Test taken: MLAT

Number of interviews: 2

Skype interview: No

Time between each interview: 1 day

Length of interviews: about 20 minutes each

First interview:
I was given a poem to look at for 30 minutes in a room with lots of other people doing the same thing and no dictionaries. We were not given the author or date of the poem. We were told to write notes on anything we could think of to say about it. I approached this like I was analysing it for English literature class, but maybe with more personal response. I looked at the style, form, and metre and thought about when it might have been written and the atmosphere of it. I was reassured by this as I found I had much more to say about it than I thought.
I was interviewed by two tutors in a cosy office. I sat on a huge sofa opposite my interviewers on armchairs.
In the interview I was asked about the poem, and was given a lot of freedom to talk about whatever I thought of it, with a little prompting to get me to talk about the form and metre. I was then asked about a poem I'd written about in my personal statement, which the interviewers gave me a copy of. Next I got asked if I'd read anything in French recently. I spoke about a classic children's book, which they were surprisingly open to. We explored what might make a book ageless and enchanting. Finally, I spoke some French with the interviewers. I was asked some easy questions like if I'd been to France before. I was surprised, as I thought they would quiz me about something intellectual in French. At each stage of the interview the interviewers were very clear about what we were going to do next. I felt that this interview had gone well.

Second interview:
The atmosphere in this interview was a bit more formal as we sat at the corner of a conference table in a big room. First I had to translate a passage from a biography out loud to the interviewers. I didn't get the sense that they expected me to do it perfectly and I reasoned out loud when I couldn't quite work something out. We then talked about the passage more generally, and I was asked to make guesses about the context of the passage in the work as a whole and about the characters. The interviewers then asked me some more personal questions about why I chose to study French on its own rather than as a joint honours with other languages. I was honest that this had been a point of conflict for me in the run-up to applying but gave some reasons why I was particularly interested in French. This is the only part of my interview process that I felt a bit nervous about, because I didn't feel that I had been clear enough about my opinions.

Overall my interviews were a lot more relaxed than I expected. I thought they would be a lot more confrontational, because of the stereotype of Oxford wanting you to be good at arguing, but actually, it seemed they just wanted to see what I thought about things and any prompting was to get me to examine or question my own viewpoint.

I worked through a grammar book ('French Grammar In Practice'), referencing Byrne and Churchill's 'Comprehensive French Grammar' (you can buy cheap old editions, which are still very useful) for more tricky circumstances. I did lots of practice papers and got my teacher at school to mark them.

Read some books in French. They don't have to be complicated or intellectual, and it doesn't matter if it's the first thing you've ever seriously read in French. Try and read something that other people won't have read (i.e. not something everyone studies in school like 'L'étranger') - maybe a children's book or a contemporary novel - but make sure it's something you could talk about and that you have opinions on.

Practise talking to people or just writing about some 'big questions' that interest you in relation to French, to get you into the pattern of discussing things in an explorative way.

Go over what you've written in your personal statement: make sure you can expand on what you've said and note if you've had any changes of perspective or read or heard anything recently that has given you new insights.

If you can, get someone to do a practice interview with you, even if they don't ask representative questions (when I did it was totally different to my actual experience) you will get more confident at responding to intellectual discussion if this isn't something you've grown up with.

If you haven't studied English literature at A-level it's a good idea to look at some poems or prose and learn a bit about analysing it because it's quite important in the interviews.

The best thing I did in my interviews was to talk about things with enthusiasm, the interviewers are the opposite of the kind of people who are going to shame you for this. Try not to let the thought that it's an interview put you off the fact that you're getting to discuss something you love with people who love the same thing but have lots of knowledge and experience on it. Don't worry about being too formal or sounding intellectual, show your genuine response and don't be afraid to say you found something complicated or difficult, because it likely is for a reason.

Finally, for some reason I panicked and asked my interviewers if they'd read every book in the room. It obviously didn't offend them to such a degree that I didn't get in but I regret doing it because it probably sounded quite cheeky and it didn't really serve any purpose.