Oral Exam Prep
A track of P45 · Speaking & Pronunciation.
The written half of the Production orale: know the épreuve's anatomy — the draw, the 30-minute preparation, the exposé and the débat — and build the three-part skeleton you will speak from, before a single word is recorded.
You draw a topic, and a clock starts: thirty minutes, one sheet of paper, no dictionary, and at the end of it you will speak for five minutes and then defend what you said. Most of the marks in that room are decided during the thirty minutes, not during the five — and most candidates spend the preparation writing sentences they will then read aloud badly, which is the one thing the format punishes hardest.
This track is the written half of the production orale, and it deliberately contains no recording. It starts with the anatomy of the épreuve: how the draw works, what the preparation is for, what a monologue suivi is expected to be as against a summary of the document, how the débat that follows is conducted, and what the examiner is marking in each. Knowing the shape removes a surprising amount of the anxiety, because most of it comes from not knowing what is supposed to happen next.
Then the skeleton. What you produce in thirty minutes should not be a text; it should be a three-part structure with enough hooks to speak from — a position stated plainly, two arguments each with a concrete example, a concession, and a conclusion that does not merely repeat the opening. You will build that skeleton against real triggers and learn what belongs on the page and what must not: full sentences invite reading, and reading kills the coherence and range marks that the same content would have earned if spoken. The recording work continues in Speaking to B2 — this track decides what you will have to say when it starts.