning, I met a friend of mine for coffee that I hadn't seen for a few months and thinking about it. We didn't start into deep conversation about anything. No, even though we were friends, our first few minutes of talking of conversing was spent talking about:

how's your week been? How's your summer so far? How's your wife doing? Nice and easy, polite topics. But by the time our conversation finished about an hour later, man, we had gone deep into a lot of really important, really deep conversations, but it didn't start off that way. We began at the surface with nice, polite conversation.

So being polite and kind is for sure an important part of everyday regular conversation. That is 100 percent true. But generally, you don't need to worry too much about that on the CELPIP. One of my favorite kinds of stories to read, or movies to watch, or stories to write, are stories or movies that use a storytelling technique called inmedias res, which means:

in the middle of things. In short, it means that the story dumps you right into the middle of the action that's happening in the story, and you just need to catch up to what's going on around you. You need to do the same thing with your CELPIP answers. Unless the question you are answering is placing you in a specific situation where those kinds of polite

flowery conversation starters are needed. It's best to get right to the point of your answer, and let your tone of voice, and the feelings that you want to express as you talk, be what help you offer a polite answer. Failing to do this, spending too much time with an introduction that it's all flowery, will have you scrambling to develop a strong answer because you've used up too much time with that introduction.

And by the time, you know, you're, you actually start answering the question, you've already lost like five or sometimes ten seconds I've seen students take with these long Introductions. Don't do that to yourself. So for your CELPIP task speaking answers always be loud and Proud and get right to the point of answering your question. And when I say be loud and proud make sure you're speaking right to the point into that mic.

Don't be afraid of it. Don't be afraid of, of expressing your ideas. Get right up next to that mic and speak with confidence. And one of the ways that you can speak with confidence is getting right to the point. So be loud and proud and get right to the point of answering the question by actually starting with answering the question that you're trying to answer.

So if you're sharing an opinion about something, get right to it, which means start right off by saying if you agree or if you disagree with the topic that you're trying to talk about on the CELPIP exam. If you're talking about a past experience, for example, dive right into telling that story. Dive right into telling that experience that happened to you.

Don't set the scene. Don't spend time talking about how it began or why it began. Just dive right into that experience, sharing what happened to you. If you're trying to describe a scene, start talking about that lovely, um, that beautiful statue or that beautiful fountain that you see in the, in that lovely city park scene that you're looking at.

If you're making a case for why you need to open up a dry cleaning business, instead of your business partner's suggestion that you try and buy a laundromat instead, immediately begin starting why your idea is still the strongest one. See what I mean? Get right to the point. You're not being rude.

Instead, if it will help you, imagine that your conversation with this person that you're talking to in your answer has already begun. It's already been happening. You're in medias res, or you're already in the middle of it. You're in the middle of the action already.

So you don't need to do that introduction stuff that is an important part of regular conversations, but you just don't need to have that happening in your answer unless, unless. The question is asking you to, but in most cases it won't. In most cases, that question will leave a space, will leave it open for you to just dive right into giving your answer.

Make sure that you get right into the meat and potatoes of the conversation that you're trying to have. Have you ever heard that expression by the way, to get into the meat and potatoes of something? According to the Cambridge Dictionary, to get into the meat and potatoes of something, it means that you are talking about the most important or the basic parts of whatever it is that you're talking about.

So get to the meat and potatoes of your CELPIP answers, okay?

And that, my friend, is what I want to leave you with today. If you found it hard to get off to a good start with your CELPIP speaking task answers, then give yourself permission to just get to the point. quickly in medias res in the middle of the action, just dive right in and start talking about it.

If you do this, you will find that it's way easier to develop a strong answer with lots of great details because you will have the time to do so. If you don't do this, Like I said at the beginning, you're going to find yourself struggling as you get closer and closer to the end of your recording to actually answer your question effectively because you lost so much time with that opening, with those opening few statements that you made that weren't really needed.

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