Killer Applications For the Oral Abitur (Mündliches Abitur Englisch - Tipps und Tricks)

First of all you need to know that you are not helpless in the oral exam. You can, in fact, take control of it to some extent.

Example: Your examiner gives you a boring text about the environmental advantages of solar energy and this is definitely not your favourite topic. What can you do?

Well, half way through the exam you could slip in the sentence "Well, dealing with solar energy is not exactly what I have in mind for my future."

In 99% of the cases the examiner will then ask, perhaps slightly ironically, "Well, what do you have in mind for your future?"

This is your chance to talk about how you see yourself as the most creative programmer of computer games, explain your concept for a new ego-shooter, or talk about your new insights at the last LAN party. And, no, they won't know exactly what a LAN party is, but that only gives you another chance to talk about stuff you know. You should, of course, be well prepared for it. That is work. But at least you decide in which field you do the preparation work.

What is also greatly appreciated is a knowledge of current politics. Again, this is something for which you can prepare. And it is again fairly easy to steer the exam towards this topic.

Suppose you have some knowledge of (and the right vocabulary for talking about) the cases of torture in Iraq.

Maybe, you get a topic which you find decidedly boring and with which you cannot cope well.

The following strategy might seem slightly rude but it will work well. Again, after having talked about the topic you don't like for a few minutes, you could groan something like "Do we have to talk about this when there are such terrible things going on in the world?"

BINGO! The examiner will immediately ask what terrible things you are thinking of.

And you can switch to the topic you have prepared, Afghanistan, Iranian protests, financial crisis,...

How does one get the right vocabulary for current political issues?

• Look at Spiegel.de or Netzeitung.de and see what's going on in the world.
  
• Read a few articles in German. Collect some topical vocabulary - in German! (Write the keywords down!)
  
• Go to Google News or Yahoo News and look up English language articles on the same topic. Try to find the English expressions that correspond to the German ones you have collected. Again, this takes some time but it is definitely a fast way to success! You could also go to the English version of Spiegel.de.
  
• The BBC World Service also presents written news stories with important words and expressions explained. If you want to know how these words are pronounced, you should frequently listen to the BBC World Service. You can do that while you are online anyway, so you need not spend extra time on it. On the BBC's homepage you will find a button that says "Listen to BBC World Service". If you click on it, you get a selection of earlier broadcasts but also live streaming. Extremely useful, if you want to improve your pronunciation.
  
• If you look at the "Have your say" section of the BBC World Service website you will find lots of examples of different ways of expressing ones opinion. Useful but beware: These texts often written by people for whom English is a second language.
  

More bonus points you can get, if you can talk about German current affairs in English. What the hell, for example, is the Bundesagentur für Arbeit called in English and what job does Peer Steinbrueck have? What is Mecklenburg-Vorpommern in English? A look at the news about Germany on Google or Yahoo wil help. Again, you might want to look at the news in German first.

bbc.co.uk is a god website for curr3ent news. If you need help with pronunciation go to the bbc podcast and listen to a few programmes. More here: http://weberberg.de/skool/podcasts.html

Very often you will be given a text combined with a picture. Practice talking freely about topical pictures by looking at pictures from Yahoo News. Also very popular with teachers -although not necessearily with pupils - are political cartoons. Cagle is a good selection. Be prepared!

If you are aiming for 15 points and need a good exercise, try to improve - in English! - an entry in the Wikipedia, for example this one about Biberach.

You should also be well prepared for the question: "What are your plans for the time after the Abitur?"