CELPIP Speaking Task 2 · Talking About a Personal Experience · question 7 of 20
A Mistake You Made at Work
A CELPIP Speaking Task 2 practice question (Talking About a Personal Experience), with a model answer below. No sign-up needed. Read the task, take 30 seconds to prepare, then speak for 60 seconds, out loud, as you would on the test.
The task
Talk about a time when you made a mistake at work or school. Describe what happened and what you learned from it.
- Read the task, prepare during the preparation time, then speak aloud for the speaking time.
- Preparation
- 30 seconds
- Speaking time
- 60 seconds
- Question
- 7 of 20
A simple way to build your answer
- Set the scene briefly: when, where and who.
- Tell the events in order, in the past tense.
- Finish with how you felt or what you learned.
Model answer · CLB 9
141 words · no sign-upAbout a year ago, when I was working at a dental clinic in Toronto, I made a mistake that I still think about. I was in charge of booking appointments, and one Monday I accidentally scheduled two patients for the same time with the same dentist. Both of them arrived, and of course one had to wait almost forty minutes. He was pretty upset, and I felt terrible. I apologized right away, offered him a coffee and explained exactly what had happened instead of making excuses. My manager was surprisingly calm. She showed me a setting in the booking software that warns you about double bookings, which I hadn't known about. Since then I always double-check the calendar at the end of each day. The main lesson for me was that admitting a mistake honestly is much better than hiding it.
Why this answer works
- Takes responsibility clearly, which gives the story a natural moral without sounding rehearsed.
- Uses the past perfect accurately (what had happened, which I hadn't known about).
- Ends with a clear lesson, a strong closing move for Speaking Task 2.
Get your own answer scored by AI: free account, no card
The model answer shows the target. To find out where your own recording lands, answer this question in the practice runner and get a CLB level for each criterion. A free account includes 3 AI-scored answers every 30 days.