The whole test runs 7–9 minutes at Foundation tier and 10–12 minutes at Higher, and speaking is worth 25% of the GCSE. You'll have 15 minutes of supervised preparation (with the role-play card, the reading text and the photo card in front of you) before the exam begins — use it to plan, not to script word-for-word answers. You can make notes on the answer sheet and keep them with you, but you can't use a dictionary, and you're not allowed to rehearse the reading-aloud text out loud. The parts come in a fixed order: role-play first, then reading aloud, then the photo card.

You get a card with a scenario and five tasks to complete, with clear instructions in English about what to say. Every AQA role-play is a conversation with a Spanish-speaking friend — there are no shop or hotel transactions in this specification — so the informal tú form is the natural register, and AQA gives equal credit whether you use tú or usted. One task always requires you to ask a question in Spanish, so practise your question words (¿Qué…? ¿Dónde…? ¿Por qué…?) until they're automatic. Each task is marked 0, 1 or 2 for how clearly the message gets across — communication, not perfection. Complete every task, even with simple language, and you're scoring. The classic mistake is freezing on a task instead of saying something — a simple, relevant sentence beats an elaborate silence every time. All five tasks are on your card, so nothing in this part is a surprise.

New to the 2026-onwards specification, and the part students know least. You read a short Spanish text aloud (at least 35 words at Foundation, 50 at Higher), then answer four set questions on the text's topic in Spanish. Here's the part most students miss: the reading itself is the warm-up — the four questions after it carry 10 of the 15 marks. So practise talking about everyday topics, not just reading beautifully. The pronunciation still counts, and Spanish is kind to readers: it's written the way it sounds, so the marks are mostly about the handful of sound–spelling links that trip English speakers up — j and the soft g, ll and ñ, the rolled rr, a v that sounds like b, and vowels that stay short and pure. Reading Spanish aloud for five minutes a day genuinely helps — but don't stop there, because the questions are asked word for word and can't be rephrased, so listen for the question word.

The longest and highest-mark part. Your card has two photos from one theme. The teacher says Háblame de las fotos and you describe both — mention both, because leaving one out costs a mark — and then the conversation widens into the photos' theme: school life, festivals, the environment. Description is the warm-up (5 marks); the unprepared conversation that follows is where the marks live (20). Your teacher has no script here and may rephrase, so it really is a conversation. Examiners want opinions with reasons (me encanta… porque…), references to past and future (ayer…, el año que viene…), and answers that go beyond one sentence. If you can reliably produce an opinion + reason + example on any topic, you're operating at the top bands.

This is the one place the Spanish exam genuinely diverges from the French one. The AQA specification lists more tenses for Spanish at both tiers. At Foundation, alongside the present, the perfect and the preterite, you're expected to know the singular forms of the inflectional future (iré, comerás, será) and the conditional (me gustaría) with a handful of irregular verbs, plus the present continuous (estoy hablando) — none of which are asked of French Foundation students. At Higher, those expand to all persons, and the present subjunctive appears for the first time, in the singular, with five high-frequency verbs: hacer, ser, ir, venir and tener. You meet it after cuando for the future (cuando vengas a mi casa), after wishes and requests (quiere que seas responsable), and after para que (te ayudo para que tengas tiempo). You don't need to use it in every answer; one or two well-placed examples in the photo card conversation show the examiner the range they're listening for. Attempting a complex tense with a small error is treated better than avoiding it altogether.

Your teacher conducts and records the exam, and the recording is marked by an AQA examiner against AQA's criteria: 25 marks for communication, 15 for getting the message across, and 10 for accuracy of language and pronunciation. Roughly: can you complete tasks and convey information? Do you use varied vocabulary and structures (including different tenses at Higher)? Are you understandable? A "major" error is one that gets in the way of the meaning; a "minor" one doesn't, and the top band still allows for frequent minor errors. Nobody expects native-speaker Spanish — the standard is what a well-prepared 16-year-old can do.

Speaking is the one paper you can't revise from a book — you have to actually speak, ideally to something that responds. Options: practise with a classmate using past-style scenarios; record yourself and listen back (painful, effective); or use an AI examiner.

Our app, Tête-à-Tête AI, runs the full AQA Spanish speaking exam — role-play, reading aloud and photo card, timed, with preparation time — and gives you six examiner-style scores plus an indicative grade at the end. The practice scenarios are written in-house to AQA's published format and cover the specification themes, and they're pitched at GCSE level using the informal tú register, like the real exam. The first 7 practice sessions every 30 days are free, no card required.