The DELE A1 speaking paper is the shortest test in the whole diploma, and it still makes more candidates nervous than the other three combined. Ten minutes in a room with an examiner, no dictionary, no second attempt.
Here’s the thing. Ten minutes is not much time to go wrong. Once you know what the three tasks ask for, you can rehearse most of what you’ll say before you walk in. The written papers work the same way, and the DELE A1 writing samples cover the one you sit on the same morning.
That’s what these sample papers are for. Everything below matches the current format set out in the official exam guide published by Instituto Cervantes.
What does the DELE A1 prueba oral look like?
The DELE A1 oral test lasts 10 minutes and consists of three tasks: a personal presentation of 1 to 2 minutes, a short talk on a topic of 2 to 3 minutes, and a conversation with the examiner of 3 to 4 minutes. You get 10 minutes of supervised preparation before you start.
That preparation window matters more than most candidates realize. You sit in a separate room with the task cards and a pen. Nobody is watching your Spanish yet. By the time you walk into the exam room, tasks 1 and 2 should already be planned.
Task 3 is the only part you can’t rehearse in the prep room because the examiner leads it.
For the format and scoring behind these papers, read the DELE A1 speaking guide first.
How long is each task, and how many points is it worth?
| Task | What you do | Time |
|---|---|---|
| Tarea 1 | Presentación personal | 1 to 2 minutes |
| Tarea 2 | Exposición de un tema | 2 to 3 minutes |
| Tarea 3 | Conversación con el entrevistador | 3 to 4 minutes |
| Preparation | Tasks 1 and 2 only | 10 minutes |
Speaking is worth 25 points out of 100 on the diploma. At A1, it’s grouped with listening, and that pair needs at least 30 points out of 50. Reading and writing form the other group. You can’t use a strong reading score to rescue a weak oral one, which is why the 10-minute test deserves real practice time and not a quick read-through the night before.
Sample paper 1: Tarea 1, presentación personal
The prompt you’ll see
Tarea 1. Presentación personal
Preséntese al entrevistador. Hable durante 1 o 2 minutos sobre:
- su nombre y su edad
- su nacionalidad y dónde vive
- su trabajo o sus estudios
- los idiomas que habla
- su familia
No card, no choices. The same five points come up every time, which makes this the single most rehearsable minute in the entire DELE A1.
A model answer
Buenos días. Me llamo Ananya Sharma y tengo veinticuatro años. Soy india, de Noida, cerca de Delhi. Vivo con mi familia en un apartamento pequeño.
Trabajo en una empresa de tecnología. Soy analista de datos y trabajo desde casa tres días a la semana.
Hablo hindi, inglés y un poco de español. Estudio español desde hace ocho meses porque quiero trabajar en un proyecto con clientes de México.
En mi familia somos cuatro: mi padre, mi madre, mi hermano y yo. Mi hermano es estudiante de medicina.
That’s about 95 words and lands comfortably inside 90 seconds at a calm A1 pace. Notice what it doesn’t do. No complex tenses, no subordinate clauses, no vocabulary you’d need a dictionary for.
What the examiner is listening for
The A1 scoring scale rewards grammatically complete short sentences. It penalizes answers built from bare infinitives and disconnected single words. “Yo trabajar empresa” scores badly. “Trabajo en una empresa” scores well, even though the second one is shorter.
Cover all five points. The scale explicitly notes how many prompt points the candidate addressed, so skipping one costs you.
Speaking slowly is fine. Silence is not. If you blank on a word, describe around it. “Trabajo con números” beats a four-second pause while you hunt for “analista”.
Sample paper 2: Tarea 2, exposición de un tema
The task card
In the real exam, you get several option cards presented with pictures, and you choose one. Here’s a card in the style you’ll meet:
Tarea 2. Exposición de un tema
MI CIUDAD
Hable de su ciudad durante 2 o 3 minutos. Puede hablar de:
- cómo es su ciudad, grande o pequeña
- qué hay en su ciudad
- qué le gusta de su ciudad
- qué no le gusta
- qué hace usted en su ciudad los fines de semana
How to turn five bullet points into three minutes
Two or three minutes of continuous A1 Spanish feels long. The trick is to give each bullet two sentences rather than trying to say something clever about one.
Two sentences per bullet, five bullets, that’s ten sentences. Ten simple sentences at an unhurried pace fill roughly two and a half minutes.
Write those ten sentences in the prep room as short notes, not full text. Full text tempts you to read aloud, and reading aloud sounds nothing like speaking. The examiner notices.
