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Preparing for the Individual Oral (IO) - IB Japanese (Part 2+3)
✏ Jyothika Cheerath 📅 3/11/2025 🕓 5 min read
This is one of 3 blog posts in our Japanese IO survival series. Feel free to explore and grab what you need!

Intro to IB Japanese IO - Strats and Goal
Part 1 of the Individual Oral (IO) - IB Japanese
Part 2 and Part 3 of the Individual Oral (IO) - IB Japanese (current page)

In this section we go through What is part 2 and 3, Conversational Fluency, The Three Sentence Rule, Understanding the requirements of questions, and the difference between Themes, Sub-topics and Real-world examples.

What is part 2 and 3?

Part 2 and 3 primarily focus on assessing your communication skills.

In particular, part 2 assesses your ability to think independently of your presentation (in part 1). Part 3 facilitates discussion of real-world examples you may have found through your own research.

Part 2

In part 1, you focused on a particular element of your picture or a specific real-world example or sub-topic. In part 2, your teacher will direct your attention to areas of the image you haven’t spoken about. This may include simple questions like ‘Can you tell me what this is?’ or ‘How do you think the subject is feeling in this shot?’.

Alternatively, they may ask you to elaborate on initial ideas you briefly mentioned earlier in part 1. Either way, you can think of part 2 as your teacher guiding you to expand on new areas, still solely focusing on the image.

Part 3

In part 3, the image is thrown out the window. Consequently, many students may find part 3 more difficult, as is just a ‘general’ conversation.  

However, do not be fooled by this description. Part 3 requires students to respond to questions regarding an additional theme. Importantly, you still need real-world examples in order to speak in-depth.

In part 3, teachers may provide less-support, and you are expected to speak at length, expanding and giving examples, to show your conversational fluency and knowledge of the target culture(s).

Don’t know how to do that? Keep reading!

 

Conversational Fluency

What is conversational fluency?

In your head, you’re probably thinking, ‘the ability to speak fluently’.

That is partly correct. In your native language, having ‘conversational fluency’ might mean being able to hold a conversation with someone and expressing yourself without reserve.

For the most-part, this means being able to say everything you want to say and not drifting off into a mumble-jumble of non-sense. So, how do you do this?

The Three Sentence Rule

It's simple:

  1. Acknowledge and/or introduce
  2. Example
  3. Expand and answer

For e.g.,

How do you attain conversational fluency?

As unfortunate as it seems, without actually conversing it is very difficult to attain conversational fluency :(( Let’s create a table.

Ways to attain conversational fluency (on a scale of fun-ness)

Fun-ness

Method

Effectiveness

Talk to a wall

  • Boosts confidence ✅
  • No idea if what you’re saying is correct ❌
  • Very echo-chamber-y (no new ideas) ❌

Talk to a peer
  • A bit scary, but builds your tolerance ✅
  • Can learn new ideas and real-world examples ✅
  • No idea if what both of you are saying is correct ❌

Join your school Japanese Club
  • Not very scary ✅
  • Can share ideas and get feedback ✅
  • Not-targeted support. Might have to talk with different year-levels ❌

Join Convo Club

  • Very fun and engaging ✅
  • Can share ideas and get feedback ✅
  • Targeted support and matched with students of a similar-level of proficiency ✅

Understanding the requirements of questions

If there is just one thing you memorise for part 3 of the IO, it’s these set expressions to get you out of trouble. If you don’t know something or feel uncomfortable answering a question, the best thing to do is SKIP. There is absolutely no merit in wasting time.

Remember your teacher’s want to assess your communication skills (in the target language), not necessarily how knowledgeable you are about the world (in your native language).  

To skip in style, try using the expressions below!

So, the teacher asks you a question… and it flies RIGHT past you. What should you do?

What if you don’t know anything about the topic or don’t have real-world examples (including personal experiences). SKIP!!

Themes, sub-topics, and real-world examples. 何？？

Put simply:

Themes: A broad idea which encompasses many perspectives, interpretations and real-world applications.
Sub-topics: Specific areas which can more readily applied to real-world examples (e.g. Health, Environment, Politics, etc).
Real-world examples: An occurrence in your capture or the target culture which can be linked to a sub-topic and/or theme. It can be “real” or “realistic” (i.e. made-up).

Themes help provide structure to lessons and serve as a lens through which to focus language-learning.

Subtopics facilitate acquisition of context-specific vocabulary and discussion around relevant real-world events.

Real-world examples make language acquisition relevant. They promote debate around actual events and actions, discussion of different perspectives and the impacts on affected stakeholders.

Knowing topics, subtopics and real-world examples not only help facilitate your language-learning beyond ‘learning the language’ but also enables your discussion in your oral (parts 1, 2 AND 3) to be more cohesive and in-depth.

For more help, check out: Blogs | Convo Club | Tutoring

All the best!

IO頑張ってください～！