POSSIBLE MUET ORAL QUESTIONS HERE!!!

I have a select list of possible questions for the oral component of the MUET exam in my hands --- not. Alright, that title was just an experiment to test the effectiveness of adding '!!!' to the end of a blog title to attract readers. Ok ok, I admit it was also a cheap way to draw in some of the decidedly edgy sixth formers who are about to sit for said test.

SInce we are on the topic of the oral test, I might as well dissect the awesome fear most of my schoolmates have for it. In all respects, it is a simple test, heck this part expends the least energy and takes up the least time but for the listening component. Coming from a school with students who can never seem to keep their mouths shut, I would expect most of my schoolmates to wing it at least. Not so apparently, for the moment someone so much as whispers 'MUET oral test', the whole class clams up like a captured Cold War spy, broken of course by the occasional shiver and whimper.

Normally intelligent and articulate students are automatically reduced to mumbling, incomprehensible puppies when they are simulating the test. Throughout the ordeal, you can actually see cold sweat forming on their foreheads, their fingers twitching, their eyes casting longing looks towards the imagined door of freedom. As an observer, you cannot help but feel for them. Their are being made to go through what is akin to mental torture, and I am not surprised if any of them actually breaks into tears upon completing the damned test.

Obviously, being a motormouth is not enough for you to do well, you need to have substance as well. Having helped some of my friends with their tests, I can see that they have made many points most of the time, perhaps too many. Even during practice, they feel nervous, and when the nerves set in, the clutter of so many differing points trigger a block in the mind and they spit out their points in an incoherant heap. And I am talking about some of the more capable candidates, what about the less confident ones then? Well, it is as if they are not taking the test at all, literally, for they do not say anything that will help their cause.

Having seen the fear factor the oral test inspires in my fellow candidates, I am tempted to ask whether this test is being conducted in the right way. I feel it is to rigid, with too much riding on it. I myself like to take a relaxed approach, trying to make it a tad casual, only to get a mild reprimand to 'not make it too general'. But how the hell am I to make it all detailed and specific in two minutes? How many real life talks and explanations are done and dusted in two minutes or conversations in ten? In the real world, two minutes is only good enough for saying 'hi, ermmm how's the weather lately?', which is exactly what a lot of the candidates do. I can tell you that, a REAL conversation takes more than words, it needs a certain 'feel' and human instinct, things which are inborn in all humans. The idealised 'conversations' and stating of 'opinions' which make up this test are but bastardised simulations of these elements. Pirated in the true Malaysian tradition.