French speaking: the guided interview

Answer and extend

Two or three sentences per answer. A one-line reply gives the examiner nothing to mark; the extension is where the vocabulary and the tenses appear.

1. Answer the question directly.
2. Add a reason, an example or a contrast.
3. Where natural, move through time — *avant, je…, maintenant je…* — which produces tenses without effort.
4. Stop when the point is made.

Preparing without reciting

• Prepare the vocabulary of your own life — your subject, your city, your job. It is certain to come up and it recurs in the later parts.
• Do not prepare a script. A recited paragraph has a different rhythm from the rest of the exam and is marked down.
• Have one anecdote ready that you can tell in any tense.

Asking the examiner to repeat is free and natural. Freezing is not, and the difference between the two is a phrase worth rehearsing: *Pardon, je n'ai pas bien compris.*