This week we continue our series on career profiles. We hear from Daniel Milnes, who studied German and Russian at Somerville College and graduated in 2011. Orginally from Leeds, Daniel now works as a Curator for modern and contemporary art at the Hamburger Bahnhof Museum for Contemporary Art in Berlin. Daniel tells us how his languages have fed into his career path…
After graduating from Oxford in 2011 I completed a Master’s degree in Art History at the Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg with a research period at the European University at Saint Petersburg (2011-2013). This proved to be the first step toward my current career as a curator for contemporary art. After graduation I completed a two-year traineeship in curatorial practice at the Kunstmuseum in Stuttgart where I served as assistant curator on two large-scale exhibition projects as well as curating my own exhibition with the artist Raphael Sbrzesny. This led to my next position as Assistant Curator at Haus der Kunst, Munich, a leading international institution for the display and discussion of contemporary art and culture.
Photo by M(e)ister Eiskalt, used under Creative Commons (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) via Wikimedia.org
At Haus der Kunst I served as assistant curator for the project “Postwar: Art between the Pacific and the Atlantic, 1945-1965” which redefined the art historical canon of the postwar period from a multifocal and global perspective, deconstructing the traditional narrative that has until recently been dominated by the work of white male artists from the West. For this project I was responsible for the selection of art from the Soviet Union, liaising with artists, curators, theoreticians, and museum workers in Russia. My contact to the contemporary Russian art world was further strengthened through the development of a solo exhibition with media artist Polina Kanis, who works between Moscow and Amsterdam. In addition, I curated two further exhibition projects which analysed how models of identity have changed since digital forms of mediation have come to dominate daily life.
Since 2018 I am working as Assistant Curator at the Hamburger Bahnhof Museum for Contemporary Art in Berlin, where I am currently organizing the exhibition of the winner of the National Gallery Prize, Agnieszka Polska.
In my day-to-day working life I am constantly travelling and shifting between languages in order to coordinate exhibitions, write academic articles, proofread catalogues, give tours through exhibitions, deliver presentations and speeches, and liaise with artists. This would all be unthinkable without my training in Modern Languages and the sensibility for the nuances of language and culture that it fostered.
A couple of weeks ago, we posted about our upcoming German open day, a chance for you to learn about the German course at Oxford. This week, we continue the theme by bringing you news of our open days in Spanish and Portuguese (Thursday 28 February at The Queen’s College), and Russian and other Slavonic Languages (Saturday 2 March at Wadham College).
As with the German open day, these events are a fantastic opportunity for you to explore what an Oxford degree in those languages looks like. They offer a mixture of academic tasters so you can get a feel for the content of the degree, information about applying to Oxford, and interactions with tutors and current students, who will be happy to answer any questions you have about languages at Oxford.
Highlights of the Spanish and Portuguese open day include: an introduction to Portuguese in 15 minutes, an introduction to other peninsular languages (Catalan and Galician – for more on Galician, see our post here); a spotlight on Portuguese-speaking Africa; and a Spanish Translation workshop.
Highlights of the open day in Russian and other Slavonic Languages include: a mini lecture on ‘Home from home: Russian writers in interwar Paris’; a mini lecture on ‘Russian Grammar in Time and Space’; and a parallel discussion for parents and teachers.
The open days are open to anyone in Year 12 who is interested in studying those languages at Oxford, including if you are interested in picking up the language from scratch (with the exception of Spanish, which we do not offer from scratch). Sessions will be suitable for learners who have no prior knowledge of the language, as well as those hoping to apply post-A Level. There are a limited number of places for accompanying parents and teachers. The events are free of charge but a place must be booked through the faculty’s website.
The full programmes are below, or available to view at https://www.mod-langs.ox.ac.uk/schools/meet-us
We’ve posted on here before about UNIQ, Oxford University’s flagship outreach programme. The UNIQ programme, which is for Year 12 students at UK state schools/ colleges, is a fantastic opportunity to immerse yourself in the Oxford environment, sample some of our teaching, and try out life as an Oxford student. The big news this year is that UNIQ has expanded and the University is now able to take double the amount of students for this programme than in previous years. So if you’re in your first year of further education and are thinking Oxford might be for you, send in your application to UNIQ by 28 January 2019. Read on to find out more or check out the UNIQ website….
What is UNIQ?
