25% of the GCSE is the speaking exam and there's basically nothing to revise with?

[dinky10]

Just realised how much the speaking is actually worth and I'm a bit annoyed nobody flagged this earlier. DD has had about two practice goes with her teacher all year. Everything else has past papers, textbooks, YouTube — speaking has nothing.
We looked at a French tutor but it's £35+ an hour and she'd realistically need a few sessions to make a difference. Then she found an app that does mock speaking exams with AI — picks up her actual exam board and tier and runs through the whole thing. She's been doing a few every evening this week and says it's actually helped her feel less terrified about it.
For context the paid version costs less than 15 minutes with a tutor. The app is called Tête-à-Tête AI if anyone wants to look it up.
Honestly my main gripe is with the school though — how is a quarter of the grade something they barely practise in class? What are other schools doing?

I would have thought the oral element of a language was practised throughout every lesson. Is that why specific prep has not been suggested?

Not much help here I know, but when I did my French GCSE about 10 years ago I'm sure the speaking element had a similar weighting and we did very little actual practise. I remember picking up pronunciation from just listening to natural spoken french, films with subtitles are good for that. That might be a solution. If it is what to say, writing scripted answers to different questions are good for that and I'm sure that's what I did.

Funnily enough our French teacher advised the class to download this app! My son hasn’t used it yet but will show him this post to encourage him to

You can practice with AI. You just go to copilot, tell it would need to practice GCSE level language, and off you go.

You can pick topics, tell it to speak slower, ask it to dumb it down/complicate it, ask for feedback and correction on your grammar and pronunciation, brainstorm with it how to formulate interesting sentences that can be memorised to sound clever in the exam, etc

@SkyWalrus You'd think so but DD's experience is it's mostly pair work with other students — not the actual exam format where an examiner asks questions and you're scored. The roleplay scenarios and unprepared conversation don't seem to get dedicated practice time, at least not at her school.

@Fyra Films with subtitles is such a good shout for pronunciation. The tricky bit now is the reading aloud component is new for 2026 — they get unseen text so you can't script for it. And the conversation is meant to be spontaneous so it's hard to revise for in the traditional way. The exam format has definitely changed since 10 years ago!

@ShesRunningOutTheDoor That's brilliant that a teacher recommended it! DD's school haven't mentioned anything like it. Definitely get your son to give it a go — DD says it's most useful for the roleplay and conversation where you don't know what's coming.

@IAxolotlQuestions That's a good point — DD has used ChatGPT for general conversation practice too. The difference she found is Copilot doesn't follow the actual exam structure — the roleplay scenarios, photo card timings, reading aloud etc the way they come up on the day. For general confidence building though you're right, any AI is helpful.

From recollection the things that helped me do well in spoken exams

• travelling to the country a lot (a bit late now I realise but my parents made sure they took me each year) and actually speaking in shops etc
• listening to lots of radio /TV
• learning lots of useful vocab, especially words that help sentences flow and sound sophisticated (therefore /atlhough type words)
• practising with a friend /family member to get used to saying things out loud

It's also not too late for a tutor if you can find one. They could do a mock test and feedback

You can find tutors who are native French speakers on preply.com for £16+/hr. They will be located in a different country and won't know the GCSE specification, but you can explain it to them and they can practice speaking with your child.

Is this an ad?

@SnipSnipMrBurgessI was thinking the same thing

Any good MFL teacher should be practising speaking in lessons alongside other skills, so it’s poor if that’s not been done.

Yes the spec for this year is new (obvs taught since 2024) but speaking has been equally weighted with other skills since 2018 exams (and before that, speaking and writing were rated at 30% each actually).

Meant to add there is just as much sample material (no past papers yet for any discipline of this spec) as for the other skills. Also should be lots of tasks in the textbook. Agree tho it’s harder to practise on your own.

MFL is my subject and there’s some good advice here. They key things rn (as the exam will be in the next couple of weeks probably) are:

• Verbs and tenses - make sure you are secure in future and past tense of common verbs
• As a pp says, phrases to link - opinions, adjective for reasons, conjunctions
• Read aloud - watch out for third person plural verbs (ils jouent) don’t say the -ent, and English words like intelligent - don’t say it like the English word
• Use some of the prep time to think about possible questions from the read aloud topic (this is AQA yes?), not sure candidates are doing that
• Get all your papers in order after the prep time so you know what you’re doing
• Role play is a relatively easy win for 10 marks; add the details asked for but don’t develop beyond that

All the best to everyone doing MFL speaking

I take it you are talking about the French GCSE. How long has your daughter been learning French? It is a spoken language. She should have been “speaking” French every lesson since she began. The oral part of the exam is aimed at testing her ability to communicate in French. If she can’t use the language effectively by now cramming for the next month is not going to help her much.
£35 an hour is very reasonable for a tutor.

I think you’d be surprised at how much young brains can take on in a short time @Nothavingagoodvalentinesday. Children can improve in a few days with good revision and gaining confidence. So it’s never too late!!

Thanks. I guess there is speaking in class but for other subjects, once the syllabus is covered, there is then a real focus on the exam. Just need more practice at the actual exam. But I guess her class is so big Paying a tutor that much to listen to her answers

sorry, post got cut off..and cant edit..

anyway, decided on an hour with a tutor then repeated practice with the app is best as she's getting on really well with it.

Just hope the tutor knows her actual exam specs etc. and doesn't just 'chat'.

Well the key is to pick a tutor who does know her exam.

Yes make sure before you book the tutor that they know the exam spec. This is always key. But in MFL especially I have come across a number of tutors who are native speakers (great) but who do not know the spec at all, which is not great.

At this stage especially exam focus is key. When is her speaking assessment @dinky10?

My DS didn't do French but Mandarin GCSE and they worked quite a bit on the speaking part. Prepping the different questions, having planned answers to the known topics that would come up. This was mostly done in class time. I'm sure it's the same format for most language GCSEs.

The format of MFL GCSE is new for this year’s exams. Not all themes are examined for AQA and (again for AQA; different for edexcel) the candidate no longer chooses a first discussion theme, which makes it harder to plan out answers (unless you plan answers to every topic).

Thanks for the clarification @clary ! Good job I'm not sitting it this year!!

Thank you. Will do. End of next week.

Do you want your child to be able to speak French or is this just about passing an exam in a subject she will never use?
I find your attitude to tutors very insulting.

Talking to chatgpt? Duolingo? I think you're being harsh.