Spanish oral

lestats_bride

:eek:

I'm petrified. I do spanish outside school and haven't given it as much attention as i should have.I'll be okay for the roleplays but its the conversation part that im crapping bricks about.Anybody have any hints on what they talk about?

Scarinae

Do you have 'El Espanol Bien Hablado'? I find that really useful because it has 20 sections on stuff you could be asked about - starts off with simple stuff like yourself, your family, your area, your school etc and moves on to harder topics. If you're doing higher level, it's important that you can use all the tenses, including the subjunctive if you're good. When using the future tense, try to avoid the 'voy a' route - say 'iré' instead of 'voy a ir' because it's more impressive. The important thing is to flesh out your answers as much as possible - don't give one sentence answers

lestats_bride

Yeah i was thinking if i could flesh out the easier questions i get asked then there might not be time to go onto more harder topics.Thanks for all the hints.I'll have to go and look for that book!

charmedmad

If you learn off alot of vocab about yourself you can waste loads of time and get good marks for it. When they ask your name you are them able to talk all about you, your family, hobbies, where you live and stuff like that. It can easily waste ten mins

Young Siward

I'm no great Spanish speaker, but my oral last year went fairly well.

First of all I chose my rollplay.
I did get stuck, but got out of trouble when the examiner wrote the Spanish on a piece of paper and spun it in my direction. Sound!

?Como se dice *** en Ingles? Will get you out of many a hole, and then it's just a case of doing the usual few lines on family, school, home etc. Above all be confident and enthusiastic.

Best of luck, you'll be fine.

lestats_bride

Thanks for all the advice.

So we get to choose the roleplay?I thought he/she did that. I hope i have the right set-roleplays. Mine are about a family,a hotel,a bike,a market-place,and a newsagents shop.

Does anyone have a copy of the 2004 listening comp.It's not on examinations grrr!

Young Siward

lestats_bride wrote:

Thanks for all the advice.

So we get to choose the roleplay?I thought he/she did that. I hope i have the right set-roleplays. Mine are about a family,a hotel,a bike,a market-place,and a newsagents shop.

Does anyone have a copy of the 2004 listening comp.It's not on examinations grrr!

No you are right the examiner will chose your roleplay, but maybe s/he might be extra nice and let you chose. Sure you'll find out from the first few who go in. Also, get the first in to fold the corner of the roleplay s/he gets. It might work....

lestats_bride

Actually i'll be the only one!I do it outside of school so they are just sending someone out for me.eek!

rosa

I've never done the subjunctive in any kind of detail-is it necessary to be able to use it in the oral or do you think I'd get away with not knowing it?

lestats_bride

It'll be hard to get away with not using the subjunctive in the dialogue/letter/note and essay.I think you might be able to work around it in oral unless they ask you a specific question that will need it..

Scarinae

rosa wrote:

I've never done the subjunctive in any kind of detail-is it necessary to be able to use it in the oral or do you think I'd get away with not knowing it?

I think your best bet for the oral is find a few phrases that use the subjunctive and fling them into the conversation - don't wait for them to ask you a sunjunctive question. Once they know you can use it you're grand.

lestats_bride

I cant find my marketplace roleplay!Could someone scan it for me please?!

Scarinae

lestats_bride wrote:

I cant find my marketplace roleplay!Could someone scan it for me please?!

I'm just gonna type it if that's ok

Greet the seller and ask how much the leather belt costs.
AWAIT RESPONSE
Say that it is too expensive. Your holiday is nearly over and you don't have much money left. You have to buy other presents to bring home, and you ask him/her if (s)he could reduce the price.
AWAIT RESPONSE
Say that you have about 30 euro but that you have to buy presents for two other people. Say what type of presents you were thinking of getting for them.
AWAIT RESPONSE
Say that that seems like a good idea. Ask the price of two other items which you point out and describe. Ask another question relating to one of the items.
AWAIT RESPONSE
Say that you will take them. Say that it's great not to have to worry about presents any more!

If you want what I would have said in Spanish, just PM me and I'll type it out for you. I've done my Spanish oral now, yay!! It's fine, seriously, and it goes way quicker than you'd think. When is yours?

JackKelly

i wouldn't worry about it. Out of French, German and Spanish, it seems that spanish is easist. I had my oral on Tuesday and it was grand. Wasn't asked anything difficult really at all. Kept the conversation to my interests, hobbies, area friends and sport really. Got the easy role play also. The one about the bike. A lot of the people doing French and German were telling of how they got asked about The Spire, Saipan and Roy Keane, Alcoholism, Crime, The pope etc while most of the Spainish students only had to talk about themselves. Keep a few phrases handy, along with the little filler words like "Vale, Pues, Asi Que (so), por tanto (therefore), Tambien, Primero, Que yo sepa (as far as i know),Quiza/s (maybe), no yo se, creo que" and so on.

lestats_bride

Thanks Fishie! Its tomorrow!Eek!!

lol very nervous.Yours went good?And how good would you say you are at spanish?

