Test taken: Modern Languages Admissions Test (MLAT)
Number of interviews: 1
Time between interviews: n/a
Length of interviews: 10 mins time to prep a passage of literature followed by 30 min interview
Online interview: No

My interview questions were mainly about the passage I’d had 10 mins to prep before I went in. They wanted to know what I’d found interesting and why, what I thought about the style of writing, what I thought about the narrative voice and questions along those lines. I went into the interview feeling very, very nervous. I was worried I was underdressed at first as I was wearing trainers, ripped jeans and a hoodie, but when I went into the interview room the two tutors (a male French tutor and a female Portuguese tutor) were sitting on really comfy sofas which put me more at ease. The landline phone in the room started ringing halfway through but it gave us all something to laugh about which was also strangely quite calming! There were no “eccentric” questions I was asked (I’d heard that the tutors could ask you really weird, philosophical questions or had heard that a tutor could just say “Surprise me.” to you and expect you to do something outlandish) and no one I spoke to during the interviews or once I was a student at Oxford ever had any “weird” interview questions either. Two of the final questions I was asked were about my personal statement, and these were in french. I actually couldn’t hear the tutor properly for one of them and asked him to repeat the question. When I still couldn’t hear, he just asked me the question in English instead. The final question was about which book I’m currently reading - it was one that the tutor knew (Candide by Voltaire) and so he asked me a few questions about what I thought, the major themes, and then about the ending of the book.

I went over my personal statement and highlighted parts that I thought they might ask me about or that I hadn’t developed too much in the personal statement (eg, brexit, french socioeconomics, the books I’d said I’d read, a french film I’d seen). After this, I annotated my personal statement with things I could say about each highlighted part if asked (eg, after highlighting the section where I’d expressed my interest in socioeconomics, I wrote down next to it why I was interested, how I became interested, what I saw as the main socio-economic issues in France today, things I’d read to back up my point of view etc). This helped me really get to know what I’d written in my personal statement and helped me think more deeply about what I was really interested in too. I also practised going through passages from novels and poems and analysing them. This was incredibly useful as most of my interview questions were actually about the prep passage I was given (from a Charles Dickens novel, I think).

Practised with the a level grammar book provided by my school (élan a2)

Don’t hesitate to pause before you answer the question - don’t just start talking because you’re worried, take the time to have a think about what you want to say. It’s okay if you don’t know the answer to a question either - the tutors often don’t expect you to know the answer to a lot of the questions they’re asking, they just want to know how you think and work out problems. Above all, I’d recommend just thinking out loud (as strange as this may sound). The tutors really want to know how you go about solving problems, and the best insight you can give them into this is just saying what you’re thinking. This may mean that you start talking and then change your mind halfway through. This is great as it means the tutors can hear you explain why you’ve changed your mind, where exactly you realised you were incorrect and what steps you took to get there.