Ninety Seconds to Plan, Two Minutes to Talk
Priya has two minutes to speak in German on the topic 'Ein Tag, der schiefgegangen ist'. She may prepare for 90 seconds and use one cue card carrying a maximum of five keywords - no full sentences. Her plan has four sections: (1) the plan for the day, (2) the missed bus, (3) the lost phone, (4) what she learned. She has rehearsed an opening and is confident about Perfekt forms, but she is slow at retrieving vocabulary. In the rehearsal she reached 1 minute 40 seconds having covered only (1) and (2), and she had not yet said what she learned. Her teacher's feedback: 'A finished, coherent talk with three developed points beats an unfinished one with five. Don't memorise sentences - you'll freeze when you forget one, and the examiner can hear it.' After the talk the examiner will ask a follow-up question in German, possibly 'Warum hast du das Handy nicht gleich gesucht?'
1. At 1:40 Priya has covered only points 1 and 2. What should she do with the remaining 20 seconds, and why?
Read the worked answer
Do: compress point 3 into one clause, then deliver point 4 as a conclusion.
Model ending: 'Das Handy war dann zum Glück in meiner Jacke - aber seitdem schaue ich immer zweimal, ob ich alles habe.'
Reasoning:
- Point 4 is not optional. 'What I learned' is the reflection the topic demands, and a talk that stops without one sounds unfinished. Markers reward structure and closure, so a conclusion buys more than a fourth incident.
- Point 3 is compressible because it is narrative detail, not the point of the story. One sentence carrying it is enough; the missing bus already carries the 'schiefgegangen' idea.
- Do not speed up. Rushing the last twenty seconds damages pronunciation and intelligibility, which are marked. A calm, slightly short talk scores better than a frantic, complete one.
Planning lesson: with four sections in 120 seconds the budget is roughly 30 seconds each, plus a few seconds' buffer. Priya spent too long on the setup. In future she should mark a time check on her cue card - at 60 seconds she should be starting point 3.
2. What five keywords should go on the cue card, and why does the examiner forbid full sentences?
Read the worked answer
Suggested card: 'Bus 7:20 - verpasst / zu Fuß / Handy weg - Jacke / gelernt: früher los'
Why keywords and not sentences:
- A written sentence invites reading. If the answer is on the card, the eyes go down and the delivery flattens - and reading aloud is not interaction or presentation, it is decoding.
- A memorised sentence is brittle. Forget one word and the whole sentence collapses into silence. A keyword ('verpasst') can be reached by several routes: 'Ich habe den Bus verpasst', 'Der Bus ist ohne mich gefahren', 'Ich war zu spät am Bus'. Flexibility is what the standard rewards.
- Keywords act as retrieval cues for structures, not content. 'gelernt: früher los' is a prompt for a 'seitdem' or 'daraus habe ich gelernt, dass' construction - the kind of complex sentence that lifts range.
Judgement: the five-keyword limit is a design feature, not a restriction to complain about. It forces the speaker to hold the language in their head, which is exactly the skill being assessed.
3. The examiner asks: 'Warum hast du das Handy nicht gleich gesucht?' Priya catches only 'Handy' and 'gesucht'. What should she do, and what does a good answer look like?
Read the worked answer
First, repair - once, in German: 'Entschuldigung, könnten Sie die Frage bitte wiederholen?' or 'Meinen Sie, warum ich nicht sofort nach dem Handy gesucht habe?'
Why this is the right move:
- Asking once is normal conversational behaviour and costs nothing. Guessing wildly, or answering a different question, does cost marks.
- Repeating the question back in her own words proves she has now understood it, which is itself evidence of listening.
- Asking twice or more starts to look like avoidance, so the repair must be followed by an answer.
Then answer the question that was asked. The structure is 'Warum ... nicht gleich ...' = why not straight away, so the answer needs a reason, not a narrative: 'Weil ich dachte, dass es noch im Bus liegt. Ich wollte erst die Lehrerin fragen, bevor ich etwas mache.'
Reasoning on the grammar: 'weil' sends the verb to the end ('dass es noch im Bus liegt'), which is a strong structure to show under question conditions. A one-clause answer is fine; the follow-up is testing comprehension and fluency, not length.
Transferable rule: listen for the question word first (warum, wann, wie lange), then the verb - 'hast ... gesucht' tells you it is about a past action, which narrows what the answer must contain before she has decoded every word.