Thanks for the advice Timmy.My tutor had me worked up about the pope and the tsunami and drugs in my area!

rosa

Hey Fishie, what sort of things did you get asked?Just the usual, or anything hard or unusual? I've mine on Monday, really don't know what to expect! Did the examiner let you pick your own role play?

lestats_bride

Ah i dont know why i was so worried!I got the bike too!

Ros,she said at the start that she would only be talking about me and my interests and nothing other than that i.e no current affairs or anything!

Started with:my age,birthday,area i live in,the school,friends pastimes etc!

Scarinae

lestats_bride wrote:

Yours went good?And how good would you say you are at spanish?

Yeah, mine went reasonably ok I think. I'm not great at thinking of what verb to use at the right time though, so I had learned off phrases and was just flinging them in to try make it sound more natural! I average at a B in Spanish, though I'm only really starting to work now so hopefully my grade will go up a bit! How are you at Spanish?

rosa wrote:

Hey Fishie, what sort of things did you get asked?Just the usual, or anything hard or unusual? I've mine on Monday, really don't know what to expect! Did the examiner let you pick your own role play?

No, he chose it, but luckily for me he chose a relatively easy one! To save me tryping it out again, here's what I wrote in a different thread (ah, the wonders of copy and paste!):

I had my Spanish one this morning - I think it went ok. I got a nice roleplay - Oficina de Turismo (and I got suitably angry! Very dramatic!) - though the examiner started sniggering while I was speaking, I couldn't work out why until afterwards... In that roleplay one of the things I had to do complain about my hotel and give two reasons why, I said "I'm not happy with my hotel room - firstly, the shower doesn't work properly, and secondly, I couldn't sleep last night because the walls were really thin and the other guests were really noisy" - when I said that I was thinking of it in terms of other guests having a party or something, but I think he thought I meant they were having sex. Arrgh!!
The general conversation went pretty well I think. He asked about my school, my subjects, my interests, what I'm going to do this summer, what I want to do next year, what I did last weekend, about my area - they're all pretty basic topics, but I managed to expand them a bit and bring in more complicated stuff. I managed to get in the subjunctive and the conditional even though they weren't exactly necessary, and he didn't get a chance to ask me anything really complicated because I just kept talking and we ran completely over time. In fact, I had the longest oral of anyone so far, I hope that's a good thing... I was telling him about the last book that I read, Les Miserables, and I told him that I saw the musical last year... I was trying to explain that one of my friends was in it, playing Javert, but I couldn't think of what the word was for acting; I think I fell down a bit there! Also, I stumbled a bit trying to explain why I want to go and visit Pompeii - I was able to tell him that I've studied it in Classical Studies and that it seems really interesting and that I've heard that the buildings are very beautiful, and that there are people preserved in Plaster of Paris, but he asked me what happened in Pompeii (ie. He wanted me to tell him about the volcano erupting) but I had to say that I didn't have the necessary vocabulary for it. I really hope that I won't be marked down too much for that, since I did use all of my tenses correctly. I also confused him a bit when I said that I went to see the Spongebob Squarepants Movie - not actually true, but for some reason it was all I could think of! He'd obviously never heard of it... I told him it was about a sponge who lived under the sea in a pineapple, and his adventures with his friend who's a starfish - he looked incredibly confused until I told him it was a children's cartoon, I'd forgotten to mention it earlier!
I'm glad it's over though! I was so nervous coming up to it and I was afraid I'd lose all my Spanish once I went in - however, once I got in I was fine. The examiner was really nice and really put me at my ease, I didn't even notice the time going by and when he turned off the tape I was like 'Huh? Already?' I was really annoyed because I had so much more to say, and I'd prepared so much stuff, but I think it went reasonably well. I'm just so glad I never have to look at those stupid roleplays again!

lestats_bride

Fishie wrote:

I had my Spanish one this morning - I think it went ok. I got a nice roleplay - Oficina de Turismo (and I got suitably angry! Very dramatic!) - though the examiner started sniggering while I was speaking, I couldn't work out why until afterwards... In that roleplay one of the things I had to do complain about my hotel and give two reasons why, I said "I'm not happy with my hotel room - firstly, the shower doesn't work properly, and secondly, I couldn't sleep last night because the walls were really thin and the other guests were really noisy" - when I said that I was thinking of it in terms of other guests having a party or something, but I think he thought I meant they were having sex. Arrgh!!

haha!!!