A model answer
Vivo en Noida. Es una ciudad grande y moderna, cerca de Delhi. Hay muchas oficinas y muchos centros comerciales.
En mi ciudad hay parques, restaurantes y un metro muy bueno. También hay muchas escuelas y universidades.
Me gusta el metro porque es rápido y barato. Y me gustan los restaurantes, porque hay comida de muchos países.
No me gusta el tráfico. Por la mañana hay mucho tráfico y el aire no está limpio.
Los fines de semana voy al parque con mi hermano. A veces vamos al cine o comemos en un restaurante con amigos.
Around 105 words. Simple present tense throughout, one “porque” for a reason, “me gusta” and “no me gusta” doing the opinion work. That’s an A1 answer that scores well.
The vocabulary worth banking before exam day
Task 2 cards rotate through a small set of everyday themes: your city, your house, your family, your free time, your work or studies, food, shopping, holidays, daily routine. Nine or ten themes cover almost everything the examiners use.
Prepare ten sentences for each theme, and you’ve effectively pre-answered Tarea 2, whatever card you draw. Our students on the DELE A1 course build these theme banks in class and then rehearse them out loud against a timer, which is the part most self-study candidates skip.
Listening shares your scoring group with speaking, so the two rise together. The DELE A1 listening samples cover the other half of that pair.
Sample paper 3: Tarea 3, conversación con el examinador
This is where candidates lose the points they’d earned in the first two tasks. Tarea 3 has two halves, and many people prepare only for the first.
Half one: the examiner asks you about your Tarea 2 topic
Following the “MI CIUDAD” card above, expect questions like these:
- ¿Cuántas personas viven en su ciudad?
- ¿Su ciudad es buena para las familias? ¿Por qué?
- ¿Prefiere vivir en una ciudad grande o en un pueblo pequeño?
- ¿Cómo va usted al trabajo? ¿En metro, en coche o a pie?
- ¿Hay muchos turistas en su ciudad?
Short answers are fine. One or two sentences each. What you must avoid is answering “sí” and stopping. A bare “sí” gives the examiner nothing to mark.
Compare these two:
- Weak: “¿Su ciudad es buena para las familias?” / “Sí.”
- Strong: “¿Su ciudad es buena para las familias?” / “Sí, es buena. Hay muchos parques y muchas escuelas.”
The strong version is nine words longer and worth noticeably more.
Half two: you ask the examiner two questions
The A1 format requires you to ask the examiner two questions on the same topic. Candidates forget this constantly, and the examiner will not always remind you.
Have two all-purpose question frames memorized. These work on any topic:
- ¿Y usted, dónde vive?
- ¿Le gusta su ciudad?
Swap the noun, and they fit any card. If the topic is food, “¿Y usted, qué come normalmente?” and “¿Le gusta la comida india?” do the same job.
Question formation is a real weak spot at A1, mainly because beginners practice answering far more than asking. In fifteen years of running oral mocks, this is the single most common reason a candidate walks out of Tarea 3 having left points on the table.
Sample paper 4: Tarea 2 alternativa, mi trabajo
You are offered several option cards in the preparation room. Here is a second one, so you can see how the same structure carries a completely different topic.
Rehearse the oral alongside a written paper from the same session, using our DELE sample papers.
The task card
Tarea 2. Exposición de un tema
MI TRABAJO O MIS ESTUDIOS
Hable de su trabajo o de sus estudios durante 2 o 3 minutos. Puede hablar de:
- qué hace exactamente
- dónde trabaja o estudia
- cómo es un día normal
- qué le gusta de su trabajo o de sus estudios
- qué es difícil
A model answer
Trabajo en un banco, en Noida. Soy empleado y trabajo en la sección de préstamos.
La oficina está en el sector dieciocho, cerca de mi casa. Voy en metro y tardo veinte minutos.
Un día normal empiezo a las nueve y termino a las seis. Por la mañana hablo con clientes y por la tarde escribo informes. Como a las dos con mis compañeros.
Me gusta mi trabajo porque hablo con muchas personas diferentes. También me gustan mis compañeros: somos un equipo pequeño y trabajamos bien.
Lo difícil es el fin de mes. Hay mucho trabajo y a veces salgo muy tarde. Y el ordenador de mi oficina es muy lento.
About 110 words, comfortably inside two and a half minutes.
The follow-up questions this card produces
- ¿Cuántas horas trabaja usted a la semana?
- ¿Prefiere trabajar por la mañana o por la tarde? ¿Por qué?
- ¿Es difícil encontrar trabajo en su ciudad?
