FINISHED ORAL EXAM!

[chisel]

HEY GUYS,
 i finished my final french oral exam at 1.45 pm this afternoon. My School was the first to do so, and as I know there are obviously many schools yet to do it, i am happy to answer any questions on the oral that any of you guys may have.

  good luck with all yours anyway whenever they are! 

[MnB]

What was the first question they asked you for general convo? Did they ask any questions that were a bit out of left field?

Congrats on finishing up btw

[vox nihili]

Also happy to add my experiences from last year! I've been tutoring this year, so I still remember what I'm on about....kind of.

[jamesgaston1]

Give us an insight on how it was?!?!? Thanks

[alondouek]

Haha! Well done

I remember mine, I was really nervous at the outset but my two examiners were really funny and conversational and they made the whole experience a pleasure. Ended up with an A+, so definitely worth it lol

Tips:

- Relax and answer as clearly as possible.
- don't force an accent to make you sound more 'French'; if you're not inflicting correctly by the time you get to the exam, then there's no use faking it: they'll know.
- Try to use some (but not too many) French colloquialisms and idioms.
- you don't want to go absolutely perfectly; you need to make at least one error, then correct yourself to get full marks. Self-correction is part of the criteria, so make sure you fulfil that.

Good luck to anyone who still has the oral coming up

[vox nihili]

Trav's Top Tips:

-this is your opportunity to talk, so guide the conversation the way you want it to go...drop hints, they'll happily pick them up!
-do try to sound French, don't just lapse back into what is comfortable, accent is really important!
-in the detailed study, make sure you have opinions. It's not enough to just know your subject, make sure you can say something interesting and constructive about it. They only want to hear statistics and facts in the context of discussion and debate, not dryly recited
-do show off your amazing grammar skills
-do breathe
-concur with Alon about errors. I constantly, constantly, constantly made errors during mine and wound up with a 42. If you note, the best public speakers constantly, constantly slip up in their speeches as well. Laugh it off, correct it and move on.
-do tell a joke, they love that shit
-do pretend to be thinking hard about the matter of the question (alors and ben help...or aimlessly repeating the but of the question) whilst trying to think of how the fuck you're going to put something into a sentence
-do sing the Marseillaise on the way to the examiners room...nothing is more relaxing than singing about bloodshed and protecting the fatherland!
-do try to enjoy it, it's actually not that bad!

In all honesty, I was shit scared for mine. My teacher brought in a tutor, and I quickly found out that I oughtn't be so cocky about it and that it was going to be a disaster. That encouraged me to do a lot of actual practice (yes, that's helpful...writing shit loads, I'm afraid, is not going to help you) with the scary physics teacher at school (he was Egyptian and could speak French...he once likened not bringing your books to physics to not taking night vision goggles to war...you die). When I got there, I was obviously very nervous, like anybody else. Some dancing around and some humming actually goes a long way to turn nervous energy into excited energy. It's a good frame of mind to get into. Nervousness and excitement are really similar feelings, so you can trick your brain into believing it's excited when really it's dying of nerves. At the end of the day though, I enjoyed mine. I got 15 minutes to have a lovely discussion about the influences of the French revolution on modern France and got 15 minutes during which they HAD to listen to the crap I said...if that's not fun, what is?

Bonne chance

[chisel]

my first question was "parle moi de votre famille" so it was pretty straightforward. and i guess from your initial ability to answer the first question, the difficulty of following questions will be judged by examiners.

On question in particular that was a bit weird for me was when i said i loved literature, they obviously asked what books i read (like genre) So i said classic english literature like Jane Eyre... THEN they asked me what i liked about Jane Eyre?!?! was a bit out of field, but i felt i handled it well.

Dont stress Guys, GOOD LUCK!!!

[vox nihili]

my first question was "parle moi de votre famille" so it was pretty straightforward. and i guess from your initial ability to answer the first question, the difficulty of following questions will be judged by examiners.

On question in particular that was a bit weird for me was when i said i loved literature, they obviously asked what books i read (like genre) So i said classic english literature like Jane Eyre... THEN they asked me what i liked about Jane Eyre?!?! was a bit out of field, but i felt i handled it well.

Dont stress Guys, GOOD LUCK!!!

Hard questions during the general conversation are often a good sign that you did well

[xenial]

I had mine today. Not really sure how I went! Is anyone going to box hill? I had this one woman who was really old and cranky and she had an accent that was sooo difficult to understand. I was talking about a recent french film and she got confused and started asking me about this other film she'd seen... which clearly wasn't the one I was talking about. She realised later and then shut up for a bit (thank god) but asked me a question a minute later which I THINK was 'who recommended you see this film' but I could hardly understand. I just heard the word 'conseils' and blurted out a response. The other girl I had was nice, she had braces and asked most of the questions. Both native speakers. My first question was about family.

My main worry is that I stumbled a lot and gave answers that weren't always very precise. Speak slowly and articulate guys