UNIQ is open to students studying in their first year of further education, who are based at UK state schools/colleges. Students make a single application between December and January and can be selected to participate in one of two activities: UNIQ Digital or UNIQ Spring and Summer.
UNIQ Spring and Summer gives you a taste of the Oxford undergraduate student experience. You will live in an Oxford college for a week, attend lectures and seminars in your chosen subject area, and receive expert advice on the Oxford application and interview process. The timetable also allows plenty of time for social activities; in the evenings you are free to tour the city, sample some of the University’s sports and cultural facilities, and let your hair down at the farewell party.
UNIQ Digital provides comprehensive information and guidance on the university admissions process, and aims to give you a realistic view of Oxford student life through videos, activities and quizzes. The platform offers a range of forums where you can discuss both academic and social topics. These forums are monitored by student ambassadors, who are always on hand to answer questions and offer support.
What does this look like for Modern Languages?
The in-person Modern Languages UNIQ courses have been slightly restructured during the UNIQ expansion. This year, we will be offering courses in French, German, and Spanish, with each of those courses also incorporating an introduction to a language from scratch (Italian, Portuguese, Russian, or German*). What this means is that you will apply for a course in French, German, or Spanish but you will effectively cover two languages during the summer school. The first two days of the course will be spent focussing on the language you study at A Level (or equivalent), including sessions to hone your language skills and knowledge of grammar, as well as lectures and seminars introducing you to an exciting array of topics in literature, culture, or linguistics, from the medieval period to the present day. During the final two days, meanwhile, you will be given the opportunity to study an unfamiliar language from scratch, learning some beginners’ grammar and new phrases, and exploring a new culture through its literature, film, or linguistics. The dates for the Modern Languages UNIQ courses are 14 – 18 July and 21 – 25 July.
* Participants will be allocated to a ‘new’ language by us. Those already studying German at school will not be allocated to German as a new language.
How do I apply?
To be eligible for UNIQ you must be studying in your first year of further education at a UK state school or college and you must reside in the UK. For Modern Languages UNIQ courses, we would expect you to be studying the language for which you apply to A2 Level. Although we would generally expect you to have high GCSE grades, we are aware that, sometimes, circumstances arise which mean you do not perform to the best of your ability at GCSE. If this is the case, you should fill in the extenuating circumstances section of the application form. This doesn’t guarantee you a place on UNIQ, but when we look at the applications we will take this into account.
You should apply online through the UNIQ website. You will need:
At least six GCSE/National 5 (or equivalent) qualifications, with a preference for 8-9/A-A* grades
A short statement detailing interest in your chosen course
School Information (Current UK state school/college and a past school)
Your current A-level/Scottish Higher (or equivalent) courses
Contact details of a current teaching referee
Contact details of a parent/guardian referee
You will receive an email on the 25 February containing the result of your application.
Happy New Year from Adventures on the Bookshelf! To kick off the blog in 2019, we’re diving in at the deep end and bringing you news of our German open day. If you’re thinking about applying to study German as an undergraduate at Oxford, this is an excellent opportunity to meet some of the tutors, try out a couple of academic taster sessions which will give you a flavour of what it’s like to study German, and take a look around Oxford. See below for the full details and programme. If you would like to attend, please book a place via our website.
What? The 2019 German Open Day, designed to showcase the Oxford German course and answer any questions you might have.
Who? If you study German at school and would like to continue it at university, this is your chance to see what degree-level German is like, and how we go about teaching it. But equally, even if you do not already study German but think it could be something you’d like to pick up at university, this event is a chance for you to ask any questions about studying German from scratch, and see whether it’s for you. In short, all budding Germanists are welcome, regardless of whether you have already studied German in the past.
Where? The event will start and finish at the Taylor Institution on St Giles, and the middle portion of the day will be spent at Worcester College.
When? Saturday 23 February 2019, 10:30am – 3pm
How? Book a place by registering on our website and signing up for the event.
Here’s the programme…
Keep your eyes peeled for our other open days coming up later in the term.
This post was written by Dr James Partridge, Teaching Fellow in Czech (with Slovak) at Oxford. Here, James tells us about Christmas in the Czech Republic.
My first Christmas in the Czech Republic was back in 1993, when I was still an undergraduate, 3 months into my year abroad in Brno. Christmas customs, though, are usually measured in decades and centuries, so 25 years later my Czech students at Oxford on their years abroad will still see most of the same things I did.
