DELF speaking test: what changes at B2, and what practising alone cannot fix

The current text is the annexe to the decree of 29 September 2020 on the DELF and the DALF. For oral production it gives, for each level, a duration and a preparation time.

A1: five to seven minutes, preparation ten minutes. A2: six to eight minutes, preparation ten minutes. B1: fifteen minutes maximum, preparation ten minutes — with a parenthesis that matters, because it says the preparation concerns only the third part of the test. B2: twenty minutes maximum, preparation thirty minutes. At DALF level the ratio widens again: C1 and C2 both give thirty minutes of speaking against a full hour of preparation.

Line these up and one level stands out. B1 is the only one where you are given less preparation than speaking time, and the preparation you are given covers a single section of three. Everywhere else the preparation is equal to the oral or longer than it.

The earlier regulation, published as an annexe in the Bulletin officiel in 2005, named the parts: at A1 an entretien dirigé, an exchange of information and a simulated dialogue; at A2 an entretien dirigé, a monologue suivi and an interaction exercise; at B1 an entretien dirigé, an interaction exercise and the expression of a point of view from a trigger document. At B2 it named one task and no more: presentation and defence of a point of view from a short trigger document. The current annexe no longer lists the parts by name, but it still refers at B1 to the third part of the test — so the three-part shape is still there in the text in force.

Up to B1, most of the oral is unprepared by design. Two of the three parts at B1 come with no preparation at all: you sit down and answer, then you handle a situation with the examiner. The ten minutes are for the third part only, the one built on a document.

At B2 the whole thing inverts. There is one task, you get thirty minutes with the trigger document, and you speak for up to twenty. The test stops rewarding the ability to keep a conversation moving and starts rewarding the ability to build a position and hold it while someone pushes back.

That is the single most useful thing to know before choosing a level. Candidates who are comfortable talking often assume B2 is simply more of what they already do well. It is not more of it; it is a different exercise, and the regulation says so in the shape of its own table.

It also explains a common and expensive misreading in the other direction. A candidate who prepares B1 by rehearsing a presentation is preparing the part that carries preparation, and leaving unrehearsed the two parts that do not.

The detailed marking grids for oral production are published by France Éducation international, the body that runs the diplomas. On 9 September 2026 that site refused automated access, returning a bot-blocking error rather than a page.

So this guide makes no claim about how many marks go to interaction, to lexical range, to phonology, or to any other criterion. Anyone who publishes a breakdown of the oral grid should be able to say where they read it and when; several sites that circulate one cannot.

What is published in the regulation itself, and can be repeated safely: oral production is marked out of 25 at every DELF level, the pass mark for the diploma is 50 out of 100, and no test may score below 5 out of 25 or the diploma is not awarded. That last rule is the one that matters most to a candidate who is strong on paper and avoids speaking. A very good written performance cannot rescue an oral below 5.

Ask what can be practised alone and the honest answer is: a great deal. Fluency of delivery, a stock of ready phrases, the pronunciation of a passage you have prepared, the discipline of speaking for a fixed number of minutes without stopping. All of that improves with a timer and a voice recorder, and none of it requires another person.

What does not is repair — what you do when you have not understood, or when you have been understood to mean something you did not mean. Asking for a repeat without losing the thread, rephrasing when the first attempt lands badly, conceding a point and keeping the argument. At B2 those are not incidental to the exam. The task is a defence, which means somebody is going to push, and the pushing is not scripted.

This is also why the branch of the search that asks for a script is a contradiction in terms. A dialogue written in advance is a reading, not a conversation. It is useful — reading aloud is real work on delivery — but it tests nothing about what happens when the other person departs from the page.

The same reservation applies to artificial conversation partners, and it is worth stating without hostility. Their real advantages are that they are available at any hour and that they do not judge, and for a candidate who freezes in front of people that is not a small thing. Their limit is structural: they adapt to you. An examiner does not, and a colleague does not either.

The Alliance Française de Singapour is the exam centre. Its published 2026 calendar has three sessions: Tout Public 16 to 20 March, 18 to 22 May, and 23 to 27 November, with Junior and Prim sessions on adjacent dates.

The relevant window as this is published is the third one. Registration for the November session opened on 31 August 2026 and closes on 18 October 2026 for Tout Public and Prim, and on 11 October for Junior. That is the last sitting of the year, and results take time to arrive — the fee schedule and the level-by-level cost are set out in our guide to the DELF in Singapore rather than repeated here.

One scheduling detail is worth planning around wherever you sit the exam: the oral is not always on the same day as the written papers. Centres publish a written date and then convoke candidates individually for the speaking test, sometimes on the day before or after. Do not book travel around the written date alone.

Our teachers are based in France and work one to one by video call. Exam preparation is €50/h, billed in euros with no platform commission, and hours that are not taken are refunded in money rather than credit. The time difference is in a Singapore candidate's favour: a late afternoon here is an early morning in France, and those slots are not contested.

What we are useful for in this particular case is the half of the oral that cannot be rehearsed: someone who asks the question you did not prepare, pushes on the weak part of your position, and tells you afterwards where the argument stopped being clear rather than where the accent was wrong.

The free exercise bank on this site is for the other half, and we would rather say what it is not. It is 149 questions and six written tasks across A1 to C2, built on the Common European Framework scale, with correction shown only once a session is finished. It is written practice. It will not test an oral, and no set of questions with an answer key ever will.

The first twenty minutes are free and happen by video call. For this subject the most useful thing to bring is the level you intend to sit and a date; the rest of the plan follows from those two.