When Mr Chan interviewed me as a language coach, I immediately saw the classic problem of the diligent student who had never really learned how to speak. After a year of studying French full-time, he knew all the grammar and vocabulary he needed to know but still couldn’t speak properly.

Coaching for a French speaking test: what is the problem?

The problem was something that I have covered extensively in this blog: fluency and accuracy of unscripted spoken French. When asked a simple technical question, Mr Chan would hesitate, and I could see him doing all these calculations in his head as he tried to figure out the grammar of what to say. He would then speak in a burst of more or less correct words and then start to think about what to say next again. This was a clear case of too much thinking and not enough speaking.

My strategy

We decided to meet twice a week for an hour and a half each time and then four days in a row just before the exam, for a total of about 22 hours. Three quarters of this time was spent on preparing for the speaking test and the rest on the writing test.

We used my language wall chart calendar to review some key points of grammar and I provided recordings with transcriptions and technical articles.

Step 1: How to understand the question

Here is a typical question that actually showed up in the final test:

Que peut-on faire pour diminuer les risques de maladies cardiovasculaires ? (What can be done to reduce the risks of cardiovascular diseases?)

One of the first things we did during the whole process was to look at different ways of asking the same question in French. I don’t have the space to go into examples here, but what I did is reformulate this question in four or five different ways and highlight the key question triggers.

Step 2 : Understand what the examiner is looking for

After hesitating for what seemed like a very long time, Mr Chan would then jump right into a list of things like: faire de l’exercice, manger mieux, cesser de fumer et éviter le stress. (exercise, eat better, stop smoking and avoid stress). He would quickly run out of things to say. Not a good way to impress the examiner.

I explained to Mr Chan that the examiner is looking for two things. He or she wants to hear intelligible content. The answer has to make sense and be comprehensible with relatively decent pronunciation. But the examiner is not really interested in all the technical details of the prevention of cardiovascular disease. What they are interested in is the how the language is used.

The goal here is to demonstrate that as a speaker he can speak adequately with the fewest mistakes. I emphasized that it’s much better to use a simple language that one masters well than venture into some shaky constructions that will lead to mistakes that will only confuse and irritate the examiner. In other words, go for fluency and accuracy with simplicity.

Step 3: Techniques for answering the question

Getting back to our question, here are some specific techniques that I used with Mr Chan. By the way, everything here is based on observations that I have made here in the series of posts on real-life examples:

Technique # 1: Repeat the question

Rather than stare at the ceiling or scratch your head as you think about the right answer, gain some time by repeating the question in whole or part. Native speakers do this all the time. Here are two examples:

Ah oui, comment diminuer les risques de maladies cardiovasculaires ?

Diminuer les risques de maladies cardiovasculaires.

This technique does three things. There is no dead time; you start answering immediately while you take some moments to prepare your answer. You also get a chance to imitate the pronunciation of the examiner. Finally, it sort of shows that you understood the question.

Technique # 2: Use conversation markers

Readers who have looked at the various real-life examples know that I have emphasized the importance of all these little words or expressions that users put at the beginning of phrases to “set-up” or start off what is to come. Typical starts would be: “Bien”, “Eh bien”, “Écouter”, “Alors” and “Effectivement.”

These little words have a great effect. They show that you know how to answer a question. After all, this is exactly what native speakers do all the time.

Technique # 3: Set up the answer

I showed Mr Chan how to announce the answer with some general statements. Here are four:

Effectivement, il existe plusieurs choses ou mesures qu’on peut adopter pour diminuer les risques de maladies cardiovaxcualires.

Il y a en effet un ensemble de mesures ou gestes qu’on peut faire si on veut diminuer les risques de maladies cardiovasculaires.

Diminuer les risques de maladies cardiovasculaires, c’est tout à fait possible.

Il y a plusieurs facteurs de risques dans les maladies cardiovasculaires.

Technique # 4: Smooth out the answer with connecting words that demonstrate fluency

If you’re going to explain a list of things. you could use constructions like:

Voici quelques mesures
Par exemple’
Par conséquent
Il est important
Premièrement… Deuxièmement.. Troisièmement, etc.
…vous savez…
…disons…
…c’est-à-dire…

Add some expressions that indicate that you are ending: Here are some:

En terminant,,,
Enfin
En conclusion
Et finalement
Voilà…

Step four: Putting it all together

What would a complete answer look like? Here is the beginning of such an answer:

“Comment diminuer les risques de maladies cardiovasculaire ? C’est une bonne question. Eh bien, il y a plusieurs choses ou mesures qu’on peut faire ou adopter pour réduire ces risques. Commençons par exemple par l’alimentation. Bien se nourrir, c’est important. Il existe, vous savez, beaucoup de guides et livres pour des gens qui veulent manger sainement. On les trouve dans dans les bibliothèques et les librairies.

Voici quelques idées. Premièrement, il faut diminuer le sel. En général, on mange trop de sel…”

As you can see, it is relatively easy to add various elements that allow you to take a simple idea, “manger sainement”. and add all these elements that clearly demonstrate that you can put the whole thing together fluently.

When the examiner hears something like this, she is immediately impressed because everything flows well. There are no complicated tenses, no fancy words, nothing to really trip over and lose points. And above all, no awkward pauses or stuttering.

What usually happens now? The examiner will often cut the test short because there is no point in continuing; the candidate knows his stuff. This is exactly what happened to Mr Chan.

Going higher with a language coach

This particular example illustrated the value of using a coach for test preparation. Not everybody obviously is studying with a test in mind. Many simply want to improve their speaking skills for professional purposes.

I love to work with intermediate or advanced users where we can focus on developing sophisticated speaking styles. Using authentic materials, we work on little details of usage of the subjunctive mood, impersonal verbs, pronominal verbs, word creation, literary references and, above all, the use of idiomatic expressions and metaphors.

I put special emphasis on idioms because it is the one thing that really separates the speaker of “un français impeccable” from the speaker of “un bon français.” But that will be the subject a future post.

I also enjoy preparing people for speeches, presentations and interviews.

At this level, a good language coach makes all the difference in the world. It’s impossible to do this by yourself.