The Leaving Cert language orals are just a few weeks away and nerves may be beginning to settle in among students.
Depending on the language, your oral is worth between 25 and 40 per cent of your overall grade. With so many marks available to bag before you even walk into the exam hall in June, it’s well worth putting your best foot forward.
With language orals, there is a lot of information to remember before you even greet the examiner.
How are your marks broken up?
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What topics should you be ready to talk about?
What mistakes should you avoid making?
Here, teachers of Irish, French, Spanish and German offer their advice to students who want to leave their oral exam with a smile on their face and a job well done.
Irish
“Your Irish exam is worth 40 per cent of your overall grade, regardless of whether you do ordinary or higher level, so it’s definitely worth putting lots of effort into”, says Danielle O’Connell, an Irish and English teacher and online tutor at thegaeilgecoach.com.
It is worth 240 marks in total and is split into the following sections:
- Fáiltiú (a brief welcome) is worth five marks;
- Léamh na Filíochta (reading a poem), worth 35 marks;
- Comhrá (a general conversation), worth 120 marks;
- Sraith Pictiúr (describing a picture story), worth 80 marks.
“Within each section you are marked under Cumarsáid na Gaeilge agus Cruinneas na Gaeilge”, says O’Connell. “Essentially, what this means is that even if you are not grammatically correct, you will still be getting marks for keeping up the conversation with the examiner.”
Students aiming for top marks should have “excellent control of their sentence structure”, notes O’Connell. “We hope to see lots of grammar rules within their conversation, such as the use of réamhfhocail, aidiacht shealbhach, tuiseal ginideach & saorbhriathar, for example.”
The cherry on top for examiners is a student who lets their “personality flourish in the interview while speaking Gaeilge”.
According to O’Connell, a common mistake students make is not listening fully to questions, “usually just due to nerves”.
Students should “listen carefully to questions about summer holidays (laethanta saoire) or the weekend (deireadh seachtaine) as to which tense they’re being asked in”.
In the final days leading up to the oral, students should “have confidence moving between the past, present and future tense” when speaking. In doing this, they “should have no fear of getting a question they maybe haven’t prepared, as they will have the knowledge of their tenses to answer any question”, O’Connell says.
For questions you may not understand, “don’t be afraid to say ‘Ní thuigim an cheist’ or whatever equivalent you know”, she says.
For more tips, O’Connell has created The LC Gaeilge podcast, touching on various aspects of the Leaving Cert Irish exam and oral.
French
The French oral is worth 25 per cent of the higher level exam, and is marked out of 100. These marks are broken down into:
- Communication (30 marks);
- Structures (30 marks);
- Vocabulary (20 marks);
- And pronunciation (20 marks).
Katie Lenehan, French and Spanish teacher at Dublin Academy of Grinds and (@mslenslanguages on TikTok and Instagram), says students should be ready to speak about “myself, my family, my freetime, hobbies, part-time job, my area and house, my school, my best friend, experience in France, last summer, this summer, Easter weekend and daily routine”.
For learning phrases off, Lenhen recommends the app Quizlet, which allows students to “make a stack of flash cards with the question on one side, and your prompt on the other”. She says that “mnemonics, acrostics or music” can be useful to “try to trick your brain into remembering the answers the same way it remembers the lyrics to a song”.
She also recommends students listen to the Coffee Break French podcast, which is designed to help break French lessons down into digestible, 15-20 minute “coffee break” sessions. It is tailored for all levels, from absolute beginner to intermediate and advanced.
For top marks, students should “try to map out their answers”, Lenehen notes. “Try to predict where the conversation will go – get your friend to read your answer and see what they’d ask you at the end of each answer, to try to get a feel of what the examiner might ask.”
Spanish
The Spanish oral is also worth 25 per cent of the higher level grade, and 20 per cent of the ordinary level grade, Lenehan says.
Marks are given for:
- General conversation (70 marks);
- Role-play (30 marks).
The Spanish oral also requires students to have three of five role-plays learned before the oral exam.
Similar to the French oral exam, students should be ready to speak about “myself, my family, my free time, hobbies, part-time job, my area and house, my school, my best friend, experience in Spain, last summer, this summer, Easter weekend and daily routine.”
To practice for any oral exam, Lenehan recommends familiarising yourself with the marking scheme and using that to “identify your strengths and weaknesses”.
Students should “aim to do 20 minutes of revision every single day”, she says. “I used to give my mum a list of topics for the oral exam and get her to say things from that list in English, and I would respond with my answer in French or Spanish. That way I got to see what material I could remember on the spot, and what topics required more revision.”
She also recommends the Coffee Break Spanish podcast, which has short episodes focused on conversational Spanish, with levels ranging from beginner to advanced. It covers a range of topics relevant to the oral exam, including jobs, family and feelings.
A common mistake made in Spanish and French orals, according to Lenehan, is students “not addressing the initial question word”.
“For example, if you’re asked, ‘how many subjects do you study’, your answer should start with a number, not a list of subjects”, she says.
German
The Leaving Cert German oral exam is worth 25 per cent of your grade at higher level, and 20 per cent at ordinary level.
Amy Weddell, German and French teacher at Gonzaga College and Grinds 360, notes the German oral exam has three sections:
- A general conversation (40 marks);
- A prepared story or cultural project with follow-up questions (30 marks)
- and a role-play based on prepared scenarios and tasks (30 marks).
Each section lasts about five minutes.
“An oral doesn’t have to be exceptionally complex in order to be high-scoring,” says Weddell. “Oftentimes, the best orals that I see are those in which the student has obviously committed time to making sure they have thought about and are prepared for any kind of follow-up question that might appear.”
For students aiming for top marks, “making sure they’ve really practised the declensions so that I can hear that they know the cases that they’re using, or that their tenses are really impressive”, can be helpful.
Similar to other languages, a common mistake students make in the German oral is “listening to only a keyword, rather than addressing the question asked
“Students often hear ‘Schule’ [school] and jump straight into ‘my school is called …’, when actually the question they’ve been asked is, ‘how do you get to school?”, Weddell notes.
She says students should “take a moment, let the question make sense and then answer as accurately as you can”, as “no examiner expects instant, perfect results”.
Weddell also notes that “when students get a role-play they were hoping not to, they often use the English on the candidate’s card and try to translate something they haven’t prepared, rather than adapting the material in the tasks that are in German at the top of the card.”
She says students “just need to change Sie machen Recherche (Roleplay 2) to Ich mache Recherche. You’re always being given tools to help you; the same goes for general conversation, where students parrot back the question form of the verb, rather than changing to the I form.”
To keep your tenses sharp, Weddell recommends “keeping a brief diary entry every evening, even in the notes app. Three sentences, one thing I did (past tense) today, one thing I’m doing (present) right now and one thing I will do (future) tomorrow.”
She recommends students keep up with TikTok and Instagram accounts of German influencers or German language learners and watch TV shows that they already know well in German, so they can focus on how the content translates.
Staying calm before your oral
“Preparation is the antidote to any worry”, says Weddell. “The examiner is there to ask questions so that they can justify the grade they give you.”
To boost your confidence, Lenehan recommends logging the hours you study every week. “You have proof of all the work you’ve done, so your brain can’t play tricks on you and make you think you’re not prepared enough.”
O’Connell encourages students to remember that “most examiners are teachers with a sixth-year class who they have prepped, just as your teacher has prepped you.
“They are there to give you as many marks as they possibly can; they are not there to catch you out.”
