The whole test lasts approximately 10 minutes and speaking is worth 25% of the qualification, marked out of 40. Cambridge IGCSE is untiered: every candidate sits the same test, and grades run from A* to G across the qualification as a whole. Two things surprise students who have looked at UK GCSE material first. There is no photo card and no reading-aloud task — 0520 does not use them. And you may not write anything down during preparation: the syllabus is explicit that candidates study the role play card under supervision and are not allowed to make notes. Dictionaries are not allowed in the examination.

Speaking tests take place before the main examination series, and your school sets the date within Cambridge's window. The test is recorded, so when you practise, practise speaking clearly enough for a recording rather than for the person in the room.

You are given one candidate card at the start of your 10 minutes of preparation, immediately before your test. It tells you the role play situation — who you are, who you are talking to, and what you need to do — and nothing about the two topic conversations, which your teacher/examiner must not share with you before or during the preparation.

Because notes are not permitted, advice written for AQA or Edexcel GCSE ("plan your answers, jot down key phrases") does not apply here. What you can do is read the scenario carefully, work out what each of the five tasks is likely to ask, and rehearse the shapes in your head: how you ask for something, how you say when, how you give a reason. The students who do best in the role play are not the ones with the most vocabulary; they are the ones who walk in already knowing what kind of sentence each task needs.

Your teacher/examiner sets the scene by reading the scenario exactly as printed, then asks you five questions in French, one for each task, and you respond in French. The situations are transactional and everyday: accomplishing a task or obtaining goods or services — in a shop, at a station, arranging something with a family you are staying with. Each task is marked out of 2: full marks when the information is communicated in language that is appropriate to the situation and accurate (minor slips in adjective endings or prepositions are allowed), 1 when the information is only partly communicated or the meaning is ambiguous, 0 for no creditable response.

Two rules worth knowing. Your examiner may repeat a role play question if you did not hear or understand it, but may not rephrase it — so if you need it again, ask in French (Pouvez-vous répéter, s'il vous plaît ?) rather than guessing. And if you still cannot answer after the repeat, the examiner moves on to the next task; a task missed is only 2 marks, so do not let it unsettle the other four. The classic mistake is over-answering: a role play task wants the information, communicated, in the right register. One clear sentence that does the job scores the 2.

After the role play come two conversations of four minutes each, on two different sub-topics: the first from Topic Area A (everyday activities) or B (personal and social life), the second from Topic Area C (the world around us), D (the world of work) or E (the international world). You are not told the sub-topics in advance. That is by design: the conversations test whether you can hold an unprepared discussion in French — sharing views, opinions and experiences — not whether you memorised one.

Your examiner asks the printed questions and, if the conversation is running short, may ask extension questions and up to two further questions on the same topic so that it lasts the full four minutes. In other words, short answers do not shorten the test; they just hand the marks back. The habit that pays most here is not vocabulary, it is length with structure: answer the question, give a reason, add an example or a comparison with the past or the future. J'aime… parce que… par exemple, l'année dernière… is worth more than a longer list of nouns.

The role play is 10 marks, two per task, as above. The two topic conversations are marked together, once, when both are complete: a mark out of 15 for Communication and a mark out of 15 for Quality of Language, each judged on your performance across both conversations. So a nervous first conversation can genuinely be rescued by a strong second one. At the top of the Communication scale, Cambridge's descriptors reward a candidate who responds confidently to questions, communicates information that is consistently relevant, and frequently develops ideas and opinions. At the top of the Quality of Language scale, they reward accurate use of a wide range of the structures and vocabulary listed in the syllabus, with occasional errors in more complex language, and very good pronunciation, fluency, intonation and expression.

Your own teacher/examiner conducts the test, records it, and marks it during the test against Cambridge's criteria; Cambridge International then externally moderates the marking. Nobody expects native-speaker French. The standard is a candidate who can keep an everyday conversation going, with opinions and reasons, in mostly accurate language.

Speaking is the one paper you can't revise from a book — you have to actually speak, ideally to something that responds and asks the next question. Options: practise with a classmate, taking turns as the examiner with the printed-style questions; record yourself for four minutes on one sub-topic and listen back (painful, effective); or use an AI examiner. Whatever you use, practise the 0520 shape specifically: a two-minute transactional role play from a card you have only just read, then two four-minute conversations on sub-topics you did not choose.

Our app, Tête-à-Tête AI, runs the full Cambridge IGCSE French speaking test — the 10-minute preparation phase, a short unassessed warm-up, the role play and two topic conversations, timed — and gives you six examiner-style scores plus an indicative grade at the end. The role play scenarios are written in-house to the board's published format and drawn from the five syllabus topic areas, and the conversations are pitched at IGCSE level. The first 7 practice sessions every 30 days are free, no card required.