Exam Tips – The Speaking Exam

Exam Tips – The Speaking Exam

by | Feb 15, 2023 | All posts

This month I am kicking off a series of blog posts on exam tips and techniques with the Speaking exam.  GCSE Speaking exams will be taking place in March/April which leaves around two months of revision and preparation time. 

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, GCSE there will be a picture card section, a role play and a conversation, for IGCSE a picture that you choose, and two conversations. 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 (12 or so) in a room with an invigilator.  During this time you won’t have access to a dictionary or smartphone.  The idea is that you look at the picture topic and prompts and plan the role play.  As an example, for the Edexcel board you are allowed to write notes on up to one side of A4 paper.  You 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.

3. Your teacher has probably given you a list of likely topics/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 in order to demonstrate your language skills, 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.

So make sure you recognise the clue in the question (ie “What did you do last weekend” = past, “What do you like to do at the weekend” = present, “What will you do next weekend” = future.)

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. For 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.  Remember that the prompt words are there to give you an idea of what will be asked.  The assessor will not use those exact words during the conversation, but will formulate a question around each (from their script).

7. Know how to formulate 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. Consider your choice of topic carefully. 

For IGCSE you could select one of the themes you are LESS confident with for your photo, so that you have the maximum amount of time possible to prepare, or you could just hope that it doesn’t come up in the exam and choose one that you know really well instead.

9. 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 +  past participle 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)
  • A subjunctive opinion phrase “If I were rich, I would…”
  • 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

10. 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…

I hope that these tips are helpful.   For more hints and techniques, check out the rest of the blog series on exam preparation for GCSE, coming soon…

Teri Fleetwood is an experienced language tutor with over 16 years experience of tutoring to the GCSE and A Level curriculum.  For more information please look at the rest of the posts in this blog and also check our Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/LanguageLearnersSurrey/  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

Revision Schedules

Revision Schedules

by | Jan 10, 2023 | All posts, Exam

The GCSE and A Level exams are now approaching at a gallop. It really is time to knuckle down and get a revision schedule sorted out so that you make sure you spend enough time on each subject and have a chance to look at all aspects of the curriculum.

Here are a few helpful tips to help you stay on the right path:

#1 Don’t revise for an exam within half a day of taking it.

Exam in the morning? Stop revising for it at lunchtime the day before. Exam in the afternoon? Don’t revise for it that day.

Revising at the last minute just leads to a lack of confidence as you convince yourself that you don’t know anything and will never get a good grade. If you don’t know your stuff that close to the exam, then spending the remaining hours cramming really won’t help!

#2 Little and often is key.

It can be really tempting to leave the final exams until much nearer the date. However, after 4-5 weeks of exams you will be suffering from revision fatigue and you really won’t want to spend hours each day revising for the last one or two. Besides, we can’t focus well for hours on end so that kind of revision is less effective anyway. Schedule in a few revision sessions for those last exams earlier in the month so that you can keep things ticking over nicely.

#3 Take a break every 30 minutes or so.

There is a good reason why school lessons tend to be less than one hour and include a variety of tasks – we cannot focus intensively for much longer than that. Work hard and focus well for 25-30 minutes, then take a short break. Not three hours of social media, but 5-10 minutes to walk around the house or garden, get a drink or something to eat, and stretch. Then sit down for another session.

#4 Vary your revision techniques.

Reading and re-reading the same page again and again only works for a very small minority of people. Try drawing mind-maps, thinking of acronyms to help you remember key info, summarising and re-

summarising to get to the key points. Get busy with the highlighter pens, add stickers to mark the important bits, see what works best for you.

#5 Why not test yourself?

At the beginning of a topic, write yourself a quiz covering 5-10 key pieces of information. When you think you have finished with that topic, try the quiz and see if you can remember the answers without looking in your notes.

#6 Tackle one or two past papers to check your timings.

Time management is an important exam technique as it is vital to leave enough time to tackle all of the questions on the paper. Your teacher may give you some past papers, or you can usually find some on the website for the relevant exam board.

#7 Successful multi-tasking is a bit of a myth.

If you are watching TV, listening to music, checking social media AND revising, then you aren’t concentrating properly on any of them. Book time in your schedule to check email or messaging apps, tell your friends you are going off-line for a while, and allow yourself to really focus.

#8 Remember to leave some downtime in your revision schedule.

Not days or a whole weekend, but careful slots to allow you to exercise, meet friends, go to that party.

#9 Eat well.

Lots of fruit and veg, of course, but also proper good quality protein and carbs. Yes to home-cooked stir fry, stew, bolognaise etc. Proceed with caution when it comes to doughnuts, chocolate and fast food.

#10 Sleep properly.

Although it can be tempting to revise late into the night you have to balance the likelihood of retaining something important read at midnight, with the probability of impaired thinking if you have been up that late!