CEFR C2 Speaking Topics: Questions and Model Answers [2026]

At C2 level, the topic almost stops mattering. You are expected to handle any abstract or specialised subject with the ease, precision and subtlety of an educated native speaker, conveying fine shades of meaning and shifting register without effort. This guide gives demanding topics with example questions and nuanced model answers. Read them less for what they say than for how they say it: the hedging, the precision, the willingness to complicate a simple question, which is what mastery sounds like.

Ethics and technology

Should there be limits on how far we develop artificial intelligence?

Model answer: I would resist framing it as a question of limits, because that assumes we could enforce them even if we agreed on them, which history suggests we cannot. The more honest question is one of governance: not whether to halt the technology, which is neither realistic nor, I would argue, desirable, but how to build accountability into systems whose decisions increasingly resist human scrutiny. What unsettles me is less the prospect of some dramatic runaway intelligence than the quieter erosion of responsibility, where consequential choices get laundered through an algorithm precisely so that no one has to own them. That, to my mind, is the risk worth legislating for.

Truth and media

Is objective truth possible in journalism?

Model answer: In a strict sense, no, and I think pretending otherwise does more harm than admitting it. Every act of reporting involves selection, what to cover, whom to quote, where to point the camera, and selection is inescapably a judgement. But I would part company with those who leap from there to the conclusion that all accounts are equally valid, which strikes me as a lazy relativism. The absence of perfect objectivity is not the absence of standards; a report can still be fair, rigorous and honest about its own limits. What we should ask of journalism is not the impossible view from nowhere, but transparency about the view it does have.

Society and freedom

How should a society balance individual freedom against collective security?

Model answer: The tension is real, but I am suspicious of how the trade-off is usually presented, because it tends to be framed at moments of fear, when we are least equipped to judge it well. Freedoms given up in a crisis are rarely returned once the crisis passes, so I would apply a heavy presumption in favour of liberty and demand a genuinely high bar before curtailing it. That is not to romanticise freedom as an absolute; no serious person thinks it is. It is to say that security measures should be proportionate, time-limited and reversible, and that the burden of proof must sit with those who would restrict, not with those who would preserve.

Art and value

Can there be objective standards for judging art, or is it all subjective?

Model answer: I find the binary itself unhelpful, because our actual experience of art fits neither pole. Taste is obviously personal, and yet we do not really behave as though all judgements were equal, we argue about art, we change our minds, we come to see why something we dismissed is in fact accomplished, and none of that would make sense if it were pure preference. What I think we have is not objectivity in the scientific sense but a tradition of informed judgement, a shared, evolving conversation in which some readings are better supported than others. It is closer to how we judge a good argument than to how we measure a length.

How to practise these

At this level, practise for control rather than coverage. Take a question, argue one side convincingly, then argue the opposite with equal conviction, listening for whether you can shift register, hedge precisely and stay fluent throughout. Recording yourself and being ruthless about any padding or vagueness is what sharpens speech from advanced to masterful.

At the very top of the scale, self-assessment becomes almost impossible, because the gap between C1 and C2 lives in subtleties you may not hear in your own speech. Just below sits C1 speaking topics, and it pairs naturally with C2 vocabulary. Our English levels explained guide spells out what separates C1 from C2, giving you a clear reference for whether you have reached mastery level rather than leaving it to guesswork.