How to prepare for IGCSE oral

Im doing iGCSE French and I go ad lib- its much easier and I find it better to improvise because you sound more like a natural speaker that way.

Have you done any mocks? How did they go?

Also, what do you do if you are mid-sentence and don't know a word?

I did my mocks and I got 44/45, A*.
Usually, your teacher would prompt you with a suggestion you could say yes or no to or you could just go back on yourself.
I prepared by learning all of my questions, but I memorise things really easily.

Wow, well done

When you talk about learning all the questions, do you mean you learnt all the answers - does that mean you didn't go ad lib...? I'm a little confused...

Aha thanks.
Sorry, I didn't make it clear...
I prepared answers to the questions in detail for my teacher to check (initially) and then, on flashcards I wrote one/ two sentences which would prompt me to ad lib.

How many questions did you have? I have 75

We hadn't finished all the units at mock time and so I only had 55-60 questions I think?
I went overtime on the photocard and overtime on the general conversation because I spoke too much
I'd say just make sure you know your vocab and also how to form tenses in your head. Those are skills that you can also transfer to your writing exam.

Thanks I averaged 92% over Reading+Writing & Listening (mocks) because the listening was from May 2015 (apparently it was really hard) so I got 88% in that...

The listening and reading from 2015 were really hard- from all other past papers I'd been getting strong A*s but I fell to a A/B grades in them

Thanks for answering this thread

It was really helpful to hear from someone else

I am relatively good at Spanish. I have my oral mock very soon. I was away on a trip with school before that, so couldn't really revise.

I have all my answers prepared, and some of them checked through. My question is how to revise for this exam.

I feel like my options are to learn it verbatim (I checked the word count and it's about equivalent to learning the entire book of Hebrews!), learn bullet points so I have a springboard (still 3000 words with 4/5 8-word bullet points per answer), or go ad lib with some phrases and filler, maybe memorising a few sentences and one or two tricky answers.

Could anyone who has done this let me know what they think. I would really appreciate any help!

Sorry this post is so long...

Thanks in advance!

No problem if you need anything else feel free to PM me

Hey! I realise you've already had an answer but I figured I might as well add my two pennies worth since it might help I did IGCSE French a couple of years ago, and for the oral I didn't really try to learn questions verbatim. I'd make sure I learnt 4/5 really nice sentences for each topic, and then a few of the really obvious questions for each topic (stuff like 'describe your family' or whatever, basically the 'introductory' ones that you know they'll ask first). The bullet points option is almost definitely the best, particularly since you could learn the whole thing off by heart and then get asked a surprise question.
I assume you guys still have to do the picture thing at the start, I'd say learn that off by heart just for peace of mind & it's a nice easy start to the oral
Seemed to work for me back in the day, I think I got full marks or something along those lines so??
Best of luck!

AQA?

Wow, well done

Although I was sort of thinking of doing the opposite - e.g. I could talk about my family on the spot easily, but talking about how we should combat global warming in Spanish under exam pressure might be something I'd need to learn... hmm

Ahh thanks! It feels so long ago now...
I reckon that would work too, I think the only risk is that those questions just won't come up. We always got 10-12 questions per topic, with them getting progressively more obscure/harder but I really can't remember being asked anything much beyond 'where do you like to go on holiday'. I'd always make really nice long answers to the first questions because I could spend the whole time on that (thus avoiding the weird questions) and it'd also be a nice calm way to ease into the oral.
Honestly though, just do what works for you and makes you feel most at ease (and don't panic too much- I remember going into mine crying- because it sounds like you'll do pretty well).