Much of the run up to Christmas (Vánoce) will be familiar to anyone from the UK: packed shops, panic buying, mildly disappointing Christmas markets. Early in December, though, the first Czech Christmas ritual begins: the baking of cukroví – Christmas biscuits. There are many different kinds of cukroví, and most are usually quick and easy to make, but they are made in large quantities. Most families take great pride in baking their own cukroví and have their own favourite recipes, often handed down through the generations. Vanilkové rohličky (vanilla rolls) are made from a simple dough of butter, flour, sugar, egg yolk, a little vanilla sugar, perhaps some ground nuts, pressed into moulds and baked quickly. Medvědí tlapičky (‘bears’ paws’) are made from a similar dough, but flavoured with cocoa. Colourfully decorated gingerbreads are also very popular, and some cukroví such as kokosové kuličky (coconut balls) aren’t baked at all. However you make them, the idea is to make as many as possible so that there will always be a selection available for family and guests for the whole Christmas period, if they last that long.
Christmas day itself (Štědrý den, literally ‘Generous / Bountiful day’) is on December 24th. In the past, Štědrý den was a day of fast and people would eat nothing (or very little) until the evening. In the middle ages, the custom was not to eat meat during the day, but something plain like barley groats with mushrooms. Those who honoured this custom faithfully were rewarded by seeing a vision of a zlaté prasátko (golden pig) in the early evening. Traditionally, the pig is a symbol of abundance and prosperity, and gold represented the passing of the winter solstice, however people nowadays usually just tell their children that you see the golden pig because you are so hungry by sunset that you start hallucinating.
Once you’ve seen the golden pig it’s time to sit down to Christmas dinner and eat until you can eat no more, and the centrepiece of the meal should always be carp. The Czech tradition of eating carp is a very old one, probably dating back a thousand years or more to the early Christian period, when monasteries would construct special fish-ponds for raising carp to eat. The cultivation of carp really took off in southern Bohemia after the early 15th century on the estates of the powerful Rožmberk family, and especially thanks to the work of their celebrated Master of Fisheries Jakub Krčín (1535-1604), who oversaw the building of a network of lakes that still supply carp to this day.
Buying carp before Christmas is a task that many westerners find… disturbing. A week or two before Štědrý den, large blue plastic vats overflowing with water begin to appear outside supermarkets, on street corners and in other places in villages, towns and cities across the country, and these vats are filled with carp, brought up from the lakes of Southern Bohemia. These are big fish: 5-8 kg is a pretty standard size. Long queues form, regardless of freezing winds and snow, and people simply choose their carp from the small shoal swimming around in front of them. Up until quite recently, many families would take their live carp home with them and put it in the bathtub for a few days as a sort of ‘pet’, albeit one whose remaining days were very short in number. Nowadays, the fishmongers who run the carp stalls usually just hoik the animal out of the water, whack it on the head with a hammer and then either wrap it up and give it to the customer (hopefully not still flapping), or behead and gut it on the spot. Once they get going, it doesn’t take long before the pavement is running red with fish blood.
The fish itself is prepared by being filleted, breaded and fried until golden brown, and it is always served with remarkable quantities of potato salad. This may sound easy, but filleting a big carp is serious manual labour, and nothing can go to waste: fish giblet soup is one of the highlights of the whole meal.
Olomouc at Christmastime. Image by Labenord on Pixabay
The other essential component to any Czech Christmas is watching pohádky, which are filmed versions of classic fairy tales. This is a tradition that really took off in the early years of the communist period, and one of the first pohádky is still one of the most loved: Císařův pekař a pekařův císař (The Emperor’s Baker and the Baker’s Emperor, 1951), written by and starring Jan Werich – an actor and writer of great importance in Czech theatre and film history. I should also mention Pyšná princezna (The Proud Princess, 1952), Princezna se zlatou hvězdou (The Princess with the Golden Star, 1959), the extraordinary, expressionist (and genuinely scary) Tři zlaté vlasy Děda Vševěda (The Three Golden Hairs of Grandpa Knowall, 1963), not forgetting the delightful and hugely popular Tři oříšky pro Popelku (Three Hazelnuts for Cinderella, 1973). And no Christmas would be complete without the Russian fairy tale Mrazík (Old Father Frost, 1967). I first saw it in the cinema during that first Christmas in Brno in 1993 and the atmosphere was like a late-night showing of The Rocky Horror Show here in England: the audience knew every word of the story of Ivanko and the lovely Nastěnka, and sang along to the soundtrack of the film.
