Test taken: English Literature Admissions Test (ELAT), Modern Languages Admissions Test (MLAT)
Number of interviews: 2
Time between interviews: I had one interview on Monday and one on Wednesday.
Length of interviews: About 25 minutes each
Online interview: Yes

My first interview was my French interview. The first thing I did when I got into the Teams Meeting was to spend 5 minutes reading through a short poem in French and jotting down my thoughts. After those 5 minutes (to be honest, it was actually a little longer, as I was the first person they interviewed that day and there were some major technical issues - so don't worry if that kind of thing happens to you!), I was asked if there were any words in the poem I didn't know. Be honest at this point - this is not a test! We then had a discussion about what I had thought of the poem, and the tutor offered insights and extra pieces of information. When the tutors do this, they are looking to see how you respond when you are given something new to consider, so don't ignore what they say - take your time, and consider (out loud!) how their insights might change your analysis of the passage. Afterwards, another tutor spoke to me about translation, which was something I had mentioned on my personal statement, and I was asked some thought provoking questions to see my approach to the subject, before we had a general discussion about things I had read recently in French and what I thought of them. It's worth noting that the Oxford languages course is very literature heavy, so the tutors are going to be expecting you to have read a least a little bit in the target language (but this can be poems, short stories, plays etc - it very much does not have to be novels!). Finally, we moved on to the French language portion of the interview. It's worth noting that I made a very silly mistake in French here and I still got an offer, so please don't worry if you feel like this portion doesn't go completely to plan! I was asked to describe a picture in French, and the tutor offered me some help when I got stuck. All in all, this interview was a fairly enjoyable experience, and 20 minutes or so absolutely flew by. My second interview was my English interview. For this interview, I was emailed some pre-reading 15 minutes beforehand which I read through and made notes on. If your interview is online, you probably won't be able to print this out because of the security software they use to send the passage, so don't waste your time trying to do that like I did! We spent the first half of the interview discussing my thoughts on the passage and, like before, the tutor offered their insights and some extra information that helped shape and refine my analysis. We then moved onto some general discussion on Shakespeare, which I had mentioned in my personal statement, and once again the tutor guided me if I wasn't quite going where they wanted the conversation to go. After this, I had a very brief discussion on reading in general with my other tutor, and then the interview was over! I really enjoyed this interview, and one myth I absolutely want to dispel is that 'If you think your interview has gone well, it's gone badly', because that absolutely was NOT the case for me. If you remember that the tutors are there to help you rather than test you, and that it is an open conversation rather than a job-interview-style Q&A, you will be absolutely fine, and you'll showcase your skills to the best of your ability.

The main thing I did to prepare for my interviews was to brush up on and read around the subjects I had written about on my personal statement, as these are definitely things that are likely to be picked up on at some point in the interview process! I don't think obsessing over what they could ask you from your personal statement is particularly helpful - this can vary SO much between interviewers/subjects/colleges! - but I definitely think feeling confident talking about things you've said you're passionate about is a great place to start. I kept a reading journal of everything that I read in the lead up to my interviews that I calmly read through the day before each one, just to rejog my memory of some of the things I found interesting. For my French interview, I also found it helpful to vlog in French to myself a few times a week, just to get some practice of speaking French aloud, because speaking in the target language will almost definitely form a small component of any languages interview.

For the MLAT, I completed every single practice paper on the Oxford MFL website! I think that the only way to get used to the kind of grammar content and vocab they're likely to use is just to do as many practice papers as you possibly can. For the papers that didn't have answers, I worked with a student mentor from the educational charity Zero Gravity (which I would highly recommend looking further into if you're a state school student!) who marked my answers for me, but this is also the kind of thing you could give to a languages teacher at school if you are unsure. I also found that spending 30 minutes every day brushing up on my A Level grammar knowledge really, really helped. The MLAT isn't designed to be testing you on things you won't have already come across (though it definitely can be difficult), so make sure you are up to date on any grammar points you have covered on your course so far. I would recommend buying a grammar workbook that matches up with your A Level course, because you can use it to prepare for the MLAT and it will also be infinitely useful when it comes to taking your actual A Level exams! I think a really good thing to note with these kind of entrance exams is that Oxford tutors don't tend to mark in a black and white way - a sentence is rarely ever just 'right' or 'wrong' (though of course that can happen!). Typically, they're trying to get a sense of your grasp of the language as a whole, so try not to worry too much if you don't know a particular word, and see if you can find a creative way to work round it with the wealth of knowledge that you definitely do have! For the ELAT, the process was very similar. I completed about 6 or 7 practice papers, all of which I found on the Oxford English Faculty website, and went through them with my Zero Gravity Mentor. Like the MLAT, the ELAT isn't really designed to test you on things you don't know - it's designed to see how you write, how well you can construct an argument, and how well you can analyse a text that's unfamiliar. These are all skills that you KNOW how to do from your English A Level, so number 1: don't panic! The structure of the ELAT is very odd because they give you so many extracts to choose from (I had a bit of a mare in my actual ELAT because there were 3 that I liked, and I eventually just had to pick 2 and go for it!), so I would say it's good practice to get used to reading extracts and quickly deciding which ones you like the look of. Also, try and practice going with ideas that you think are a bit wacky or weird, and let go of any kind of paragraph structure (PEE, PEEL, PIECES etc) that has been drilled into you in school - just let yourself write! If you run out of practice papers to do or you don't fancy sitting down for a full hour and a half, practice doing some close reading with a passage of literally any unseen passage for 30 minutes or so - this also ties in really well with A Level revision, because lots of A Level English courses ask you to do this at some point anyway. My number one piece of advice is never feel like you are 'wasting time' by preparing for these entrance exams. Any skills you develop throughout the preparation process will remain invaluable to you as you progress through the rest of your A Level journey. I've said A Levels a lot here as that was my own experience, but this is equally applicable to equivalent qualifications like the IB!

Like I said before, I wish I knew that the interview is a conversation rather than an interrogation. The tutors have chosen to interview you because they are genuinely interested in what you have to say, so don't be afraid to say what you think! However, it's important to take new information on board when it is offered to you, because the academics that you are talking to are often world experts in their field - so they're telling you these things for a reason! Don't be afraid to backtrack or change your mind if you're offered something that sheds a new light on the line of analysis that you've been exploring, and make sure you explain why you've changed your mind. Get good at 'thinking out loud'; the interviews are designed so that the tutors can see how you think, so the process is always far more important than the outcome!