Interview Topics
You will need to do a speaking test or interview as part of your English exam.
Your college or employer may also require an interview with you if you are taking one of the other English tests.
MELAB Interview Topics
The speaking section of the MELAB exam has three parts.
Interview – Part 1
Part 1 of the exam has warm-up speaking topics, which normally consist of questions about the candidate’s background, family life, education, work, interests, and hobbies.
So, during the first part, the examiner will ask personal questions about your hometown or family, for example.
Interview – Part 2
The second part of interview is the extended discourse part of the exam.
The extended discourse topics consist of current issues such as:
– tourism
– travel
– energy conservation
– education
– global issues
Interview – Part 3
The third part of the MELAB speaking exam is called “closing topics.”
The closing topics will consist of questions about the future.
The examiner may extend the discourse further by asking you to make a prediction about the topic you have just discussed.
Alternatively, you may be asked about your plans for the future in terms of your education or employment.
Verb Tense and the Interview
You should use the past and present simple, as well as the present perfect tense, when talking about topics on part 1 and 2 of the exam.
You should use the future tense or conditional tenses during the third part of the MELAB interview.
The examiner will score your interview on your fluency, vocabulary range, grammatical accuracy, aural comprehension, and use of idiomatic and functional phrases.
Our Free Study Guide contains information and advice for your speaking test.
ECPE Interview Topics
The ECPE test interview has five parts:
1) The students introduce themselves in order to warm up and get to know each other.
2) Each student is given an information sheet about a certain task, such as hiring a new employee or deciding how to allocate money to a job.
The first student will get information about two options, and the second student will get information about two different options.
3) Each student will discuss the option that he or she thinks is the best solution to the task, for example, hiring employee A instead of employee B.
Then the two students have to decide on the best course of action.
4) Each student makes a brief oral presentation to the examiner to justify why his or her choice is best.
5) The examiner asks each student questions about his or her presentation.
Remember that you will need to give reasons to justify the choice you have made in part 3 of the interview.
Communicating and Explaining
You will need to explain the advantages of your choice and the disadvantages of the choice that you have decided against.
For example: “I think we should choose employee A for the job. She has more experience than employee B. Her letter of recommendation says that she is patient with children. Furthermore, she has not had disciplinary problems in the past, unlike employee B.”
Also bear in mind that you need to interact with the other student and not monopolize the conversation.
So, when you finish speaking, you should say something like: “Well, that’s my opinion and the reasons for it. What’s your point of view?”
This shows the examiner that you know how to involve the other person in the conversation.
Remember to avoid reading from the task paper.
You need to paraphrase and restate the facts using your own words.
Finally, try not use slang or informal speech in your presentation.
Keep your tone more formal in this part and avoid using words like “cool” or “awesome”.
Have a look at the following pages to help improve your other skills for the exam: