How To Prepare For Your First Oral Exam

For many exam season is approaching rapidly, and I know for many language students, this includes oral examinations. Mock conversations, meant to be spontaneous and fluid, are often intimidating and anxiety-producing. Here are six tips to help you prepare for your exam.

Within Two Week Of The Exam

• Make an outline of possible topics. Some teachers give out a list of possible conversation themes, but if they don’t, you can get a pretty good idea of what is expected by looking back at your homework history. See what themes you've covered in class or in your homework, list them out. After that, list a few key points for each theme – things you disagree with, agree with, examples –anything that you would normally say about that topic.

• Find a partner to practice with. Ideally you should find a native speaker, but teaming up with a classmate isn't bad either. Just make sure to practice often – maybe practice over every lunch for a week or two. That will make a short examination session feel like a breeze.

• Binge watch videos in your target language without subtitles. Why without subtitles? Because you will focus on listening and absorbing information. When I took my first oral exam in German, I finished all three seasons of Türkish für Anfänger in a week. And when I took my exam, even though the topics chosen were my weakest points, I went into overtime talking about recycling. Studying videos non-stop will get you thinking in your target language.

Day of the Exam

• Practice again with a friend. Try to practice around an hour before the exam. This will get you pumped for when you actually go in and have to talk.

• Review your weak points. We all have topics that just don’t interest us. Topics that seem boring, or we don’t have a comment on them. Work on finding a way to make that topic interesting or relatable, and spend more time on it. Think of it as being prepared, even if it may not be on the exam.

• Listen only to the target language. Listen to music; watch movies, videos, anything – just don’t listen to your native language as much as possible. Try to immerse yourself in the environment, so when you walk in that room, you’re already thinking in your target language.