These classic pohádky are an integral part of the Czech Christmas ritual. The TV papers are eagerly scanned to see when Tři oříšky or Pyšná princezna are showing, and on that basis lunch, supper, or visits to and from friends and family are carefully arranged. More surprisingly still for the uninitiated foreigner, the same films are watched religiously every year and enjoyed just as much as they were in previous years. Pohádky, in short, are as much a part of Christmas as cukroví and carp.
Adventures on the Bookshelf will be taking a break now for Christmas but we’ll be back on 9th January. Have a great festive period and Merry Christmas – or, as they say in Czech, ‘Veselé Vánoce!’
This year, instead of our usual French Film competition, we will be running a Flash Fiction Competition in both French and Spanish. If you are in Years 7-13, you are invited to send us a very short story to be in with a chance of winning up to £100. Read on to find out more…
What is Flash Fiction?
We’re looking for a complete story, written in French or Spanish, using NO MORE THAN 100 WORDS.
How short can it be?
Well, candidates for the World’s Shortest Story include a six-word story in English by Ernest Hemingway:
‘For sale: baby shoes, never worn.’
Or a seven-word story in Spanish by Augusto Monterroso, called El dinosaurio:
‘Cuando despertó, el dinosaurio todavía estaba allí.’
You don’t have to be as brief as that, but anything from six to a hundred words will do. Just not a single word more.
What are the judges looking for?
We’ll be looking for imagination and creativity, as well as your ability to write in French or Spanish. Your use of French or Spanish will be considered in the context of your age and year group: in other words, we will not expect younger pupils to compete against older pupils linguistically.
What do I win?
There are two categories: Years 7-11 and Years 12-13. A first prize of £100 will be awarded to the winning entry in each category, with runner-up prizes of £25. The winning entries will be published on our website.
How do I enter?
The deadline for submissions is noon on Sunday 31st March 2019.
If you would like to submit a story in French please do so via our online sumission portal here.
If you would like to submit a story in Spanish please do so here.
You may only submit one story per language but you are welcome to submit one story in French AND one story in Spanish if you would like to. Your submission should be uploaded as a Word document or pdf.
The online page will ask you to fill in some details, which are used for the purpose of administering our outreach activity. To understand how your data is used for this purpose, please read the Privacy Policy.
You will then be sent an automated email (check your spam folder if you can’t find this), which will include a link to validate your email address. Please click this link, which will take you to the Modern Languages Faculty website (you will be given an option to sign up to the newsletter. You do not have to sign up to the newsletter in order to enter the competition, although you are welcome to do so). Once you have clicked the confirmation link in the email, your entry has been submitted.
If you have any questions, please email us at schools.liaison@mod-langs.ox.ac.uk
Alannah Burns, a fourth-year Philosophy & German student at Lady Margaret Hall, loved teaching English at a secondary school in Berlin on her Year Abroad. Here she tells us why.
‘Too many choices of what to do on a Year Abroad?! But one obviously stands out…’
Berlin’s ‘Karneval der Kulturen’ (Carnival of Cultures), May 2018]
Nine months. One city. One school. One job. One language.
Today, it’s the game ‘werewolves’ in English for Grade 8 at 12pm.
Tomorrow, it’s one-to-one English speaking exam practice with Grade 10 at 2pm – this will be the first time they are learning what the exam is really like.
This morning it was going through the answers to the English class test from last week with Grade 8 step-by-step.
Tonight I’ll have to look up the lyrics to a Disney song and create a gap-fill exercise from it to help Grade 7 students practise listening to and understanding American accents.
For nine months I was paid to assist Grade 7, 8 and 10 English lessons at a ‘community school’ [Gemeinschaftsschule] in Berlin. I worked at the school for just over 12 hours a week (that’s right! Only 12 hours a week minimum and 20 hours a week maximum are required of you!). I did this as part of the British Council’s English Language Assistant programme. This is a very popular choice for those doing a Year Abroad, and I’m here to show you why.
