Spanish leaves no gap at all between saying cuando and having to produce llegue in the subjunctive.

Each one is a choice taken mid-clause, at speed, with no way back.

• The subjunctive arrives too early

  You have to commit to venga or viene at the moment the clause opens, before you know where the sentence is going. Reading, you recognise the form. Speaking, you select it, and cuando llegue, ojalá pudiera and no creo que sea all arrive without warning.

• Preterite or imperfect, decided live

  Every past-tense verb forces an aspect choice that English never asks of you. Supe means you found out; sabía means you already knew. Conocí, quiso, tenía que — the same verb shifts meaning with the tense, and the choice is made at the same moment as the word.

• Clitic pronouns and their order

  Se lo di, voy a dárselo, se lo voy a dar. The object pronouns have a fixed order, attach to some verb forms and sit in front of others, and Spanish doubles them — a mí me gusta — where English would leave them out entirely.

• Ser and estar under pressure

  Es aburrido and está aburrido describe two different things: a dull person and a bored one. With adjectives both verbs are often grammatical, so the choice carries the meaning, and no rule of thumb is quick enough to consult halfway through a clause.

• The words run into each other

  Spanish runs words together — los otros comes out as lo-so-tros, cansado as cansao across much of the Spanish-speaking world, and syllable-final s is softened or dropped in the Caribbean, Andalusia and Chile. Nothing here is a word you do not know. What is missing is the edge between one word and the next.

Every Spanish certificate with a speaking section asks for something specific.

Below is what each of the five actually asks: how long you get to prepare, how long you have to talk, and whether there is anyone on the other side. Formats, not mark schemes, and no promise about the day.

• DELE (Diplomas de Español como Lengua Extranjera)

  Instituto Cervantes runs it for Spain's Ministry of Education. At B2 the oral paper gives you twenty minutes of preparation and twenty of speaking: assess a set of proposals, describe an imagined situation from a photograph, then comment on survey data.

• SIELE

  Backed by Instituto Cervantes, UNAM, Salamanca and Buenos Aires. The speaking test is five recorded tasks inside fifteen minutes, two of them presentations. Nobody is on the other side, so nothing you say comes back as a follow-up you can use.

• CELU (Certificado de Español: Lengua y Uso)

  Argentina's inter-university certificate, recognised by its Ministry of Education. The oral runs fifteen to twenty minutes in front of two examiners: you pick one of two cards, speak on it, then play a role in a situation they set.

• ACTFL Oral Proficiency Interview (OPI)

  A fifteen to thirty minute interview by telephone with an ACTFL-certified tester, rated against the ACTFL Proficiency Guidelines. The questions get harder for as long as you keep managing them, so the interview finds your limit by walking you into it.

• A-level Spanish (AQA and Pearson Edexcel)

  The speaking paper pairs a stimulus card — five minutes to prepare, then questions on it, including two you have to ask the examiner — with a two-minute presentation of your own research project and around ten further minutes of discussion.

What are you practising for?

• Exams in Spanish
• Work & study in Spanish
• Travel in Spanish

Our score, and what it is worth

We are not Instituto Cervantes and we award nothing. A number from a practice session describes that practice session, and says nothing about what a rater will make of you on the day of the DELE. Nor is this a course: it starts from someone who already has the Spanish and loses it when the pace goes up.