Task 5 shows you two options and tells you about one person. Almost every answer you will hear spends its sixty seconds on the two options — price, distance, this one has that, that one has this — and never speaks to the person. The options are the material; the person is the task.
That is the whole difficulty, hiding in plain sight. Paragon calls this task "Comparing and Persuading". Comparing is half the verb. Persuading is the half that gets skipped.
The task
"Comparing and Persuading" is the fifth of the eight Speaking tasks published on the test format page, which lists the component at 15 minutes for 8 tasks and stops there. The per-task clock comes from somewhere else: Paragon's Speaking study pack, not the format page — which is why almost no one publishes it.
Per that study pack, Task 5 runs in two parts. The first part gives you 60 seconds of preparation and no speaking at all — you study the two options and choose. Then the second part gives you another 60 seconds to prepare and 60 seconds to speak. So the spoken answer is short: roughly 130 to 160 words, said out loud at a normal pace.
Sixty seconds is not enough time to be even-handed. That is a feature.
The prompt
(original AlmiWorld practice prompt)
Part 1 — 60 seconds, no speaking. Your cousin Nadia is renting her first apartment. Study the two listings and choose one.
Bridgeview Apartments — one bedroom, $1,450 a month, laundry in the suite, 35 minutes from Riverside Hospital by bus with one transfer at Main.
Cedar Court — one bedroom, $1,680 a month, shared laundry in the basement, an eight-minute walk from Riverside Hospital.
Part 2 — 60 seconds to prepare, 60 seconds to speak. Nadia works night shifts at Riverside and finishes at 11:40 pm. She is putting $300 a month aside for her mother's flight in July. Persuade her to take the apartment you chose.
Sixty seconds of preparation, honestly
Three decisions, and the first one is not "which is better".
Which of her two constraints decides it? The 11:40 pm finish decides it — a 35-minute bus with a transfer at midnight in winter is a different thing from a 35-minute bus at noon. So: Cedar Court.
What is her strongest objection? The $230. It lands directly on the $300 she is saving. If you do not answer that, you have not persuaded her, you have only informed her.
What am I asking her to do? Not "think about it". Something with a verb and a deadline.
That is the preparation: not an outline, three answers.
The answer
Take Cedar Court. I know it's the pricier one — I'll get to that — but with your shifts it's the only one that actually works.
You finish at 11:40. Not eleven — 11:40. From Bridgeview that's a bus, a transfer at Main, and twenty minutes outside in January waiting for a connection that comes every half hour after eleven. From Cedar you're home in eight minutes, on foot.
The money. Yeah, it's two hundred and thirty more, and I know you're putting three hundred a month away for your mum's flight in July. But you'd drop the bus pass — that's about a hundred — and you wouldn't be cabbing home twice a week like you did last winter. It's close to a wash. The three hundred keeps going.
The laundry's in the basement, not the suite. That's the real downside — I'd live with it.
Will you call them tomorrow and ask them to hold unit four till Friday? Just that.
About 157 words, for 60 seconds of speaking.
No band or level is assigned to this answer, here or anywhere. There is no answer key for Speaking, no published weighting for the four rating dimensions, and no rater in this room. What follows is not a score. It is a reading.
Read against the four dimensions
The four published Speaking dimensions are Content/Coherence, Vocabulary, Listenability and Task Fulfillment.
Content/Coherence. Every comparison in the answer is pointed at the choice. The bus transfer is not offered as a fact about Bridgeview; it is offered as a reason against Bridgeview for a woman who finishes at 11:40. The order is a shape, not a list: choice, decisive reason, hardest objection, the one thing that is genuinely worse, the ask.
Vocabulary. Nothing ornamental. Precision does the work instead — "a transfer at Main", "every half hour after eleven", "close to a wash". "It's close to a wash" is doing more than a long word would: it concedes and settles the money question in five syllables.
Listenability is officially defined as "How easy is it to listen to and understand the response?", and its sub-points include "Rhythm, pronunciation, and intonation". The sentences here are short and the numbers are spaced apart, so no clause has two figures fighting in it. Note what Paragon says on accent: "Our raters specifically do not consider your accent when rating your responses." Accent is not rated. Being understood is — the Score Guidance level descriptors talk about whether pronunciation errors impede communication. Those are different claims.
Task Fulfillment. The task verb is compare and persuade. The answer compares in the second and fourth paragraphs and persuades in the first and last. Both of Nadia's stated constraints are used out loud. And beneath this dimension sits the floor rule: a response giving insufficient information to assess scores 0 or 1, which map to no CLB level at all.
What this answer is not
It is not a template, and it would make a poor one.
"Not eleven — 11:40" only works because a prompt gave you 11:40. "The three hundred keeps going" only works because a prompt gave you $300 and a flight in July. "Ask them to hold unit four till Friday" only works because there is a unit four. This answer works because of its details, and its details are the part you cannot borrow.
Memorise those lines and take them to a prompt about two gym memberships and you will produce a worse answer than you would have unaided — because the marks live in the fit between what you said and what you were told, and a borrowed sentence fits nothing.
What actually costs you
- Comparing for fifty seconds and recommending in the last five.
- Naming the person's constraint in preparation, then never saying it out loud.
- Pretending the losing option has no advantage. It has one. Say it and move on.
- Ending on a summary instead of an ask.
- Reciting anything. A memorised sentence cannot contain the detail this task is measuring.
Try one
[Try Task 5: Compare and Persuade →] — one full task, marked, no card required.