Tips for your oral exam

When preparing for an oral exam, especially the few that are coming up for me in the next couple of days, two things are likely to come to mind. 1) it's a lot of work (especially when it involves doing an oral in another language) and 2) OMG THIS IS SO MUCH WORK!!! HOW AM I GOING TO DO THIS THE EXAM IS LIKE IN THREE DAYS *STARTS HYPERVENTILATING*. Both of these reactions are perfectly valid and have only one answer: GET TO WORK NOW! Look there's no way of getting around this, if you want a good result then you have to work hard, this applies to pretty much everything and is a common known fact to almost everybody. Some people can get by fine if they're adept enough but in my opinion it's better to be safe than sorry. Personally speaking the more prepared I am the less stressed out I become, and the less stressed out I am I'm less prone to making mistakes. Pushing it back with the excuse that you'll brute force it later is just a way of telling yourself that you'll never get around to it. Frantically panic revising the night before is not beneficial to your mental health, you're going to be kicking yourself with regret all the way to the exam. 

When preparing for an oral (no, not that kind of oral) it's best to split your script up into neat, bite sized morsels that you can easily memorize and keep track of. Literally, just attempt a few sentences at a time, you'll get there. If you learn it all in chronological order and recite them all together repeatedly you'll eventually have it down pretty well. Another thing to remember is that revising in short chunks is much more favorable over brute forcing it over a long period. Try an hour of revision followed by an hour of something else then another hour of revision...memorizing something requires a lot of concentration on your part and doing this over a long period of time is difficult to do. Supposedly our capacity to assimilate something diminishes after 25 mins of concentration so keep that in mind.  How you revise is up to you put I guarantee that doing a little bit of revision every day will be in the long run be much more effective. By the time you can recite most of your script off by heart at pretty much any time of the day you know you've got this down pat. 

Pictured: you refusing to revise before an oral exam

As far as pronunciation of foreign languages is concerned just repeat the word that you're struggling with long enough to the point where you'll be able to do it 50 years from now, this has always worked for me. Several sites like Google Translate offer pronunciation tools so when in doubt use them. Speaking of Google Translate a lot of us are going to be using this to translate our scripts into other languages. To put it bluntly if you want to save time using translators are a must. Sure they're unreliable (and oftentimes completely wrong) but dissecting every single word in a dictionary is going to take hours and Google always offers you multiple choices of translation if you click on the translated words in your browser. Granted you'll be missing out on learning a lot more of the language but there's always later for that, the time you're spending translating everything are better served being spent on revision. Most of the mistakes are also easy to spot anyway, it's also recommended you use multiple translators to spot any differences you might have overlooked, like Pons for example.  

Onto the actual exam itself: displaying confidence is another large part of winning an oral exam, thankfully this can be faked. Attempt to speak clearly and loudly. Talking quietly won't do you any favors, I know we do it often to disguise any mispronunciations or dodgy sentences we never bothered to change last minute but it's an obvious tell. It shows a lack of confidence in your work and makes it difficult for the teacher to judge you. Your script could be complete sh*t but as long as you sell it like it's gold and show a certain assurance in what you're saying you're more likely to win more points in one area than lose points in another.

It's more manipulation than acting really.

You also need to show conviction by stretching your acting muscles a bit and pretending you're super into whatever subject you're talking about. The best piece of advice I can give you is this: MAKE. THEM. REMEMBER. YOU. If you inject a bit of personality into proceedings, it spruces things up a bit, the person evaluating you will like you more. Give your personal opinion on the subject you're handling, inject a bit of humor where possible (this doesn't mean you're presenting a Benny Hill sketch, put a few light touches go a long way) and for the love of god don't be boring or generic. To the teachers evaluating you you're just another student in a long line of students they've already seen so unless you're the first in line you better differentiate yourself from the rest of the pack. For example if you're talking about climate change EVERYONE brings up CO2 from car emissions yet the biggest cause for global warming is actually in elevating meat. Try and put that under the light more, justify it by saying they've probably heard all about CO2 emissions by now so you want to talk about something else. If you do have to mention explicit subjects than at least try to tackle from a different angle other than CO2 = BAD! Show that you're intelligent, don't recite the most boring crap everyone has heard over a hundred times or more. Just make sure you please them with your oral skills. Wait, that wasn't what I meant...

When planning your script, make it look improvised. You can still use a couple of complicated words here and there, but make sure to keep sentences simple and snappy. Refrain from using any onomatopoeia's ('so....', 'ummm....'), but say words or express pauses that people wouldn't put on paper that'll make you look smarter because you seemingly came up with it on the fly ('like.....', 'Oh yeah and I've also just remembered...', 'that reminds me...', 'but...'). Essentially make something that you actually spent working on for hours look like you improvised incredibly well on the spot, that could be one way of accruing a few more points as teachers love kids that can react in a foreign language on the fly. Don't dum it down too much though, you still need to speak intelligently. Heaven forbid if you're just copying a speech directly off the internet (you lazy ass buggers) but at least try and make it seem like you came up with it. Remember: acting!  

I can't decide whether 5 mins is a lot or nothing at all.

If there's a checklist of things you have to mention or do in your exam then try and fulfill each and every one of them satisfactory. Don't forget to time yourself as well, you will be surprised how long 5 mins can feel. It doesn't have to be EXACTLY five minutes remember (they've hardly got a stop watch on them) but at least aim for the four minute mark. Ultimately as long as what you're saying is coherent enough and reaches five minutes for a lot of teachers that's enough. It's that extra finish on top of that though which turns a good score into an excellent one. And let's be honest why wouldn't you aim for the highest score anyway? A few extra hours of work are nothing compared to the rest of your life, you know this. The points you win in this test could be making up for lost points elsewhere, Did you fail the Maths exam? This will make up for it.

The questions part of the exam are always tricky due to their random nature. I would suggest revising answers to questions that are vague enough that they could cover a large variety of possible questions. You can purposefully leave important bits out of your script that you know will be brought up in the questions part of the test. To give you an idea, if your script is on about the notion of power and you don't give the definition of power you can be damn sure this will come up in the second part. It's also possible for them to ask about your personal life, like 'What did you think of this subject' or 'Where are you going after the summer holidays?' Also your answers are nuanced and offer a bit more complexity than a simple 'yes' or 'no', they will want a bit more than that. Teachers for the most part aren't dickheads, the questions won't be super philosophical or anything like that. I imagine they've got a mental checklist with about 50 generic questions or so that they'll just endlessly cycle, so no need to be to creative. Try to go slowly on the answers though, you've got a much bigger risk of losing if you're asked four questions instead of three so take your time.

Well that's all the tip's I can think of off the top of my head. Now if you excuse me I need to stop being lazy and work on my oral skills....