hey! i did mine last year, and did pretty well, thankfully.
for me, i started to really work hard for my french speaking near about this time (maybe a month before the actual exam).
i found these really help. you might think it's a bit late fore some of these, but if you're doing it spontaneously (the general convo), these will really help.
> Learn structures you can adapt to any question. You should learn about 20 of these complex structures, which you can slot in to really impress the examiner. You don't need to use them all, but it would be very good to have many to adapt, only for your GC and photocard though. For example, pour ______, il faut que je fasse.....
> Think in French. This sound stupid, but when asked a question and you think in French as opposed to in English, it allows you to say only what you are capable of. Your mind, when thinking of English, has a general tendency to over complicate things, and you just don't know how to say things like that in French.
> Idioms. Learn a good few idioms, one or two per major topic. e.g. Il pleut comme vauches qui pissent, faire un tabac, avoir du pot. These help you sound native, apparently
> Idk if this will help you, but with me, I asked my teacher if I could chew gum in the exam. This helped relax my jaws and helped my pronunciation for words and helped me feel more at ease in general
> Lean sophisticated vocab. Literally go online and search words, 1 or two, for each major topic that will make the examiner go Whoa
> Practice with friends
> Learn time-consuming techniques. These will buy you some time to formulate a response. For example, what an interesting question! or I have never thought about that, hmm (obviously in French).