IOP Preparing for Spanish Orals

[elmar]

I have my first Spanish oral in two weeks, which my teacher says is amble time to prepare. We have our topics (food of Latin America) and we each get to present for 4 minutes. What is the best way to be able to know the information without memorizing it in Spanish? I cannot think of any other way that feels comfortable enough other than memorization and strict memorization will result in automatic failure.

Edit: Sorry, confused topics.

[Emmi]

Wing it.

In all seriousness though, when I have to learn something for Spanish class I learn it in English first. I make sure I can completely talk about it in English for the prescribed amount of time (3 minutes, 4 minutes, whatever). Then I translate what I learned into Spanish. Sometimes I'll use note cards for this because when I write something down, I remember it better. Before I present, I'll practice in front of a mirror or a family member just to get the first time nervousness out, timing myself to see if I'm speaking too fast/too slow. Then when I go to present it, I already know what I'm going to say and it's not the first time that I said what I'm going to say.

[paige011]

Haha, I just wanna say that we are taking the SAME classes, except my biology is an SL And yeah, just rehearse it well. Even if you memorize SOME things, if you practice it enough, it will sound natural, because then you really do know it.

[TTHKM77]

I have my first Spanish oral in two weeks, which my teacher says is amble time to prepare. We have our topics (food of Latin America) and we each get to present for 4 minutes. What is the best way to be able to know the information without memorizing it in Spanish? I cannot think of any other way that feels comfortable enough other than memorization and strict memorization will result in automatic failure.

Edit: Sorry, confused topics.

umm 4 minutes only i thought it was 10 minutes minimum. Plz reply im confused

[ShineeLikeMe]

It's actually a minimum of 9 and a max of 12 in order to get full points in that aspect. I think this is just a class oral though correct me if im wrong.

The more you yourself talk the more points you receive.

The point of the oral is to test your abilities to hold a conversation in a foreign language so just treat it as such.

If you feel like you need to ask the teacher to repea the question or give you another question or rephrase the question, do so in that language.

Also the graders do know when an oral is memorized, they can hear it even if you think it sounds natural. Try to create vague bullet points that you build your oral around. Specific bullet points will just make you nervous if you miss one and can't go back. Also get familiar with the vocab of your oral. Sometimes the teacher will throw something out that will contain some of these obscure vocab, and you'll want the know it in order to naswer the quetsion.

That's all, good luck!