How do I improve my speaking marks?

Speaking is a difficult thing to practise alone, but there are a few ways you can do it! Here are my top tips:

1) Listen to French radio: you might wonder how this helps your speaking, but one of the key places where people lose marks in speaking is pronunciation. Listening to French regularly (15 minutes a day) really does help you to get into the zone and tunes your ear to how French sounds, even when you aren't trying to understand it!

2) Read French out loud: again, it doesn't really matter too much whether you understand every word. Every day, open your textbook and choose a paragraph, and read it aloud to yourself. This will really help your pronunciation too.

3) Talk to yourself: choose a time of day to talk to yourself only in French. I used to have a rule where I forced myself to talk in French whilst I was having a shower! Follow your normal thought processes but do your best to say them out loud in French, even if this initially seems super difficult. It will get easier and you'll quickly get used to simplifying what you're trying to say which is a great skill!

4) Don't overcomplicate it! In my experience, people make the most mistakes when speaking if they try to say something too difficult. Keep it clear and simple, get in your opinions and your subjunctives in there and you'll score more highly for accuracy.

5) Choose in advance: you won't know what the questions are going to be, but you do know the things you need to include to get the marks your going for. Build up a really good bank of opinion expressions by challenging yourself to stop saying 'je pense que' for an entire week in lessons, practise a couple of subjunctive phrases rather than trying to learn them all. Then they'll roll off the tongue more easily on the day!

Final Advice: Be confident! A lot of people get very very nervous and clam up in practise; on the day it's then even worse. Tell yourself you can do it, and it will seem much easier in practise and go more smoothly on the day!