Speaking Success: Trinity GESE Grade 8
Intermediate stage · CEFR B2.2 — the tasks, themes and language of Grade 8, practised by Philo and Sophia.
•Grade 8, at a glance
Intermediate stageCEFR B2.215 minutesOne-to-one with the examiner
1. Topic discussion
up to 5 min
2. Interactive task
up to 4 min
3. Conversation
up to 5 min
At the Intermediate stage you lead. You introduce and discuss your own topic (with brief notes or a mind map), then take control of an interactive task from a short prompt, and finally discuss two subject areas chosen by the examiner.
1What you need to do (communicative skills)
- Topic: explain viewpoints, organise your ideas clearly, and recover smoothly from interruptions
- Interactive task: control the interaction and encourage the examiner’s opinion
- Conversation: follow up the examiner’s comments and repair any breakdowns
2Themes and topics (subject areas)
Conversation subject areas (the examiner chooses two)
Topics
- Society and living standards
- Personal values and ideals
- The world of work
- Unexplained phenomena and events
- National environmental concerns
- Public figures past and present
Your own topic must not be taken from this list: choose something personal, which you know well and enjoy talking about.
3Language functions and grammar (what the examiner listens for)
Functions
- Expressing feelings and emotions
- Expressing impossibility
- Reporting what others said
- Speculating
- Persuading and discouraging
Grammar and language
- Third conditional
- Present perfect continuous
- Past perfect
- Reported speech; reporting verbs: say, tell, ask, advise, promise
- even though, in spite of, although
- Cohesive devices: so, to continue, in other words, for example
Worked example — the Conversation phase: unexplained phenomena
ExaminerLet’s talk about unexplained phenomena. Do you believe in ghosts?
SophiaNot really, although my grandmother swears she saw one. She told me she’d been sitting in the garden when a woman in white walked straight through the wall.
ExaminerCould there be another explanation?
SophiaOh, I’m sure there could. If she hadn’t been reading ghost stories all evening, she might not have seen anything at all! Have you ever experienced anything you couldn’t explain?
Tips for Grade 8
- Practise reporting conversations: She told me that…, he promised to…
- Use the third conditional to speculate about the past.
- In the Interactive task, try to persuade or discourage the examiner.
•How Grade 8 is assessed
The examiner gives a letter grade for each phase, for task fulfilment: how well you use the communicative skills, functions, grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation of this grade and all the grades before it, with good fluency.
A · DistinctionAn excellent performance.
B · MeritA good performance.
C · PassA satisfactory performance.
D · FailNot yet satisfactory: the report shows what to work on.
← Grade 7All Trinity examsGrade 9 →
Based on Trinity College London’s GESE specifications (from January 2026). Always check trinitycollege.com/GESE for the current version.