I had never been to Berlin before I started my Year Abroad. I lived in nine different flats in eight (very different) areas of Berlin, for periods ranging from only five days, to four months straight (try doing the maths on that one!). I saw so much of the city this way, and experienced so many different kinds of city environments. I was paid 850 Euros a month for the teaching and (amazingly) never paid a cent more than 500 Euros for an entire flat to myself in Berlin with all bills included… Student life certainly does not get better than that! Teachers I worked with let me stay with them at the start of my time in Berlin, and helped me open a bank account, register my addresses, and find new places to live. The English Language Assistant placement with the British Council is also part of the Erasmus+ Scheme (which most universities are signed up to), meaning that you have access to extra funding and can continue to receive your maintenance loan from Student Finance as usual! I even still received funding, as I do every year, from Oxford University’s Moritz-Heyman Scholarship which is for students from backgrounds with a low household income. Put all these things together and see just how quickly my financial worries about a year of moving to a new country by myself were extinguished!
‘Living abroad for a year?! But how will I finance this?! How will I make friends?!’
outside the ‘Berliner Dom’ (Berlin Cathedral)
Another scary part of spending a year in a new place and new country is how to get to know new people. The British Council run training sessions before your placement which are usually (but not always) in the country you will be spending your Year Abroad. This training lasts for a few days (for which they usually provide you with accommodation etc.) and during it you work closely with the other people from different universities who are also going to be teaching English at schools in the same city/region as you. This means that you know a circle of interesting people straight away who will be doing the same job, and build good friendships with them early-on while learning how to prepare lessons, work with teachers, teach different age groups etc.
Now to the job itself. The idea behind the British Council’s English Language Assistants programme is to foster an environment of joyful learning and incredible cultural exchange abroad, with a native English speaker supporting and encouraging people abroad to enjoy learning English and about English-speaking countries.
My experience was pretty unique: I never prepared my own off-curriculum lessons on British culture (or indeed anything), and never spoke German to the students… Here’s why: Most students at the school were from migrant or economically-disadvantaged backgrounds, with many students having diagnosed behavioural problems or learning difficulties. Some students had weak levels of German, let alone English. Not knowing I can speak German thus encouraged them to practice English with me – great for the students, but not for my spoken German… We followed the curriculum strictly as the students’ English levels generally were too weak to diverge from the textbook with exams/class tests always looming.
‘You don’t have to be crazy to work here. But it helps tremendously!’
found in the school’s staff room
As an enthusiastic native English speaker, I was told I had become a very valuable asset to this school. I led whole lessons, supported students in one-to-one speaking sessions, ran lunchtime English clubs, explained grammar, produced my own worksheets, and marked tests and homework. This experience was perfect for me as I hope to become an English teacher abroad in future. but my experience was certainly not typical! I know some people who worked at schools in Spain which asked them to teach science or other subjects in English, and others in different countries who were always preparing their own English lessons about British culture or their own background. The teaching experience is what you make of it and what you want it to be. There is always so much scope to talk with your school about what they want to get out of having a lively native English speaker in their classrooms, and what you want to learn from the experience and gain skills in. Every key skill you could ever need to show-off on your CV (such as leadership, teamwork, confidence, independence, reliability, punctuality, commitment, etc.) is what you can gain from this Year Abroad placement with the British Council. I cannot recommend it enough!
After leaving Berlin I gained a TEFL qualification through doing around 250 hours of volunteer English teaching to Polish children/teenagers in Warsaw and London, and German business professionals in Frankfurt. The English Language Assistant programme with the British Council certainly prepared me well for this.
You can find out more about the British Council programme here.
This week we hear from another Modern Languages graduate from Oxford, Elen Roberts. Originally from Cardiff, Elen studied French and German at St Anne’s College and is now a Trainee Solicitor at Marriott Harrison LLP, London.
I studied French and German at St Anne’s College from 2008 until 2012. I spent my year abroad in Munich, Nantes and Grenoble (15 months in total, as I did not spend either summer at home) where I worked as a marketing intern, au pair and translator respectively. The year abroad was without doubt one of the most enriching periods of my life, as I got to travel all around France and Germany and meet so many new and interesting people.
After graduating I undertook a TEFL course in Cardiff (my home city) and then taught English for two years at various private schools and universities in Hamburg and Berlin. My first teaching job was actually at Hamburg’s French Lycée! It goes without saying that my language skills came in useful there, as I was switching between English, French and German on a daily basis to teach different groups of children of various ages.
