Oral exams

Stations written from a board's own notes, answered out loud, and marked by your subject's examiner.

The Oral tab sits on every board, beside Cards, Exam and Lecture. It holds the board's stations and every attempt you have made at them. Nothing is generated until you ask.

Stations come from the board#

A station is one question, plus the points a good answer covers. You make one in two steps.

Suggest stations reads the board, or the sections you pick, and proposes a handful of questions, steered by anything you type first. They wait under Not written yet. Expected marks the whole-topic question an examiner is most likely to open with; Go deeper marks narrower ones for extra practice.

Write station (Generate station on the phone) turns a proposal into a full station in about a minute: the opening question, follow-ups, a suggested speaking time, and the must-not-miss core it is marked against. If you leave while it is being written, it is saved when you come back.

Stations come from your board's notes, not its name, so you are asked about what your board says, mistakes included. Each is written for the subject's examiner, whose kinds of station set its type. A proposal is never used up: if the examiner changes, it is offered again. A station is a snapshot. If the notes or the examiner change afterwards, its row says so, and Write again for this examiner in its ⋯ menu writes a fresh one beside it (on the phone, write its idea again). The same menu deletes a station (the bin on the phone).

StationAttemptsBestAvg

The letter that crossedA seller and a buyer have been dealing by letter. The seller posts a revocation on Monday; the buyer, who has not seen it, posts an acceptance on Tuesday, and the revocation arrives on Wednesday. Is there a contract?48274

Shop window or offerA shop prices a jacket in its window at £40 by mistake. A customer insists on buying it at that price. Advise the shop.27167

The reply that looked like a yesAn offer to sell a car for £1,000 is met with 'I'll give you £950'. The seller refuses, and the buyer then says 'Fine, £1,000'. Where does that leave them, and what would change your answer?16464

Explaining it plainlyExplain the postal rule to someone who has never heard of it, in the words you would use with them.0——

Four stations written from one board. The last one has not been sat yet, so it has no numbers.

Two ways to sit a station#

Every station has two doors, and each says what it does.

Question (the microphone): you answer the station's opening question once, and it is marked. Practise one answer at a time.
Viva (the speech bubbles): the examiner asks the opening question, follows up on what you say and closes the station, the way a real viva, OSCE or MMI runs. The viva is not open on every account yet; where it is not, a station has the Question door only.

Every attempt, results page and sitting wears the same chip, so you can always tell which one you are looking at.

Question#

Press Answer the question on a station. The opening question is on screen, the microphone is the only control, and a timer runs against the suggested time.

Ask aloud reads the question out. A station's opening is prepared as the station opens, so it plays at once. Auto reads each question out by itself.
Focus shows what the examiner is listening for; on the web, Guide opens the marking guide.
Start records (the microphone on the phone). You can pause, and a recording stops itself at the time limit, with a warning first.
A rough live transcript shows while you speak, where your browser or phone supports it. Type instead lets you write the answer.

Press Stop, then Mark answer (on the phone, Stop sends it straight for marking). Your answer is transcribed and marked, and the attempt's own page opens with the examiner reading the feedback back to you: the score and the spoken feedback first, with its script under the player.

Answer the follow-up asks the next question the examiner would ask, as an answer of its own, with a shorter target. Its page links back to the answer it followed. Answer again asks the opening question again, and Sit the full viva sits the whole station live.

Viva#

Press Sit the viva on a station. The examiner speaks the opening question, then works through the follow-ups, probing what you leave out without naming it, and closes the station when it is done. A pause to think is not taken as the end of your answer. The whole conversation is marked as one attempt, and its page shows which of the must-not-miss points you volunteered, gave after prompting or missed.

From a viva's page, Sit the viva again starts the station over, Next station sits the station below it on the Oral tab, and Just answer the opening question practises its first question on its own.

The marking comes from the subject's examiner, which is worked out for you. Each criterion has a score and the one thing that would have earned the rest; open it for the examiner's reasoning. If Ask is on for your account, you can ask about a criterion from there too.

