Mündliche Prüfung: surviving the question that exposes a memorised talk
Mündliche Prüfung, GK, 20 minutes: a ten-minute presentation based on a one-page material (a cartoon and two statistics on social media and voting), then ten minutes of questions from two examiners. Sofia has memorised a nine-minute talk. In the Q&A an examiner asks: “You said filter bubbles are the main reason young people don't vote. Which of the two statistics on the sheet supports that, and how far does it actually take you?” Statistic A: 62 % of 18–24-year-olds say they get most of their political news from social media. Statistic B: turnout among 18–24s fell from 58 % to 47 % between the last two general elections. Sofia answers: “I read that somewhere, I don't have the exact number.”
1. Answer the examiner's question properly, using the two statistics and being explicit about what each can and cannot show.
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Model answer: “Statistic A supports the premise of my claim, not the claim itself. If 62 % of 18–24-year-olds get most political news from social media, then the environment in which they form political views is largely curated by platforms - that is what makes filter bubbles plausible. But A says nothing about voting: it measures where news comes from, not whether people vote.
Statistic B shows a fall in turnout from 58 % to 47 %, so it establishes that there is something to explain. It cannot support my causal claim, though: it is a change over time with no comparison group and no measure of social-media use attached to the same people. A drop could be explained by registration rules, a dull campaign, or distrust - all of which the sheet does not measure.
So the honest version of my claim is weaker than what I said: social media is one plausible contributing factor worth investigating, not ‘the main reason’. To support the stronger claim I would need data linking individual news diets to individual turnout.”
Why this scores: it separates premise from causal claim, uses the material precisely, and revises the thesis openly - which is what the Q&A is testing.
2. Sofia has just said “I read that somewhere”. What should she do instead when she does not know a fact in an oral exam, and which phrases carry her through?
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What not to do: invent a number, or go silent. Both are worse than an honest limit, because a fabricated figure ends the exchange and an embarrassed pause wastes the ten minutes of Q&A that carry a large share of the marks.
What to do instead - a three-step move:
- Name the limit precisely: “I don't have a figure for that, so I won't invent one.”
- Say what you can support from the material in front of you, and point to it explicitly (“what the sheet does show is…”).
- Formulate a hypothesis and how it could be tested: “If I wanted to check that, I'd compare social-media use and turnout across the same age group in several elections.”
Useful phrases: “I can't substantiate that, but I can reason from…” / “That's beyond what the material shows; my argument only needs the weaker claim that…” / “Let me distinguish what I know from what I'm inferring.”
Why it works: the examiners are assessing whether she can think and argue in English under pressure, not whether she memorised trivia. Declaring a limit and then reasoning from available evidence demonstrates exactly the intellectual honesty the task rewards - and it keeps her talking, which is what the time is for.
3. What is the structural problem with a nine-minute memorised talk in a ten-minute presentation slot? Suggest how Sofia should prepare differently.
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The problem is arithmetic and function. Nine memorised minutes leave one minute of slack, so any interruption, forgotten sentence or slower delivery pushes her over and forces her to rush the analysis. More seriously, a memorised monologue is closed: it produces claims but no visible evidence-handling, and the examiners' Q&A exists precisely to test whether the claims are hers. Her collapse on the filter-bubble question is a symptom of a talk that was rehearsed as text rather than as argument.
Better preparation:
- Prepare five or six talking points, each one sentence plus one piece of evidence from the material - not a script.
- Rehearse transitions and signposting rather than sentences: “That brings me to the second statistic, which complicates this.”
- Build in a deliberate gap: one point where she says what the material cannot show. This pre-empts the examiner's favourite question and demonstrates source criticism.
- Practise three minutes of self-questioning per point (“what would someone who disagrees say?”), ideally aloud with a partner.
- Aim for eight minutes of content plus one minute spare, so that the talk ends where she decides, not where the clock does.