One task is of a more general nature, and includes giving a personal view on a topic. Responses should be between 200 and 300 words in length. There are four set books, and candidates must write on two of them. Candidates must be able to talk about a topic which deals with aspects and problems of contemporary life and to participate actively in a conversation about such a topic. They are expected to organise their spoken discourse in such a way that main and subsidiary points are clearly distinguished.
Candidates have forty minutes to prepare a reading text and a talk.
The first part of the test involves reading the text aloud. They then have to give a talk on a topic of general interest, which tests the ability to talk coherently and logically. Finally, the candidate participates in a conversation on the topic of the talk. They are expected to do this by completing tasks which communicate facts on topics of current interest. There is one section with approximately forty items of gap-filling and sentence transformation task types.