Preparing for the Individual Oral (IO) – IB Japanese (Intro)

✏ Jyothika Cheerath 📅 3/11/2025 🕓 4 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 (current page)
Part 1 of the Individual Oral (IO) – IB Japanese
Part 2 and Part 3 of the Individual Oral (IO) – IB Japanese

There is something different about oral exams… no matter how well you can read, write or hear information, something tends to get mumble-jumbled between the thoughts in your head and the movement of your tongue…

But!

Fear no more, as we break down everything you need to know to score highly in the IB individual orals. This is what we will cover:

Purpose and criteria of the IO
Broad 'structure' of the IO
Timings to the IO

This blog will outline everything you need to know to score the best you can for the Ab initio or Language B SL oral examinations (the Higher Level IO is completely different and will be covered in another post!)

Purpose and criteria of IO

Like any standardised testing, it may be interesting to consider that the people who made the exams actually had somewhat pure intentions when they did so. No, the IO (or any other exam) is not designed to simply cause pain and suffering.

You can think of the two main purposes of the IO as the following:

To test whether you can speak the language
To test whether you can be globally minded and think critically

We see this notion in the assessment criteria provided directly from the IB too.

Criterion A: Language	Criterion B1: Message—visual stimulus	Criterion B2: Message—conversation	Criterion C: Interactive skills—communication
How successfully does the candidate command spoken language	How relevant are the ideas to the selected stimulus	How relevant are the ideas in the conversation	To what extent does the candidate understand and interact
To what extent is the vocabulary appropriate and varied	How well does the candidate engage with the stimulus in the presentation	How appropriately and thoroughly does the candidate respond to the questions in the conversation	How well can the candidate express ideas
To what extent are the grammatical structures varied	How well are the ideas linked to the target culture(s)	To what depth are the questions answered	How well can the candidate maintain a conversation
To what extent does the accuracy of the language contribute to effective communication
To what extent do pronunciation and intonation affect communication

With that in mind, being able to “speak Japanese” is insufficient to perform well in the IO oral examination – the construction and development of your ideas is vitally important too.

Broad structure of the IO

Additionally, description of each part of the IO for all levels from the subject guide can be found below (IBO, 2020):

Section	Description	Time (AB, min)	Time (SL, min)
Supervised preparation time	Student shown two image w/ theme Student choses one Brief notetaking permitted	15	15
Part 1: Presentation	Student describes image Relates to relevant theme and target culture(s)	1-2	3-4
Part 2: Follow-up discussion	Teacher engages student with presented theme Teacher engages student to expand	2-3	4-5
Part 3: General discussion	Teacher and student have a general discussion about one additional theme	4-5	5-6

Timings (mins)

Level	Preparation	Part 1	Part 2	Part 3
Ab Initio	15	1-2	2-3	4-5
Language B SL	15	3-4	4-5	5-6
Language B HL	20	3-4	4-5	5-6

Importance of managing stress

Presented with a random image and being asked to say 4-5 minutes of profound analysis can be daunting (*cough, it “IS” daunting).

What do you say? What is there to say??

It’s important to not enter this whirling spiral of doom and falling into an endless cycle of えーとs and あのーs.

Instead, practice using a structure that works for you. Create alternative sentences that mean the same thing and memorise useful set-phrases.

Including this into your general IO prep ensures you know phrases that are both grammatically and contextually correct, giving you more time to expand on your ideas.

It doesn’t matter what picture you are given, there are set expressions which are useful throughout the IO. We list these as well as a recommended Part 1 Structure here:

Part 1 of the Individual Oral (IO) – IB Japanese
[Part 2 and Part 3 of the Individual Oral (IO) – IB Japanese]

The key to any exam is practice PRACTICE PRACTICE!

Practicing with friends is an awesome way to improve the development of your ideas and share real-world examples but join our Conversation Club today to improve your conversational fluency too!

For one-on-one help with the IO check out our tutoring services here!

Best of luck everyone!

頑張ってください～！