I then came back to the UK and did the law conversion course, which took a further two years. I am now in my final few months of training to be a solicitor at a small City firm, Marriott Harrison LLP. Although we are mainly instructed on UK matters, some of our deals and disputes have a foreign element where my French and German skills have come in very handy. So far, I have been asked to translate email correspondence, and analyse the corporate documents of various French, German and Swiss companies and then explaining them to senior colleagues. This has saved the firm the time and expense of having to hire professional translators and getting them to sign non-disclosure agreements. (A lot of our work is confidential).
In a nutshell, if you are considering a career in the law, or any field where you would have to engage with foreign businesses, a working knowledge of European languages is most definitely an asset!
This post was written by Guo-Sheng Liu, a third-year student of Spanish and Portuguese at Lincoln College. Guosh is currently on their year abroad.
I had assumed a knowledge of Spanish would suffice when I embarked on a three-month long journey backpacking around Spain. I was wrong; I soon realised the importance of regional identities, languages and histories, all indispensable for understanding Spain’s complexities.
Though a minority language, Galician has been worth learning to me. For example, reading medieval Spanish and Portuguese was easier since modern Galician preserves some words now in disuse in its modern siblings. I also feel a connection to the language whenever I read lyric poetry beautifully composed in Galician-Portuguese (also known as Old Portuguese or Old Galician). On the contemporary end, the diversity of Galician dialects and the richness of vocabulary unique to Galician continue to surprise and sustain my interest.
Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela. Photo by Miguel Saavedra on freeimages
While helping develop my thoughts on multilingualism in other places, the sociolinguistic situation in Galicia is, on its own, extremely fascinating. This includes the long, difficult struggle to preserve Galician as well as the great debates on orthography and normalisation (e.g. whether to embrace the hegemonic influence of Spanish) and on the nature of the language (is it the same language as Portuguese?). Galician is at a crucial junction as regards its survival; now is the perfect time to learn it.
Above all, perhaps, Galician is useful for understanding regional identity and history. Although Francoism (and its attendant repression of regional languages) ended decades ago, Spaniards today still grapple with comprehending the full extent of its socio-political legacy. A knowledge of Galician opens new ways to approach themes of collective memory and identity, struggles for freedoms, and current controversies over regional constitutions and politics.
Independence movements and some leftist groups exclusively use Galician for political reasons. And in my time spent in Santiago de Compostela, I have found locals most open to talking about their society when spoken to in Galician. Locals do not expect outsiders to speak their tongue; the pleasant surprise of your ability to do so translates into greater friendliness on their part and a deeper understanding of their society on yours. Galician culture and mindsets are certainly quite different from those of, say, Andalucia or Catalonia.
Compared to Catalan (let alone Basque!), Galician is even easier to learn if you already speak Spanish. This means you can start using the language sooner. The Xunta (regional government) also offers generous grants for its summer courses; I attended them twice for free, even receiving a stipend that covered accommodation.
Lastly, if themes of migration, feminism, independence, cultural identity / history, multiculturalism / multilingualism or ruralism sound appealing, Galician literature and film will be worth the effort of picking up the language.
Oxford has rich intellectual traditions, and Galician is no exception. Our university was the first one outside of Spain to offer Galician studies; language studies are open to all members of the university, while papers in its literature and linguistics are available to MML students.
More information on Galician at Oxford can be obtained at this webpage or by contacting the the current lectora, Alba Cid at alba.cid@mod-langs.ox.ac.uk
Last week we took you through the practicalities of coming to an interview at Oxford. This week we’ll delve into the interview itself, breaking down what you might typically expect from a Modern Languages interview. What we cover here is an outline of the general format of Modern Languages interviews but you should be aware that practice can vary a little between colleges. It is worth bearing in mind that the interview is not designed to trick you or make you stumble: it aims to stretch you intellectually and give the tutors an insight into the way you think and your motivation for applying for the degree.
The Format
You will have at least two interviews, possibly more, each lasting around twenty minutes. This is so that you have ‘two bites of the apple’, as it were. We know that candidates commonly get nervous during interviews and may not always feel they have performed at their best. Having two interviews gives you two chances to demonstrate what you can do and optimises your chance of showing us your best side.
Your initial interviews will be in the college that is hosting you or, occasionally, they might be conducted centrally in the Modern Languages department itself.
