How to Improve Your French Speaking (and Actually Ace Your Exam)
Updated: 5 minutes ago
If you're an Australian student who picked French in Year 11 or 12, chances are you'll have to sit a French speaking exam at some point. As a language assistant, a big part of my job is helping students prepare for exactly that — and I'm consistently surprised by how much time students spend perfecting their written scripts while leaving the main part of the exam, the speaking itself, until the last minute. In a speaking exam, clarity is greater than sophistication: you don't need to sound smart, you need to be understood. And speaking skills are completely different to writing skills, because speaking goes beyond just words.
In this article, I want to help you understand how much hides behind speaking and give you the practical advice you can start implementing now to prepare for your French speaking exams and (most importantly) ace them.
I once had a student who'd memorised beautifully written, genuinely impressive answers but her pronunciation made her so hard to follow that all that hard work almost didn't land. I've also seen the reverse: students whose French wasn't perfect, but whose pronunciation carried them. That's when it really clicked for me: pronunciation isn't a nice-to-have, it's what makes everything else actually count. Here are the tools I give my own students to improve their speaking skills (pick and choose which one(s) work best for you (number 4 & 11 are my personal favourites).
How to actually improve (tips for your speaking exam)
1. Shadowing. Ask a teacher, tutor or language assistant to record your script being read aloud. Listen to it, then repeat it back one sentence at a time: paying close attention to pronunciation, intonation and rhythm, not just the words themselves.
2. Mimic native speakers without worrying about the meaning. Pick a short clip of a native French speaker — a podcast snippet, a YouTube video, a scene from a show — and copy exactly what you hear, sound for sound, without trying to translate or understand it. Treat it almost like learning a song in a language you don't speak: focus purely on how it feels in your mouth, not on what it means. This trains your pronunciation and rhythm separately from the pressure of processing meaning at the same time, which is exactly the kind of multitasking you're eventually aiming for.
3. Record yourself and listen back (critically). Record yourself reading your script, or just talking about your day, then play it back a day later with fresh ears. It's uncomfortable, but it's the fastest way to catch the gap between what you think you sound like and what you actually sound like. Pick one or two specific things to fix, then record again.
4. Annotate your speaking exam scripts. Make the invisible visible. Ask your teacher what you personally need to work on pronunciation-wise, then mark it directly on your script — liaisons, silent letters, tricky words, whatever applies to you. If you keep repeating the same mistakes over and over, you're only reinforcing them. By annotating your script, you're helping your brain remember that there is something you need to look out for. Here's an example:
This script is purposefully simple and over-annotated. Your annotation should reflect your own challenges. This is just an example; use whatever's most relevant to you.
5. Practise tricky words in isolation. Every student has a handful of words that trip them up. Isolate them and exaggerate the correct pronunciation until it feels automatic. A few common culprits:
Éducation — the "-tion" ending sounds like "see-on", not the English "shun"
Une situation réelle — "ré-elle" is two syllables, not one
Mes parents — the final "s" and "t" are silent
6. Sing along to French songs. Find a few songs you genuinely like, pull up the lyrics, and sing along out loud. (I still do this with my favourite Spanish songs!) You'll quickly realise how much of a skill this is... Lyrics that look easy on the page can be surprisingly tiring to say out loud.
7. Listen more purposefully. You can't recreate a sound you haven't really heard. Next time you listen to a French podcast or watch a French video, consciously tune into the rhythm and flow of the speaker, not just the meaning of the words.
8. Talk out loud — to AI, to yourself, to anyone who'll listen. Narrate your day to yourself if that helps. I've also trialled a few speaking apps with my students — you'll find my [comparison of AI speaking apps] in the free resources.
9. Build a small bank of filler phrases for when you blank. Every French speaker, native or not, pauses to think mid-sentence. Prepare four or five go-to phrases you can reach for instead of freezing or slipping into English — alors..., comment dire..., en fait..., c'est une bonne question, laissez-moi réfléchir. They buy you a few seconds and keep the conversation sounding natural rather than stalled.
10. Warm up before the exam. This one I have mentioned in other blog posts (but I love it because I used it myself as a language student). Just like an athlete warms up their muscles before a competition, you need to warm up your mouth before speaking French. Before entering the exam room, speak French out loud. Practice with a friend or just re-read your paragraphs out loud. Your mouth (and brain!) will thank you for it. (This was the advice my English teacher gave me before my English-speaking exam. It was a great tip that I ended up using times and times again for all my language exams).
11. Simplify your scripts. Many students use Google Translate or AI to help write their exam responses, and that can genuinely help if used wisely. But I often see beautifully written scripts, full of long sentences and advanced grammatical structures, that fall flat the moment they're spoken aloud. When you're speaking, clarity beats sophistication. Aim for simple sentences, linked clearly with discourse markers.
Simplicity in action: "La Résistance"
Here's a paragraph on La Résistance that's grammatically correct but far too dense to work well in a spoken exam:
"La Résistance française, qui s'est développée principalement pendant la Seconde Guerre mondiale, constitue un mouvement historique particulièrement important qui regroupait un ensemble de groupes et d'individus, issus de différents milieux de la société française, qui, malgré les risques considérables auxquels ils étaient confrontés, se sont mobilisés afin de lutter contre l'occupation allemande et le régime de Vichy. Ceci notamment à travers diverses actions telles que la diffusion de journaux clandestins, le sabotage, la collecte d'informations et l'aide apportée aux personnes persécutées, jouant ainsi un rôle essentiel dans la lutte contre l'occupation et contribuant progressivement à la Libération de la France."
