Should I start on my GC and DS now?

[strawberrytoast]

None of my teachers for LOTE have talked about the General Conversation or Detailed Study yet, however with both oral sacs coming up I can't help but wonder. Or should I not bother yet and spend my time on something else? Because I'm quite stressed at the moment because of such wishy washy information from teachers and friends haha
Edit: What should I expect with General Conversation ?

[Remy33]

Reckon you should definitely start on them asap. Have you gotten topics for your detail studies?

For general convo, you get asked about yourself, your family, school, interests and aspirations, strictly in that order.

[vox nihili]

None of my teachers for LOTE have talked about the General Conversation or Detailed Study yet, however with both oral sacs coming up I can't help but wonder. Or should I not bother yet and spend my time on something else? Because I'm quite stressed at the moment because of such wishy washy information from teachers and friends haha
Edit: What should I expect with General Conversation ?

You don't really need to do a lot of preparation for general conversation, not deliberately anyway. Just make sure you've had plenty of practice getting used to using the language to talk about concepts. The purpose of the general conversation is to tease out the extent of your language ability, not so that you can just rattle off formulaic responses to predictable questions (as is often the case). Students who do well are those who can demonstrate that they can use language flexibly.

Detailed study is a long way off. There's really no urgency.

[pnk_marie]

This is somewhat related and I know it's still a bit early but what detailed study topic is everyone doing? I really don't know what I should talk about. (PS I'm doing German 

[Ironiic]

Would recommend you get started now, especially for GC. I had a teacher for the first half the year for 3/4 who didn't speak a word about GC and DS, then we had a second teacher take over around August who panicked when he realised how behind we were for oral preparation. GC is mostly straightforward, just make sure to prepare responses that are more than one sentence, and get someone to test you with questions that are out of the scope of your typical questions like 'What are your hobbies?' etc, so you can prepare yourself for more unexpected questions.

As for DS, my teacher for the second half of the year gave us a lot of material to prepare, including for the 1-min intro and almost all the questions you could possibly get. My advice would be to ask or gather material from your teachers and have an in-depth knowledge of your topic. A day before the oral, my teacher called me and asked me the most random questions that wasn't included in the material he gave, and while some of it wasn't relevant, it really helped me to prepare myself for challenging questions the examiners might ask. However, I mostly prepared for this around August/September on a daily basis so don't be too worried about preparing for DS right now.

[khai.ling]

Yeah I totally agree with most of what's been said!

In some schools, students will start preparing for GC from day 1, so I would highly recommend you get started. Start writing some responses for common topics like the ones Remy33 mentioned. I wouldn't worry about memorising them, but absolutely start practising with your friends or a teacher/tutor if you have access to one that is willing. I say this because GC is not just about preparing an answer to every question, but speaking naturally and being able to direct the conversation where you want it to go, so having that practice will be really useful. I'd work on

• trying to direct the convo to a particular topic if you know that you've prepared some really good sentences for it
• getting your friend to try to ask as many curveball questions as possible, like Ironiic said, and being able to speak spontaneously
• being aware of what "follow up" questions someone could ask, e.g. if you talk about your family and say you play soccer with your brother, be aware that they could ask about soccer, or your relationship with your brother, or other things you do to have fun, etc

because these are things that would really elevate your GC skills and they're not things you can "cram" when november comes around

Good luck!!