6 minutes in
You have one minute to prepare and two minutes to speak. I will tell you when the time is up. Begin when you are ready.
Eleanor Vance
The long turn
Eleanor Vance
Speaking examiner, 19 years
Runs rooms pitched at confident fluency
Face to face, across a table, from Cambridge
Not checked against people yetNot yet rated(0)
From 13 min
A session of any length
First five minutes free
Ways in to Eleanor Vance
Try it free
5 minutes, no card, and the full write-up at the end. 16 of the catalogue are open on it.
Free · 5 min
Sprint
150 minutes to use in thirty days, which is about 12 conversations. For a date already in your calendar.
$66 · 150 min
Monthly
300 minutes a month, renewing. For a job search, a move, or a language you are keeping up.
$105 · 300 min / mo
For a team
One invoice for everybody, and nobody sees anybody else's conversations. For a company putting a team through the same interviews.
$25 · per seat
In Eleanor’s words
Eleanor has examined more speaking tests than she can count and has a rule she never breaks: she does not help.
Not with a word, not with a nod, not with a rephrased question. If you stop at forty seconds on the cue card, she waits in silence until two minutes are up, because that is what will happen on the day. She is not unkind about it. She reads the questions exactly as written, times every part, and says 'thank you' in the same tone whether you were brilliant or lost. What she notices, and what her sheet asks her to notice, is whether you can keep going, whether you reach for a better word, and whether your ideas connect to each other rather than to the question. She lives in Cambridge, cycles to the test centre, and drinks her tea black.
1min
They speak first, about a second after you press start. There is no press-to-talk and no waiting for your turn.
4min
Four minutes of the real thing, at the real pace, with the interruptions where a real one would put them.
1min
Your pace, your pauses and your filler words are counted within a second, and the score follows. Nobody asks for a card to hear it.
What a score from Eleanor is worth
How the score is worked out here
Three things, and you can read what each one actually means. None of them turn this into an exam: talk to this person as often as you like, and the score is there only if you want it.
Run on Eleanor
Cleared
Published criteria
The criteria and their weights are visible before you speak.
- Here
- Short questions, a two-minute monologue with one minute to prepare, then abstract discussion, with the exact timings of the public format.
- Held by
- Published in advance; changes go through review
- Method
- Before you speak you can see what is being measured and how much each thing is worth, as percentages that add up to a hundred. That is checked automatically: a set whose percentages do not add up never reaches the site.
Nothing Eleanor is scored on has been checked against human examiners yet, so this profile carries no calibrated mark. We do not skip that check: until it is passed, the scoring does not switch on, and the mark appears the day it does.
Situations and levels
What Eleanor runs, and what a fortnight of it costs
A minute costs the same whoever you talk to: the expensive part is the model, not the person. Move the sliders to match the two weeks you actually have.
Situations
- Full speaking testAll three parts, timed, with an examiner who does not help you.
- The long turnTwo minutes alone on a card you were given one minute to think about.
Difficulty
What it costs to rehearse this properly
Three runs across a week is what changes an answer. Move the sliders to your own plan. Nothing renews, and nothing is charged until you buy minutes.
- Minutes of talking in total
- 78
- What that costs here
- $34
- The same minutes with a tutor
- $300
- You do not spend
- −$266
At $50 an hour, rounded up to the 60-minute booking nobody will sell you less than.
What Eleanor says
The lines you will actually have to answer
Word for word, from Eleanor's own opening and follow-up questions, in the language they speak. Read them and ask yourself whether you could answer the second one. That is the whole decision this page is asking for.
1 of 1 shown
5
free minutes to judge for yourself
What Eleanor is like, across 1 scenario
Ratings
What people said after talking to Eleanor
Each one written after a conversation of their own. They asked not to be named, so nothing is signed: a made-up name beside a real sentence would be the one false thing on this page. Stars will arrive as finished conversations leave them.
I tried the scenario twice. The exact timing made the speaking test feel much more real than a normal tutor session. Good practice for staying clear under pressure.
After a session with Eleanor
1 person has talked to Eleanor and written about it. Stars will sit beside these as people leave them, and only a finished conversation can leave one.
Compared with an hour of a tutor
8 rehearsals with Eleanor for the price of one lesson
A human tutor is worth $50 an hour. What they cannot do is sell you 13 minutes, be free the morning of the interview, or cut you off mid-sentence because that is what the room will do.
One lesson, 60 min
$50
One rehearsal, 13 min
$5.72
89% less, and you can do it 8 times before the hour is paid for.
| A human tutor | Reallang | |
|---|---|---|
| Shortest thing you can buy | 60 minutes | 13 minutes, or five |
| What that costs | $50 | $5.72 |
| When you can have it | When they are free | Now, or at 6am on the day |
| Feedback in writing | About 24 hours later | 60 seconds later |
| Will they interrupt you | No. They are being kind | Yes, on purpose, at ninety seconds |
| Evidence under the feedback | What they remember | Your own sentence, checked |
| Can they hear what you meant | Yes, and that is the point of them | No. It is a rehearsal, not a teacher |
The last row is not a concession, it is the division of labour. A tutor teaches you the language. This rehearses the minutes where you have to use it, and there is no reason to buy an hour of a person’s time to do that.
Start a session
Pick the meeting, and Eleanor starts talking
There is no calendar, because there is nothing to wait for. Choose which conversation it is, allow the microphone, and a second later you are talking.
Which conversation are you having?
Eleanor Vance runs 2 meetings. They are different conversations, not easy and hard versions of one, and each has its own criteria.
What counts as going well
Speak in full turns, fill the two minutes, and give reasons and examples in Part 3 without being asked.
Eleanor Vance
British English · neutral
- Waiting
- 0.8 seconds
- The score
- 60 seconds after
- This one
- Free
- After that
- $5.72
- The first 5 minutes cost nothing and no card is asked for.
- We ask for your microphone before the conversation starts, never after.
- Audio is not stored. The written record of the conversation is, because the score quotes from it.
Also free the first time
Who to talk to after Eleanor
Ranked against Eleanor on whichever line you are choosing by. Save two or three and read them side by side.
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