Test taken: Modern and Medieval Languages Admissions Assessment
Number of interviews: 2
Time between interviews: 5 hours
Length of interviews: 20 minutes
Online interview: No

My first interview was the "post-A level language interview". The first half of the interview was conducted in the target language I applied for and I was asked questions about things I'd studied in the previous year and a little about myself. This should be fairly manageable and nothing too different from oral skills you've would've practiced before. In the second half of this interview, I was asked about a passage in the target language which I was given 20 minutes to look at before the interview. The interviewers asked me a few questions about the content and a little analysis. There aren't really any right answers for this bit, the interviewers will just try to ask questions that push you to think deeper about the passage - there is no pressure to come up with anything really extravagant. The interviewers will try to push you in the right direction and just want to see you thinking out loud. I'd recommend during the passage preparation time to jot down a couple of things that you find interesting about the passage. After discussing the passage the interviewees asked me about the books which I'd mentioned in my personal statement.

The ab initio language interview was slightly different because I was obviously not expected to be able to speak in the ab initio language. They asked me to read a section of a passage that was in the ab initio language and had an English translation to get an idea of my accent. I was then asked some analysis questions, similar to the post A-level interview. They later asked me about my interest in my ab initio language, picking up on a few things from my personal statement and asking me about those. Both the interviews felt relaxed - I had 2 interviewers for both and they were all friendly. Definitely try to go into it as relaxed and cool-headed as you can.

There were a couple practice interviews conducted at my school - my French teacher gave me one and there was another organised by my school who arranged some people from the field to come in. I'd recommend asking your subject teacher for a mock interview if they can. Other than that I read up online and watched a few videos about interviews and read about the kind of questions I might be asked, but this can really vary from interview to interview so the best idea is to just go in with a clear head and not be stressing about the different questions you might be asked.

I practiced using practice papers from the faculty website.

The interviewers are looking to understand the way you think through and process questions. Don't feel pressured or under the spotlight, they're not trying to catch you out and ask trick questions - they just want to see how you'd cope in a supervision scenario. Feel free to take time to think about what they're asking, and definitely try and relax as much as you can, it will make you think much more clear-headedly.