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5 min prep before A level Spanish/ French speaking

I’m not very clear on what to write during 5 minutes preparation time for A level languages (I do Spanish) speaking. Obviously, there is no time to write full answers to the questions on a card, so would you write sentence starters, key points you want to mention, questions you ask your teacher during discussion or just list grammar features you want to use?
That’d be helpful if you could share what you did/do.

Reply 1

Original post by Kridrik313
I’m not very clear on what to write during 5 minutes preparation time for A level languages (I do Spanish) speaking. Obviously, there is no time to write full answers to the questions on a card, so would you write sentence starters, key points you want to mention, questions you ask your teacher during discussion or just list grammar features you want to use?
That’d be helpful if you could share what you did/do.

hi! i have my spanish oral in about 5 hours haha. usually what i do is write quick bulletpoints of the main ideas you want to say for each bulletpoint. you'll find you have more time because you're more focused on getting out more ideas than stringing sentences together. key phrases and things are good to write down too if you have more complex structures you want to show off. my teacher often recommends to write down the 2 questions during this time but if you cannot then don't worry too much, just make sure it is relevant to the topic and it can be fairly broad too! i tend to not focus too much on grammar features as it tends to come out when you speak if you are used to it. hope this helped!

Reply 2

Original post by msnrise
hi! i have my spanish oral in about 5 hours haha. usually what i do is write quick bulletpoints of the main ideas you want to say for each bulletpoint. you'll find you have more time because you're more focused on getting out more ideas than stringing sentences together. key phrases and things are good to write down too if you have more complex structures you want to show off. my teacher often recommends to write down the 2 questions during this time but if you cannot then don't worry too much, just make sure it is relevant to the topic and it can be fairly broad too! i tend to not focus too much on grammar features as it tends to come out when you speak if you are used to it. hope this helped!

how was it? its been 5 hours since ur comment hope it was good

Reply 3

Original post by msnrise
hi! i have my spanish oral in about 5 hours haha. usually what i do is write quick bulletpoints of the main ideas you want to say for each bulletpoint. you'll find you have more time because you're more focused on getting out more ideas than stringing sentences together. key phrases and things are good to write down too if you have more complex structures you want to show off. my teacher often recommends to write down the 2 questions during this time but if you cannot then don't worry too much, just make sure it is relevant to the topic and it can be fairly broad too! i tend to not focus too much on grammar features as it tends to come out when you speak if you are used to it. hope this helped!

How did you find it?, i just did mine aswell, did you do AQA?

Reply 4

Original post by Kridrik313
I’m not very clear on what to write during 5 minutes preparation time for A level languages (I do Spanish) speaking. Obviously, there is no time to write full answers to the questions on a card, so would you write sentence starters, key points you want to mention, questions you ask your teacher during discussion or just list grammar features you want to use?
That’d be helpful if you could share what you did/do.

I like to have a plan of what i am going to answer for question 1, where you have to summarize info and give opinion, then bullet points for the rest as q3 opens it up to the broader topic, this is for AQA btw. Whens your exam?

Reply 5

Original post by warneowr
how was it? its been 5 hours since ur comment hope it was good

yes it went okay! i usually get nervous in these situations but i recovered when it came to the irp and think i engaged her into the topic well 😊 i did misread my photocard which was kind bad but she recovered it until i was able to realise! i would say to definitely implement some difficult structures into your answer.

Reply 6

Original post by 83828727227
How did you find it?, i just did mine aswell, did you do AQA?

yes i did aqa!

Reply 7

Original post by 83828727227
I like to have a plan of what i am going to answer for question 1, where you have to summarize info and give opinion, then bullet points for the rest as q3 opens it up to the broader topic, this is for AQA btw. Whens your exam?

Thank you! Mine is on Friday

Reply 8

Original post by msnrise
hi! i have my spanish oral in about 5 hours haha. usually what i do is write quick bulletpoints of the main ideas you want to say for each bulletpoint. you'll find you have more time because you're more focused on getting out more ideas than stringing sentences together. key phrases and things are good to write down too if you have more complex structures you want to show off. my teacher often recommends to write down the 2 questions during this time but if you cannot then don't worry too much, just make sure it is relevant to the topic and it can be fairly broad too! i tend to not focus too much on grammar features as it tends to come out when you speak if you are used to it. hope this helped!

Thank you so much! Hope it went well! What card did you choose?

Reply 9

Original post by Kridrik313
Thank you! Mine is on Friday

so is mineee but im doing gcse not a level and idk how to memorise my flashcards for spanish

Reply 10

Original post by Kridrik313
I’m not very clear on what to write during 5 minutes preparation time for A level languages (I do Spanish) speaking. Obviously, there is no time to write full answers to the questions on a card, so would you write sentence starters, key points you want to mention, questions you ask your teacher during discussion or just list grammar features you want to use?
That’d be helpful if you could share what you did/do.


For some reason my teacher has always told me to write out a full answer to all of the questions super quick in the prep time. But obviously in all the practices we’ve done it has taken me about 15 mins to do that, so it’s clearly not feasible. So now I’m only a couple weeks before my exam and I’ve never had to speak spontaneously in Spanish. Anyone have any tips on how to improve quickly? I find speaking in Spanish spontaneously so hard because my mind just goes blank and I panic and can’t think of anything.

Reply 11

Original post by Kridrik313
Thank you! Mine is on Friday

Hey how was yours? Could u pm me haha
(edited 3 weeks ago)

Reply 12

Original post by msnrise
yes i did aqa!


do u mind sharing what ur photo card was?xx

Reply 13

Original post by LittleFire10
For some reason my teacher has always told me to write out a full answer to all of the questions super quick in the prep time. But obviously in all the practices we’ve done it has taken me about 15 mins to do that, so it’s clearly not feasible. So now I’m only a couple weeks before my exam and I’ve never had to speak spontaneously in Spanish. Anyone have any tips on how to improve quickly? I find speaking in Spanish spontaneously so hard because my mind just goes blank and I panic and can’t think of anything.


wait isn’t the whole thing meant to be spontaneous😭 like the general conversation and the questions about your IRP? were you allowed to learn exact answers?? (I do aqa French)

Reply 14

Original post by harriettetaylor
wait isn’t the whole thing meant to be spontaneous😭 like the general conversation and the questions about your IRP? were you allowed to learn exact answers?? (I do aqa French)


I meant the photocard part, not IRP. Obvs I don’t know what questions will be on my photocard so I’ll be writing down stuff for the first time in the 5 minutes prep time.

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