Oral Assessments: Presentation, Conversation, and the Full IB-Style Combined Exam
Speaking isn't one skill — it's at least three. A student who can deliver a polished two-minute speech might still freeze when asked a follow-up question, and the one who chats easily can fall apart the moment a topic gets formal. With v1.10.0, Oral Assignments grow from a single recording into three full formats: a clean presentation, a live AI conversation, and an IB-style combined exam that runs both back to back in one sitting.
Video Overview
Why Three Formats?
When Oral Assignments first shipped, they answered one very specific need: give every student a chance to record a prepared response and get real feedback on it. That's still the right tool for the descriptive monologue, the photo prompt, the "tell me about your weekend" routine — and it's still here, exactly as it was. But anyone who's taught long enough knows that's only one slice of what speaking actually is. Real oral assessment also looks like a back-and-forth interview, or an IB-style exam where a student presents and then defends their ideas in conversation. v1.10.0 turns the single Oral Assignment into a family of three formats, and you pick the one that matches what you're actually trying to measure.
Presentation
A prepared monologue. Student records once, you get the audio, transcript, and rubric.
Conversation
A live Q&A with an AI character that asks your questions and follows up naturally.
Combined
IB-style. Part 1 is the presentation. Part 2 is the conversation — back to back, one sitting.
The Conversation Format
You write the questions you want covered. The AI partner asks them. That's the simple version. What makes it interesting is everything you get to shape around it — how closely the character sticks to your script, how comfortable it is wandering off when a student says something worth following up on, which questions you want spent real time on and which are just check-ins, and how long the whole conversation should run. For your student, it feels less like a chatbot working through a checklist and more like sitting down with an examiner who's genuinely curious about their answers.
Three styles, three personalities
Rigid Linear asks each question word for word, in order, no follow-ups — the right pick for an oral quiz where every student needs the same experience. Natural Structured still covers everything on your list, but reacts to what the student actually said and follows up when their answer invites it. Free Unstructured treats your list as a starting point and lets the conversation breathe — closer to a real chat than an exam.
You can also tag any question with a + for "spend real time here" or a − for "just touch it and move on." The conversation pacing actually shifts to match — the topics you care about most get the deeper exchange, the ones you just want covered get covered. It's how you build an oral that has shape to it, without having to script every turn.
The Combined Format — Built for IB
If you teach any IB language course, you've run this exam a hundred times: a student is handed a prompt and a photo, given a few minutes to gather their thoughts, they present, and then they get questioned about what they just said. The Combined format runs the whole thing for you. Your students get their prep time first — exactly the way they would for any presentation — and when they're ready to start, they speak through their presentation. The moment they finish, the conversation half picks up where they left off. The examiner even opens by warmly referring back to something the student just said, the way a real examiner would, so the handoff doesn't feel like a clean break.
One submission to look at, not two
The whole exam comes back to you as a single piece — one audio recording, one transcript, one rubric score. You don't have to hunt for the conversation half or stitch two submissions together. Part 1 and Part 2 are clearly marked out in the transcript so you can jump straight to whichever section you want to grade more carefully.
You can set the timing for each half on its own. A two-minute presentation followed by a three-minute conversation is a very different exam from a five-minute presentation followed by ten minutes of questions — and now those don't have to share one timer just because they happen back to back.
Feedback That Points at Real Moments
Every oral still comes back with a full rubric score, but the written feedback is now broken out per category — pronunciation, vocabulary, grammar, content, or whichever categories your rubric is built around. And on the results page, the transcript can be viewed through any one of those lenses. Look at it through the grammar lens and the grammar mistakes are highlighted with the corrections written right next to them. Look at it through the vocabulary lens and you see the word choices that didn't quite land, with the better word offered up beside them. Same conversation, viewed the way you'd be reviewing it yourself.
For a student, this is the difference between "you got a 7 in vocabulary" and "you got a 7 in vocabulary, and that moment in your answer is exactly where it slipped." That's where students actually start to improve.
Quetzalita on Prep Day
For the presentation and combined formats, students have a few minutes before they record to read the prompt, look at the picture, and jot down some notes. If you've enabled Quetzalita Chat, she's sitting right there with them while they prep. She can see the prompt, she can see the picture, and she can see the notes they're writing as they go. She'll help them brainstorm vocabulary, suggest a way to structure their answer, or just talk them through what they're looking at. What she won't do is write their response for them — and that's the line you want her to hold.
The Little Things That Add Up
A few smaller touches that you'll feel once you start running these with real students. Their prep notes save themselves quietly in the background — a student who accidentally closes the tab won't lose what they wrote. The examiner waits patiently when a student needs to think; long pauses mid-answer don't get interrupted the way some voice tools do, which matters a lot for students who are still finding their words. The prep timer can be hidden by the student who doesn't want it ticking away at them. And the handoff between the presentation and the conversation isn't a hard cut — the examiner picks up warmly, often referring back to something the student just said, so the second half feels like a continuation rather than a brand new test.