CELPIP Speaking Task 5: Comparing and Persuading
Can you choose between two options and actually persuade someone of your choice?
A typical prompt
Your community centre can fund only one of two options: longer evening hours, or new weekend programs for children. Choose one, compare it with the other, and persuade the committee to fund your choice.
The one thing that scores 9+
State your choice, fairly acknowledge the other option, then give two strong reasons your choice serves a BIGGER need or MORE people. Acknowledging the alternative is what makes it persuasion rather than a one-sided pitch.
A Band-9 sample answer
Original — written to show the technique, not to memorise. Raters penalise memorised, off-topic answers, so use it as a model for structure, then say your own.
I understand both options have value — longer evening hours would help adults who work during the day. But I'd urge the committee to fund the weekend children's programs, and here's why. First, they reach the group with the fewest alternatives: working parents have almost nowhere affordable to take their kids on weekends, whereas adults already have gyms, cafés and libraries open late. Second, investing in children pays off for the whole community over time — kids who have a safe, structured place to go build friendships and skills and are less likely to get into trouble. Evening hours mostly extend a service that already exists; the weekend programs create something genuinely new for the families who need it most. For the same money, that's a far bigger impact, so I'd strongly encourage the committee to choose the children's programs.
What caps people at Level 7
- Never mentioning the option you rejected — that makes it a description, not persuasion.
- Vague reasons ("it’s better") instead of who-it-helps and why.
- Forgetting to actually ask for the decision at the end.
Practise this task
Reading a sample only gets you so far — you improve by speaking under the clock. Take the prep time, record your own answer on your phone, and compare it to the sample above and the level descriptors in our CELPIP score decoder. All 8 speaking tasks run in thefree CELPIP full mock, and the whole format is in theCELPIP format guide.