Type “TOEFL speaking topics” into a search bar and you will find long lists of prompts about lecture summaries and campus notices. Most of those lists describe the old test.
Since January 21, 2026, the Speaking section has two tasks and takes about eight minutes. There is no preparation time. The topic reaches your ears and your answer starts right away.
This guide covers the topics that come up and a method for answering without freezing.
ETS replaced the four old tasks with two.
In Listen and Repeat, you hear seven sentences, one at a time, and say each one back as exactly as you can. In Take an Interview, a recorded interviewer asks four questions about a single subject, and you answer each one in about 45 seconds. That makes eleven questions in all.
Your Speaking result sits on the 1 to 6 scale that ETS now uses for every section, reported in half-point steps.
The sentences sound like things a student hears on campus, such as an instruction or a short description of a place. ETS’s own sample for this task is set in a library. Early sentences are short. Later ones run longer and are harder to hold in memory.
Four habits help:
Groups of words that belong together are easier to remember than single words. Hear “the library closes at nine tonight” as two pieces and you only have two things to hold.
Stress and pauses help a listener follow you. Say the sentence the way the speaker did.
One wrong word costs little. Stopping to fix it takes time you need for the rest of the sentence.
Read a long sentence once, hide it, and say it back. Add a few words each week.
The interviewer stays on one familiar subject. ETS’s samples include a study about reading habits and an interview about urban life. Practice sets from other providers use themes like exercise and commuting. Each of these is something you can talk about from your own life, which is the point.
Here are four practice questions we wrote in the style of the test:
How do you organize your study week, and what would you change about it?
What is one thing you would improve about the area where you live?
How often do you exercise, and what makes it easy or hard to keep going?
Do you prefer reading on paper or on a screen, and why?
See also: Learning Spoken English Step-by-Step: A Guide You Should Follow
Four moves fill 45 seconds: give your answer, add a reason, share a short example from your life, and close with the result. At a natural pace that is roughly 100 words.
Try it with the city life question:
“I would add safe bike lanes. Right now most roads near my home are narrow, and cyclists share them with buses. My brother rides to work every day, and last month a car nearly hit him at a crossing. With a separate lane, more people could cycle, and traffic would ease a little too. A small change like that could make the whole neighborhood calmer.”
Notice the order. Opinion first, then reason, example and result. Each part takes one or two sentences.
If you run short of ideas, add a detail about when or where something happened. Details keep you talking.
A memorized script is a risky habit. With no preparation time and natural questions, a script rarely fits and sounds flat. Long silence hurts too. A small grammar slip costs less than a pause, so keep talking.
Check your practice material as well. Anything built around a reading passage and a lecture summary belongs to the old test.
Record two interview answers a day. Play them back and pick one thing to fix. Once a week, run all eleven questions in a row to feel the pace of the real section.
If you want a partner at midnight, you can practice English with AI, though it works best next to real conversation.
The 2026 Speaking section comes down to two tasks, eleven questions and a clock that never stops. The topics are ordinary. What you need is the habit of speaking English out loud every day.
Lingua Learn runs live online English classes with native-speaking tutors, in small groups or one to one, with detailed feedback. Explore the English courses to find your level, or look at the IELTS preparation courses if your university accepts that exam too.
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