Two interviews. Both conversational with two interviewers in each.
First interview on personal statement and phonetics. Second interview involved commenting on sentences.
Reading Pinker’s ‘Language Instinct’. Going to linguistics exhibitions and having a mock interview.
They want to see passion and an ability to think, not prior knowledge.
Remember this advice isn't official. There is no guarantee it will reflect your experience because university applications can change between years. Check the official Cambridge and Oxford websites for more accurate information on this year's application format and the required tests.
Also, someone else's experience may not reflect your own. Most interviews are more like conversations than tests and like, any conversation, they are quite interactive.
Two interviews, two interviewers in each.
First one was with my now
Both were just conversation interviews. I did not need to prepare/read anything beforehand.
First interview was heavily based on my personal statement. They also gave me some words to look at, and we then discussed them with respect to key ideas from linguistics. The discussions were quite phonetics based as both interviewers specialised in phonetics.
The second interview I was given sentences to look at and was just asked to comment on what I thought was interesting about them.
I mainly read Stephen Pinker's Language Instinct in preparation for my interview. I also went to linguistics based exhibitions in london and some lectures hosted by my local university.
I contacted a professor from my local university and organised a
They don’t expect you to know alot about the subject as it's not one that's taught in schools, they just want to see how you think things through and that you’re passionate about the subject.