Ab Initio French Oral

[tobyxddd]

Hello, this is my first post on IB Survival. My IB French AB Oral is coming up, but I am not really sure how it goes. Is it 10 minutes of talking? 5 minutes of talking? Is it 5 minutes of me talking and 5 minutes of conversation with my teacher?

Also, are there any past IB French AB exams from previous years? Anywhere to find them?

Thanks!

[Summer Glau]

First off, there's no such thing as language AB. There is language A1 for native speakers, A2 for near-native speakers, ab initio for beginners and B for those between being beginners and near-native speakers. I'm going to assume your oral is a B language oral since it's 10 minutes long..

If it's a B language oral, I believe it's 10 minutes long and you talk for some time, then the teacher asks you questions about your subject and you are supposed to answer them and basically carry a conversation.

About past papers, you can search for them on Google or ask your teacher but I'm sorry to say that we don't have any on IBS.

[larry]

Yep, no idea what an AB oral is, but for the French B oral we got told 4 min presentation of a topic, 4 min general conversation and 4 min personal discussion of your topic.

Regarding the presentation, we were also told to outline the topic first and present some fairly balanced discussion of it (which can include some of your own opinion); and then in the personal discussion of the topic, obviously you can just say what you think. So the presentation isn't just immediately launching into your personal opinion, but it's more than just be a simple statement of facts: ideally, your topic will have some controversy related to it, so you should present a couple of different views (i.e. of experts) on the topic. After all, the French do love their "thèse, antithèse, synthesèse". For example, I did Simone de Beauvoir, in particular "est-ce qu'il existe un décalage entre sa vie privée et ses idées de philosophe féministe?" So I gave both sides of the argument (one of them being the one I agreed with), and finished with my personal conclusion. Then in the personal discussion I went into more explanation of my personal p.o.v. (i.e. why one side was wrong, why actually the relationship was like this... (and yes, I know, that's not exactly "synthesèse" but whatever))

[Expired Manwich of Doom]

Hello, this is my first post on IB Survival. My IB French AB Oral is coming up, but I am not really sure how it goes. Is it 10 minutes of talking? 5 minutes of talking? Is it 5 minutes of me talking and 5 minutes of conversation with my teacher?

Also, are there any past IB French AB exams from previous years? Anywhere to find them?

Thanks!

I think he may be referring to ab initio.

[dessskris]

Yes, true. I think so. It's closest to Ab initio. I always wanted to reply but forgot

Oral Component for Language Ab Initio

Individual Oral

Approximately 10 min (plus 10 min preparation)

Part 1: (approx. 5 min) Candidate's presentation

Part 2: (approx. 5 min) Conversation between teacher and the candidate

Interactive Oral Activities

The time duration is not limited by the IBO

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IBS is against the free distribution of past IB papers. So if you need some, ask your teacher or google it.

[slizzie]

french ab is the short hand for french ab initio on all IB papers, so he definitely means ab initio. As for the oral: you have to talk about a picture your teacher picks out for 4 minutes, say what its about, attention to detail and then what could happen in the picture. You'll have three pictures to choose from, so choose the one in which you feel most comfortable talking about. For the next four minutes, your teacher will ask you questions referring to the image, probing any information out of you she feels you were weak on. (For instance, my teacher said if I don't mention clothes in the first four minutes she will ask a question about what they are wearing). For the last four minutes you are asked questions on any topics (do you have a list of topics?) This can be anything from if you could go anywhere where would you go, to describe yourself and your family.

As for preparation, remember beginnings of sentences or words you can use to describe, for instance dan's l'image de milieu.. ( in the middle of the image..) a cote de (next to), en face de (in front of). Make sure you know your tenses and general vocab for each topic.

Good luck!! Mine's tomorrow