I'm very nervous about the speaking exam - I'm afraid that I won't know what to talk about as it's not an easy paper to revise. How do I go about handling mental blocks during the exam?

This is a question many nervous A Level French students ask throughout the academic year after they’ve found out that there is a big jump between GCSE and A Level French. Three elements can be identified in this question, and I shall endeavour to answer each of them in term, one following the other. 1/ Revising for a modern languages exam French, or modern languages in general, is not a subject that you can leave to the last month to revise for. You should follow diligently your classes, put in a 100% into the homework assignments, and learn your vocabulary throughout the year. Do this, and by the exam season you should be mainly practising past papers and honing your ideas for your essay question, as well as your grammar. (a) Revising grammar and vocabulary This is something that you should do consistently throughout the year — your teacher will have taught you the grammar and usually they provide a vocabulary list topic by topic (environment, social issues such as immigration, law, politics, culture etc.).
You may feel that the vocabulary list isn’t enough, and a very useful tool you can use to expand naturally on your grammar and vocab by exposure is by using WordReference, and online dictionary and conjugator. It also functions as a thesaurus, providing not only the translation of words or phrases, but also more importantly the context of those words. Context is important to take note of — you also have to be careful not to use words that may sound fancy but also out of context, and therefore fundamentally wrong. So WordReference will help you avoid embarrassing vocabulary and grammatical mistakes, hence aid individual learning. Another useful tool is the Reverso Grammar and Spelling Check, which corrects your French text, providing explanations for the errors, and then the correction. These tools will help you faster when your teacher may not necessarily be available or quick enough to give you the answer. (b) Revising for the speaking exam Revising for your speaking exam is not as difficult as you may think. First, you must look at the relevant specification of your exam board, which will state the subject content of the course. Take the themes specified — e.g. in AQA, themes include current trends in French-speaking countries (la famille, la cyber-société, le rôle du bénévolat) and current issues (diversité à la société — le racisme, la criminalité, les marginalisés etc), politics (le droit de vote pour les jeunes personnes, la patrimoine) or culture (e.g. la musique francophone). You should prepare possible points of discussion surrounding these themes. Start out general, then probe deeper into more specific discussion points. If you are up to it, you can even formulate a mini-debate — weighing out pros and cons to a certain situation, and picking a side that resonates best with your beliefs and opinions. If you prepare this in advance, you are sure to have a lot to talk about during the exam, and make an engaging discussion that will captivate the examiner. The debate approach will certainly be required if you go on to university, where it becomes the norm, with your own research on the matter. Your points need not be totally original; in fact, you can get away with using existing arguments and opinions — you can get them from the news. France24, Le Monde and CNews are good sources for French news online. BBC News reports on affairs all around the world, and even though it is in English, the ideas will certainly give you good points of discussion. 2/ Nerves and stress Time management throughout the year is key to avoiding stress. At A Level, as long as you stay on track with your work, you have little to be worried about in terms of preparing for the exam, as the entire year is working towards the content of it. The exam can be quite long as time is allowed for thorough checking of grammar and sentence structure — you will need to develop your exam stamina for this. Constantly refer back to your exam specification and past papers to prepare yourself for what to expect in the exam. It generally follows a certain pattern, however, as new specifications are employed, it is wise to be wary of relying too much on homogeneity. Don’t let this get the better of you, as long as you keep your grammar in check, and revise your vocabulary and do your work properly, you should be able to overcome anything the exam hurls at you. It is also important to talk to people if the stress is getting out of hand, especially in the second year of A Level, where the entire grade of the exam will determine your university destination. 3/ When you have a mental block in the middle of the speaking exam and freeze into silence Everyone experiences this. You cannot always anticipate what questions the examiner may ask you in your discussion. It is okay to take a few moments to think about your answer, but if you pause for too long, the examiner will assume that you don’t have an answer and will ask another question. To avoid this (pausing too long will mark down your fluency and communication), a good tactic to use is to give a general ‘sit-on-the-fence’ answer, consider the weight of the question, and then try to direct the discussion towards something you are more comfortable and knowledgable about. It is not only the examiner that directs the conversation, but you yourself are equally capable to do so. But, if you do know the answer, by all means, give it your best shot — amidst the adrenaline you may forget the mention a few good points you may have prepared beforehand, but don’t beat yourself up about it — it is impossible to mention everything in exam conditions. As long as you make an engaging discussion, you will be fine. A flat and monotonous conversation is the biggest downfall for most students in the speaking exam. Your grammar may be perfect and have all the vocabulary, but be aware of the exam rubric, where the content of your discussion carries a significant weight, sometimes more than the grammar. Prior preparation and following the news will help to a certain extent, but good tactics is what will get you out of a mental block.