- ¿Y usted, trabaja en una oficina? (your question to the examiner)
Notice the pattern repeats. Five bullet points, two sentences each, one porque for a reason, one negative for the difficulty. Whatever card you draw, that shape works.
Card themes rotate through a small set: work or studies, your city, your house, your family, free time, food, shopping, holidays, daily routine. Prepare ten sentences per theme, and no card can surprise you.
How should you spend your 10 minutes of preparation?
Split the prep window: two minutes choosing your Tarea 2 card and rejecting the ones you have no vocabulary for, five minutes writing short note-form sentences for the five bullet points, two minutes drafting your two questions for the examiner, one minute checking Tarea 1 covers all five personal points.
Choose your card on vocabulary, not on interest. A topic you find dull but can describe in fifteen words beats a topic you love but can only handle in five.
Write notes as fragments. “parques, restaurantes, metro bueno” not “En mi ciudad hay parques, restaurantes y un metro muy bueno.” Fragments prompt speech. Sentences prompt reading.
What you can take into the exam room
You keep the notes you made during preparation and the task cards you were given. You can glance at both while you speak. What you cannot bring is anything from outside: no phone, no dictionary, no prepared script on paper.
Examiners are used to candidates holding notes. Nobody will mark you down for looking at them. They will notice if you read from them word for word, because reading and speaking sound different, so keep the notes sparse enough that they can’t be read aloud.
How is expresión e interacción orales scored at A1?
Examiners grade against holistic scales that look at whether you complete each task and whether your Spanish is comprehensible. They reward short, grammatically formed sentences and mark down answers built from isolated words or heavy borrowing from other languages.
Two habits drag scores down more than grammar errors do.
- The first is code-switching. Dropping an English or Hindi word into a Spanish sentence is specifically named in the scale as a marker of the lowest band. If you don’t know a word, say something simpler in Spanish rather than reaching for English.
- The second is under-answering. The scales track how many of the prompt points you covered. A candidate with shaky grammar who addresses all five points often outscores a careful candidate who addressed three.
For how the four papers fit together on exam day, see the DELE diploma structure.
Six mistakes that cost A1 candidates points
- Memorizing a script and reciting it. Examiners can hear it, and any follow-up question derails you.
- Skipping the two questions in Tarea 3.
- Choosing a Tarea 2 card on interest instead of vocabulary.
- Answering Tarea 3 questions with one word.
- Filling pauses with English.
- Rushing. You have 1 to 2 minutes for Tarea 1. Finishing in 35 seconds is not efficiency; it’s an incomplete task.
If the DELE calendar does not suit your timeline, a SIELE prep course leads to a comparable certificate with faster results.
The A1 reading paper has 25 items to be completed in 45 minutes. The DELE A1 reading samples walk through every task.
A two-week practice plan for the A1 oral
Days 1 to 4. Record your Tarea 1 presentation once a day. Play it back. You’ll hear the missing points yourself.
Days 5 to 9. One Tarea 2 theme per day, ten sentences each, spoken against a timer. Cover city, house, family, free time, work, or studies.
Days 10 to 12. Pair up. Someone reads the examiner’s questions from this page while you answer, then you ask them two questions back.
Days 13 to 14. Full 10-minute mock with 10 minutes of prep, no notes from earlier days.
Working through this alone is possible, though the conversation half is hard to simulate without a partner. If you’d rather practice against someone who marks to the official scales, the DELE prep course runs the oral as a timed mock with feedback on the same criteria examiners use.
Candidates outside Noida take the same mocks in our online Spanish classes.
For where this level sits against the others, see CEFR levels explained.
Taking the DELE A1 in India
DELE runs six times a year in India, in February, April, May, July, October, and November. The exam center is Instituto Cervantes New Delhi at 48 Hanuman Road. Registration usually closes six to eight weeks before the session, and the 2026 A1 fee is ₹5,700 plus 18% GST. Check the center’s current DELE exam dates and fees in India.
The oral test is often scheduled on a different day from the written papers, sometimes even a different week. Don’t assume you’ll sit everything in one sitting, and don’t book travel before your speaking slot is confirmed.
Ready to take the real thing?
You’ve now seen the whole A1 oral paper: three tasks, timings, model answers, examiner questions, and the two questions you owe the examiner in return. Rehearse Tarea 1 until it’s automatic, build theme banks for Tarea 2, and practice asking questions rather than only answering them.
If you’d like that practice with a trainer who grades against the official scales and runs full-time mocks before your session, talk to us about the next DELE A1 batch in Noida or online. Call or message us on WhatsApp, or visit the Sector 18 center. Small groups of four to six, and every batch includes mock orals.