GCSE Speaking Exams will be taking place in late April which gives just a couple of weeks left for preparation. This year they may be causing particular concern to some students, parents and teachers, as the recent curriculum changes have introduced a new “read aloud” task to check pronunciation.
So, if you have just 10-12 minutes or so to wow the examiner and get the best possible mark, what preparation can you do?
1. Firstly, be sure to look at the specification for the exam board that you are doing. They are all freely available online, and your teacher may have given you some information already. In general, there will be a read aloud task, a role play and a picture card section with a related conversation – do you know how long each one lasts? How long do you have to prepare?
2. Use your preparation time wisely. You will have a few minutes (14 is standard, more if you have special accommodations) in a room with an invigilator. During this time, you won’t have access to a dictionary or smartphone. Look at the picture topic and prompts and plan the role play. Think about how to pronounce the words in the read aloud task, and where you should take your breaths. You are allowed to write notes but must not read out full sentences from your notes, so use keywords only – maybe past participles or verbs to remind you to use them – even a simple list of the things to remember like tenses, adjectives, smile etc. Decide whether you will use the one-minute recorded practice to read words aloud or if you prefer to remain quiet and practice silently.
3. Your teacher should have given you a choice of two topics for the photo. They may also have given you some sample questions. Ensure that you understand ALL of them and that you can recognise them quickly. If you have been encouraged to write sample answers for each question, then accept that you may not remember each answer in full – that’s like learning a script. Instead, try to learn keywords for each area and if necessary be willing to be creative so you can demonstrate your language skill, rather than stick rigidly to what you really think/did. E.g. if you spent last weekend windsurfing in Cornwall but can’t remember how to say so, then tell the assessor that you went to the cinema with your friends to see a comedy!
4. Your assessor will give you a chance to demonstrate past, present and future tenses. Make sure you recognise the clue in the question (ie “What did you do last week?” = past, “What do you like to do at the weekend?” = present, “What will you do next summer?” = future). Try to mirror the tenses used.
5. Learn some panic vocabulary. Swapping from your target language into English to say “I don’t understand” will lose you marks – doing it in French/German/other target language will lose you fewer marks and may gain
you some for effective communication! Remember that for some parts of the exam the assessor is only allowed to repeat what they said, not to change the words at all.
6. When it comes to the picture prompt, it is always a good idea to have practised a couple first. Do remember to try to link your description of the photo to the topic where possible. So, if the topic is “Work” and you have a picture of a young man serving an elderly couple, try to include the words “waiter”, “restaurant” or “hotel” in your answer as well as describing what they are wearing/doing/eating.
7. Know how to ask questions in your chosen language. For example, does the word order change when you make a question instead of a statement? What are the different question words and what do they mean? Can you recognize them all? You will have to ask a question as part of the role play, so do practise relevant questions for each topic.
8. Grammar! In order to get higher marks, you will have to demonstrate a range of grammar knowledge. See how many of these you can include in your conversation…
– A range of tenses (past, present and future as a minimum, but for a higher grade add, imperfect, conditional and pluperfect if possible) – Complex grammatical structures – e.g. um…zu for German, après avoir +infinitive and avant de +infinitive for French. – A range of people doing the verbs (to show you can use correct endings) – Opinions (3 different ways of showing what you think) – Modal verbs (can, should, must) – Word order: especially for German but also with French (adjective order) – Correct endings depending on gender (and “case” for German) – Time phrases – not just “at 12 o’clock” or “tomorrow” but also rarely, often, never, always etc. – A negative or two
9. Take time to take a deep breath or two as you go into your speaking exam. Remember to smile. And when you run out of things to say, stop and smile confidently rather than trailing off in the middle of a sentence…
Teri Fleetwood is an experienced language tutor with 20 years experience of tutoring to the GCSE and A Level curriculum. If you would like to discuss 1:1 or small group tuition, whether for exam preparation or pleasure, then do get in touch! teri@language-learners.com
Whether you are choosing a language tutor for a child, for an adult or for a group, there are several considerations that you may want to bear in mind when it comes to finding the right person for you. Here are some ideas for you if you are looking for someone to tutor a student under the age of 18:
1. Be timely. If your student is finding the subject hard at school then consider getting a short burst of tuition as soon as possible, to get them back on the right track. Please do not leave it until just a few weeks before the exams and expect the tutor to unpick years of misunderstandings and lack of confidence.
2. Ask for their DBS check. It is not compulsory for someone to have a DBS check in order to tutor, but it is definitely good practice to do so.
