How to Prepare for the Speaking Section of Your TELC or Goethe B2 Exam

For most candidates, the speaking section is the part of the B2 exam that causes the most anxiety, not because the German required is more advanced than the written sections, but because it happens live, in real time, with another person watching and listening. Knowing exactly what to expect removes a huge amount of that pressure.

The Overall Structure

The speaking exam runs around 15 minutes total and is conducted in pairs, with two candidates paired together rather than facing the examiner one-on-one. Before the actual exam, you're given roughly 20 minutes of preparation time to read through the materials and plan your responses. Depending on your exam centre, the speaking section may happen on the same day as the written exam or be scheduled separately, so it's worth checking this specifically when you register.

The Warm-Up: Low Stakes, Just Getting Started

The exam opens with a brief, unscored warm-up phase, about one to two minutes total, roughly 30 to 60 seconds per candidate. This is simply an opportunity to introduce yourself to your exam partner, asking their name or where they're from if you don't already know them. Nothing here is formally assessed, but it does let the examiners get a first impression of your pronunciation, and it gives you a chance to settle your nerves before the graded sections begin.

Part One: The Personal Monologue

You'll speak for roughly one and a half minutes about a personal experience, drawn from a fixed, published list of topics that doesn't change on exam day. This is genuinely good news, since it means you can prepare in advance rather than being caught off guard by something unfamiliar. After your monologue, your exam partner asks you follow-up questions based on what you said.

The most effective preparation here is getting the full official topic list ahead of time and writing three to four short personal talking points for each one, not a fully scripted text, just enough structure to speak naturally for the required time without going blank.

Part Two: The Discussion, Often the Hardest Part

You're given a short text during your preparation time, which you first summarise, and then use as the basis for a discussion with your exam partner. This is widely considered the most challenging section, since it requires genuine back-and-forth interaction, agreeing, disagreeing, building on your partner's points, rather than simply delivering prepared content.

Common discussion topics that appear across both telc and Goethe versions of this exam include everyday debate-style subjects, city versus country living, social media, environmental protection, online versus in-person learning, and similar familiar themes. Practising discussion phrases, expressing agreement, disagreement, and building on a point, matters more here than memorising specific vocabulary.

Part Three: Planning Something Together

The final section typically involves working with your partner to plan or organise something together, using notes prepared during your preparation time. This tests your ability to negotiate, suggest, and reach a joint decision in German, skills that are genuinely close to real workplace communication.

What Examiners Are Actually Evaluating

Across both exam providers, assessment focuses on pronunciation, vocabulary range, grammatical accuracy, fluency, and your ability to interact naturally, not just produce grammatically correct sentences in isolation. This is exactly why practising real conversations, not just reviewing grammar rules, matters so much for this specific section.

How to Actually Prepare

Get the official published topic list well in advance and prepare short, personal examples for each one, rather than trying to improvise on exam day. Practise timing yourself on the monologue section specifically, since running too short or too long both cost you points. Regular conversation practice, ideally including mock discussions on common topics, builds far more real exam readiness than solitary grammar study alone. In the final day or two before your exam, review your prepared notes and talking points rather than trying to learn new phrases, familiarity matters more than novelty at that point.

A Final Note on Nerves

It is completely normal to feel nervous before a speaking exam. Knowing the exact structure in advance, the warm-up, the monologue, the discussion, and the planning task, along with knowing that topics for Part One come from a published, unchanging list, genuinely reduces the uncertainty that causes most exam anxiety in the first place.