English — English
Ordinary spoken English turns could have been into one blurred beat, and resolve into sort out.
Ten minutes of spoken English with an AI partner — or fifteen, or thirty if you want the long turns, with nothing to book. It contracts, it reduces, it reaches for look into where a textbook reaches for investigate, and it does not slow down when you stall. Afterwards, a page with a score, the corrections, and a few things to bring back next time.
The rhythm, the particles, and the tense that decides whether you still live there.
Weak forms swallow the sentence
English is stress-timed. Unstressed words collapse to a schwa or vanish outright — the of in a cup of tea, the have in should have known, the to in want to go — so a fluent sentence carries far fewer beats than it has words. You have to produce that rhythm, not only decode it.
Phrasal verbs do the ordinary work
In writing you can reach for postpone, tolerate, delegate. In speech people say put off, put up with, hand over — and the particle moves depending on the object: turn it down, never turn down it. Reading English rarely forces you to get that ordering right.
Present perfect against past simple
I have lived here three years or I lived here three years — the choice carries whether you still live there, and you have to make it before the sentence is out of your mouth. American and British speakers even split on it: did you eat yet against have you eaten yet.
The auxiliary and the inversion
Conversation makes you ask as well as answer, and English questions need an auxiliary and inversion — does she know, did you go — except in indirect questions, where the word order reverts: do you know where the station is. Tag questions add another layer: copy the auxiliary, flip the polarity — that's clear, isn't it.
The reading register gives you away
English keeps a Germanic everyday layer and a Latinate formal one. If you learned the language mostly from books and papers, you say commence and utilise where a colleague says start and use, and the hedging — I was wondering if, that might be tricky — never turns up at all.
Every English certificate that opens a visa or a university door has a speaking section, and no two are built the same.
One gives you a card and a minute to think. One pairs you with a stranger. One records you with nobody in the room, and one hands you a patient. Turn up knowing which of them you booked.
IELTS (Academic and General Training)
Eleven to fourteen minutes with a live examiner, in three parts. The middle one hands you a card, gives you a minute to think, and then expects one to two minutes of uninterrupted talk.
TOEFL iBT (ETS)
Since the January 2026 revision the speaking section is two task types — listening to sentences and repeating them exactly, then a simulated interview about academic and campus situations — in about eight minutes. The four-task format people practised for years is gone.
C1 Advanced (Cambridge English)
About fifteen minutes, and you are paired with another candidate. Part three puts a question and written prompts in front of the two of you and asks you to discuss them and reach a decision together.
PTE Academic (Pearson)
Scored by machine, and the tasks show it: read a paragraph aloud, repeat a sentence you have heard once, describe an image, retell a lecture, respond to a situation, summarise a group discussion.
What are you practising for?
Start with ten minutes
Nothing to book, and a written report at the end of the first session.
Try 10 minutes freeNot a qualification, not a beginner course
Nothing here is accredited. The number at the end of a session is ours; IELTS awards bands and Cambridge awards grades, and we cannot tell you what either of them would put on the same answer. You also need enough English for a conversation to exist — if you cannot yet hold a sentence together, a beginner course will do more for you than this will.