3. Consider carefully whether you would be better to have tuition at your home or at the tutor’s premises. Some students work better in unfamiliar surroundings, away from familiar distractions – others do better when they feel comfortable. Do note that most professional tutors will be unwilling to be left alone with a child in the child’s own home due to safeguarding reasons.
4. Match your tutor to your needs. If you would like your 8-year-old to have a little booster then you may be fine with a University student. However, if your child has specific additional learning needs or is studying for an exam then it may be a good idea to pay extra for someone with relevant experience!
5. The GCSE curriculum and exam methods have changed in the last two years – so University students DID NOT sit the same exam that your child will be taking. If you need to be boosting grades then ask your tutor questions about how they have kept their knowledge of the curriculum up-to-date.
6. Have reasonable expectations of what you will be paying. Remember that the minimum wage for someone aged 21 or over will be £12.71 per hour from April 2026. So, if you are expecting to pay just £10 per hour you can only legally employ those aged 20 or under! With a good tutor you are not just paying for the one hour of the class, but also for the time they spend planning and marking homework. It can take quite some time to plan a student-specific scheme of work to boost that particular student’s grades in the time available. As a rough guide, prepare for the cost of the tutor to be similar to the cost of a 1:1 session with a physiotherapist or personal trainer at the gym.
7. If your tutor is just going over the same material that was covered in school, using the same books and worksheets, then it is time for another tutor. They should be adding value by bringing different/more resources. Not that you
necessarily want lots of different explanations (that’s confusing) but a range of new exercises and challenges will really help to consolidate the information.
8. Personality. Ensuring that your child gets on well with the tutor and will work nicely for them is a key element. Sometimes two people just don’t get on well, without it being anyone’s fault – so be prepared to review the situation after two or three classes to make sure that both sides are happy.
Teri Fleetwood has been providing French and German tutoring for 20 years. Her students consistently exceed expectations at GCSE and A Level through a careful mixture of topic and grammar work as well as a keen attention to exam technique.
“My teacher gave us a list of questions and told us that we should prompt (insert choice of AI here) to give us some good answers for us to learn. Should I be doing that for German too?”
Pretty shocking, isn’t it.
This was the start of a conversation with one of my independent candidates during their lesson this week. They are studying one European language at school, and German with me.
It probably won’t come as much of a surprise to learn that I was not in favour of this idea, either for German or for the language this student is learning at school. Is it cheating? Frankly, yes! However, that is not the only reason that I advised against this course of action. This is a talented student who will be taking GCSE German (their third or fourth language) early (ie they are not yet in Year 11). Put simply, I don’t want them to deliver pre-scripted robotic-sounding answers and DROP marks that they are capable of earning for themselves, using their own hard work. Will they make some mistakes? Quite probably. But the grade they receive will be a result of their own hard work and will be something they can be proud of.
Is it possible to train your AI well enough that it starts to sound like you (or you start to sound like it), delivers colloquial language predominantly using the GCSE vocabulary list, gives answers tailored to your exam board, and scores well? Maybe. Is it possible for a student age 13-16 to do this well? Much more tricky. Will such an attempt either end up sounding like they have cheated (which they have) or make no sense at all to a “real” speaker of the language? Well, I guess we will see in the next couple of years if this school and others continue to make such suggestions….
Naturally, the school will remain unnamed. Bearing in mind the wide geographical area I cover when teaching online, if it sounds familiar, then you may like to wonder just how widespread this is.
It is often recommended that exam students try to include some idioms in their writing, to show that they have a good knowledge of the language they are learning. While this can be useful, it is a tip that should be used with caution as idioms, by their very nature, don’t translate directly, and so it is very easy to use them incorrectly, or to misunderstand when they would be appropriate.
Following on from the sausage-related German idioms found in our October blog, here are some French ones, all related to food.
1. Ça ne mange pas de pain. Direct translation: That does not eat any bread. Meaning: It doesn’t cost anything.
2. Garder une poire pour la soif. Direct translation: To keep a pear for the thirst. Meaning: To keep something back for a rainy day.
3. Je m’occupe de ma pomme. Direct translation: I take care of my apple. Meaning: I’m looking after number one (i.e. myself).
4. On ne peut pas avoir le beurre et l’argent du beurre. Direct translation: You cannot have the butter and the money for the butter. (Presumably to do with farmer’s wives making butter for the family to eat, or to sell for extra money). Meaning: You can’t have your cake and eat it.
5. N’en fait pas tout un fromage. Direct translation: Do not make a whole cheese out of it. Meaning: Don’t make such a fuss.
I hope you can have some fun with these. Which English idioms do you think would be the hardest to explain for the non-native speaker?
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