And here's how I'd simplify it for a spoken exam. Notice how discourse markers (in bold) do the work of linking ideas and how I purposefully prioritise simple terms and shorter sentences:
La Résistance française était un mouvement qui s'est développé pendant la Seconde Guerre mondiale.
Son objectif principal était de lutter contre l'occupation allemande et le régime de Vichy.
De plus, la Résistance regroupait des personnes très différentes, avec des rôles différents. Par exemple, certaines distribuaient des journaux clandestins, tandis que d'autres faisaient du sabotage ou transmettaient des informations aux Alliés.
En outre, ces personnes prenaient énormément de risques. En effet, si elles étaient arrêtées, elles pouvaient être emprisonnées ou même tuées.
À mon avis, la Résistance a donc joué un rôle très important pendant la guerre. Elle montre notamment que des citoyens ordinaires peuvent agir et faire une différence dans des situations extrêmement difficiles.
The bottom line
There's no point preparing a beautifully sophisticated script for your speaking exam if the examiner can't understand you. If that sounds like you, go back to simpler sentences but keep working on your pronunciation just as hard as you work on your content.
Going from good to great: what makes French sound like French
Want to understand why speaking is such a distinct skill and maybe pick up a classroom hook of your own along the way? Here's the linguistics behind it, including a video trend my own students love.
More than just words
Have you ever watched one of those "What your language sounds like to foreigners" videos on YouTube? If not, I'd really encourage you to. Here's the one I show my own students: How your language sounds to foreigners.
Beyond being genuinely entertaining, these videos point to exactly what I mean: a spoken language is more than just words strung together. A language is recognisable even when it's complete gibberish.
Sounds we instinctively recognise
Without even realising it, we can match certain sounds to a language, even when the words mean nothing at all. Try saying these made-up words out loud. None of them mean anything, but you'll instantly feel which language each set "belongs" to:
Vontrusille, Chalembrun, Pentignon
Blenforth, Rickmuthly, Grovensmith
Schlarmpfen, Wurmschlacht, Brendorff
Katsumoro, Nirashiba, Tomikawa
Four completely invented sets of words... can you guess which ones sound Japanese, English, German and French? Most probably, yes :)
French leans on sounds barely used in English: nasal vowels (as in on, un, an), the "r" made from the back of the throat, and glide sounds like the "ui" in bruit
English leans on sounds French doesn't really use: the "th" sound (as in think), vowel glides (the sound in "my" or "now"), and clusters of consonants piled up at the end of a word (like "-rth" or "-nth")
German stacks consonants together in a way French and English rarely do (think "schl-", "-pfen", "-cht")
Japanese is built almost entirely from simple, open syllables — a consonant followed by a vowel, over and over (ka, su, mo, ro) — which is part of why it sounds so smooth even to non-speakers
Worth trying with your class or on your own: invent a few nonsense words that "sound French," then a few that sound like another language you know. Which sounds did you instinctively reach for? Are any of the "French" sounds ones you personally still find hard to actually produce?
The "musicality" of a language
Every language has its own rhythm and "tune": the pattern of rises, falls, pauses and emphasis that makes it sound like music even before you understand a word of it. That's part of why French has such a recognisable melody.
Say "comfortable" out loud in English and notice how it practically collapses into "COMF-ta-ble," with some syllables almost disappearing. English tends to punch one or two words hard and rush through the rest.
French works differently, in two ways. First, French doesn't swallow syllables the way "comfortable" gets swallowed in English: nearly every syllable keeps roughly the same length and weight. Second, on top of that even rhythm, French adds its own melody. Take a simple sentence: "Je vais à la piscine tous les samedis matins." Say it out loud, giving each syllable close to equal weight. Your voice should also rise gently to a small peak around "piscine" — roughly the middle of the sentence — then glide back down through the rest, ending low on "matins." One smooth arc, up then down, laid over a string of evenly-weighted syllables... quite different from English, which stretches a few syllables out and rushes or drops the rest.
That's exactly why French speakers can come across as monotone, robotic, or even a bit bored when they speak English. Not because they feel that way, but because English relies on big, dramatic pitch swings to signal enthusiasm and emphasis, and a flatter, French-style delivery simply doesn't send that signal. (It cuts the other way too: French listeners often find English intonation theatrical, almost over-the-top, for what's actually being said.)
Why speaking feels so hard
If you've read this far, you'll already have a good sense of two of these layers: the sounds and sound combinations that don't exist in English, and the musicality that gives French its rhythm and melody.
There's one more piece to the puzzle: pronunciation rules — liaisons, silent letters, and the other patterns that quietly change how written French is actually said aloud. Together with sounds and musicality, that's three layers behind every word you speak — plus a fourth challenge on top: doing all of it spontaneously, in real time. That's exactly why the tips above work the way they do: they target sounds, pronunciation rules, and the pressure to perform on the spot, the very things that make spoken French hard in the first place.
P.S. If you find these tips useful, make sure to subscribe to my email list. That's where I share all my inside tips — the same advice I give my paying students.
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