Two weeks out from your French oral and that familiar mix of excitement and dread has just kicked in. Sound familiar? Good news — two weeks is actually plenty of time to go from shaky to confident, if you use the time well. Here are ten things Jen swears by to get you across the line.

1. Practice Out Loud — Every Single Day

This is the big one. Reading French in your head is completely different from actually speaking it. Your mouth needs to get used to the sounds, the rhythm, the flow. Even ten minutes of talking out loud — to yourself, your dog, your mirror — makes a massive difference by exam day. Set a timer and go.

2. Download the 50 Free Questions MP3

Jen's free MP3 of the 50 most common oral questions is a game-changer. Listen on the bus, on a walk, at the gym. The more you hear the questions, the more natural your brain's processing becomes. You stop panicking when you hear a question in French and start actually answering it.

3. Nail Your Favourite Topics First

You don't have to be equally brilliant at everything. Pick three or four topics you genuinely enjoy — your family, sport, travel, your future plans — and get really fluent on those. In the oral, you can often steer the conversation toward areas you're comfortable with. Play to your strengths.

4. Prepare Your Document Early On

The document trips a lot of students up only because they haven't thought about it in advance. Spend time preparing your document topic ahead of time, anticipate any possible questions. Practice describing what you see, what the topic is, and then giving your opinion on it. Aim to speak for a full minute without stopping.

5. Get Your Current Affairs Ready

Current affairs come up more often than people expect. Two topics that have appeared often in the past are l'environnement and les problemes sociaux. Have five or six sentences ready on each — your opinion, a fact or statistic, what people should do about it. You don't need a full essay, just enough to sound informed and keep the conversation going.

6. Brush Up on Your Tenses

One of the clearest ways to show the examiner you're a strong student is to use a range of tenses correctly. Make sure you're comfortable with the present, past (passé composé and imparfait), and future tenses. Even dropping in a conditional — j'aimerais or je voudrais — earns extra marks. Spend twenty minutes a day drilling one tense at a time.

7. Record Yourself and Listen Back

It feels cringey — we know — but recording yourself on your phone and listening back is one of the fastest ways to improve. You'll immediately hear where you're hesitating too long, mispronouncing something, or falling back on English filler words. Fix those habits now, not in the exam room.

8. Do at Least Two Full Mock Orals

Ask a classmate, a parent, or your French teacher to sit across from you and fire questions at you for twelve minutes straight. The first mock will feel awkward. The second one will feel much more manageable. Simulate the pressure before the real thing — it takes a huge amount of the fear away.

9. Build a Personal Phrase Bank

Collect ten to fifteen phrases that sound impressively fluent and that you can drop into almost any topic. Things like À mon avis (in my opinion), Il faut admettre que (you have to admit that), or D'un côté… d'un autre côté (on one hand… on the other hand). Weaving these in naturally shows real competence.

10. Stay Calm on the Day

Easier said than done, right? But here's the thing — the examiner is not trying to catch you out. They want you to do well. If you don't understand a question, it's completely fine to say Pouvez-vous répéter, s'il vous plaît? If you make a mistake, keep going. Fluency and confidence matter more than perfection. Take a slow breath before you go in, remind yourself how much work you've put in, and trust yourself.

The students who do best in the oral aren't necessarily the ones with the most knowledge — they're the ones who've practised speaking so much that they just feel comfortable in the room.

— Jen

Two weeks is a solid runway. Use these ten steps consistently and you'll walk into that oral feeling genuinely prepared — not just hoping for the best. You've got this.