However, you might also find that other colleges want to interview you. This means that all the languages tutors across all the colleges can view your application and can request to see you. You shouldn’t read anything into this. It does not mean that your first college has rejected you. It simply means that colleges are keeping lots of options open to them. Again, it is another chance for you to show us your best.
There will be at least two interviewers in the room. They may split the questioning 50/50 or one may take the lead while another takes notes. Don’t let this faze you – it’s just policy. They will start by introducing themselves and explaining the format of the interview. Some might shake your hand. Others might not. Again, don’t overthink this: whether or not you shake a tutor’s hand will not affect your chance of getting in.
The interview is likely to be split into two or three parts, depending on whether you are applying for the language from scratch or post-A Level (or equivalent).
If you are studying the language at A Level or equivalent, there will be some conversation in the target language. This is likely to be just three or four minutes and is another chance for us to assess your linguistic skills. We’re not looking for perfection or fluency. We are simply expecting an ability to speak in the target language at the standard expected of a candidate who is predicted a grade A at A Level. We will be assessing your language skills alongside your written work submission and your performance in the MLAT, so this is not the be all and end all.
If you are applying for a beginners’ language don’t worry, we will not ask you to hold a conversation in that language!
Regardless of whether you are applying for a language from scratch or post-A Level, you will probably be asked to do an exercise in close reading. You will be given a text about 20-30 minutes before the interview and asked to read and think about it. This may be a poem or an extract of prose. It is unlikely to be longer than a side of A4. Practice does vary a little between colleges as to whether this text will be in the target language: some may give you a text in English; some may give you a text in the target language with an English translation; some may give you a text in the target language and also provide a dictionary or vocab. list, or invite you to ask about any words you don’t understand at the start of the interview. If you are applying for a language from scratch you will be given a version of the text in English.
Use your preparation time to read the text fully, make notes if you like, and draw some initial conclusions from the text. Ask yourself not only ‘what are my first impressions?’ but, more importantly, ‘why and how are those impressions created?’
The tutors will ask you about the text for around ten minutes.
There will also be some general conversation as part of the interview. During this portion of the interview you might be asked to talk about: academic work you have completed in the last year or two; any relevant wider reading or work experience you might have done; subject-related issues that are very readily visible in the wider world (you will NOT be expected to have an intricate knowledge of current affairs); things you have mentioned in your personal statement.
Top Tips
The first thing to remember is that the interview simulates a tutorial. Tutorial-style teaching is really the USP of Oxford and Cambridge: it is a method of teaching that focuses on discussion in very small groups (usually a tutor and two or three students) on a more-or-less weekly basis. The interview is a way for us to see how you would fare in this type of teaching environment.
As such, we are interested in seeing your ability to contribute to an academically challenging discussion: this will partly be a matter of forming, expressing and, at times, defending your opinions on a particular topic, but we will also want to see your ability to think analytically, to read perceptively, and to be flexible in your thinking.
Try not to be too rigid in your approach. Be open to receiving new information and to changing your opinion based on that information if appropriate.
Go back and re-read your personal statement – there is a good chance you will be asked about it. Make sure you can talk about any books or films you have mentioned, or explain your interests further.
Decisions are not based on your manners, appearance, or background, but on your ability to think independently and to engage with new ideas beyond what you have learnt in school.
The questions will be focused and challenging but this is not a trap and it is not a vocabulary test. If there is anything you are unsure about, whether that’s the questions you are being asked or a particular word you might not understand, it is absolutely fine to ask the tutors to repeat or clarify their question.
So that’s a rundown of Modern Languages interviews at Oxford. It’s a lot to think about and we understand you may justifiably be feeling a little nervous. Of course, not everyone who is interviewed can be offered a place, and we know that this can be disheartening. But remember, you have already done incredibly well to reach interview stage. Whatever the outcome of your application, you should be proud of what you have achieved simply by getting into the room. Above all, try to enjoy the process – it’s not every day you will have the undivided attention of world-leading experts in your subject who are interested in what YOU have to say.
Check out our other interview related posts on this blog by clicking the ‘interviews’ tag. All that remains to be said is good luck!
A blog for students and teachers of Years 11 to 13, and anyone else with an interest in Modern Foreign Languages and Cultures, written by the staff and students of Oxford University. Updated every Wednesday!
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