Oral — The letter that crossedMarked

Examiner

A seller and a buyer have been dealing by letter. The seller posts a revocation on Monday; the buyer, who has not seen it, posts an acceptance on Tuesday, and the revocation arrives on Wednesday. Is there a contract?

2:143:00Mark answer

74%The letter that crossed — marked74/100 · 2:14 spoken of 3:00

Identifying the issue15/20

You saw early that the answer turns on the timing of the two letters. You did not say which party made the offer, and everything after depends on it.

ImproveOpen by naming the offeror and the offeree, then the question: did the acceptance take effect before the revocation did?

Stating the rules17/20

Both rules were stated accurately — acceptance on posting, revocation on receipt — each with its case.

ImproveAdd the condition on the postal rule: post must be a reasonable way to accept (Henthorn v Fraser).

Applying them to the facts14/20

You reached the right answer, a contract on Tuesday, but jumped to it without walking the dates through.

ImproveTake the three days in order and say what each letter did on each one, so the conclusion follows from the facts.

Exceptions and limits15/20

You said the rule can be excluded, which most answers miss.

ImproveSay how: an offer that requires the acceptance to reach the offeror shuts the rule out (Holwell Securities v Hughes).

Conclusion13/20

The answer stopped rather than concluded, and did not say where that leaves the seller.

ImproveEnd with the outcome in one sentence: a contract was formed on Tuesday, and the seller is bound by it.

A strong answerThe seller made the offer and the buyer is the offeree, so the question is whether the acceptance took effect before the revocation did. A revocation takes effect only when it reaches the offeree (Byrne v Van Tienhoven), so the seller's letter did nothing until Wednesday. A posted acceptance takes effect when it is posted, provided post is a reasonable way to accept (Adams v Lindsell; Henthorn v Fraser), and it is here, because the parties have been dealing by letter. So the acceptance took effect on Tuesday, a day before the revocation arrived, and a contract was formed then. The answer would change only if the offer had required the acceptance to reach the seller, which excludes the postal rule (Holwell Securities v Hughes). The seller is bound.

One attempt, marked. The score sheet is the same on every station; the criteria are the examiner's.

Under Your answer are your recording and your transcript as spoken, with the phrases that cost marks tinted where you said them, and a card for each saying what it cost and how to say it instead.

Transcript

So the first thing I would want to know is when each letter was posted and when each one arrived. Acceptance by post counts when it is posted. So there is a contract and the seller has to go through with it. And I would explain that the revocation came too late, because a revocation only counts once it arrives.

not enough detail

So there is a contract and the seller has to go through with it

When the contract was made is the whole question. Without the dates, the conclusion is asserted rather than shown, and the marker is listening for you to set Tuesday's acceptance against Wednesday's revocation unprompted.

Say: The acceptance took effect when it was posted on Tuesday, and the revocation only when it arrived on Wednesday, so a contract was formed on Tuesday.

The same answer with the two phrases that lost marks shown where they were said.

The Must not miss core button beside the doors opens the checklist the station is marked against, so you can read it before you sit (on the phone, open the station's row). A station that has none yet gets one written when you press it. You can also open it during the sitting, but that is recorded on the attempt.

Attempts#

Every attempt is kept, and a later sitting never overwrites an earlier one. Transcripts, marks and written feedback never expire. The audio, both your answer and the spoken feedback, is deleted after 90 days; after that, Make spoken feedback on the attempt's page speaks the feedback again.

Questions and vivas are counted apart, because one answer and a whole station are not the same score. Each station's row shows your best and your average for each one you have sat, the viva first. Expand it for your speaking time against the target, per mode, and the list of attempts, each marked Question or Viva. Feedback on an attempt plays its spoken feedback where it is, and the attempt itself opens its own page: the score and the feedback, the criteria, then What worked, what didn't, your answer, a better answer, the must-not-miss core and drills. ⋯ on that page regenerates the feedback in the current voice or deletes the attempt. The strips at the top of the tab total the whole board, one for each mode.

What your attempts lost marks on becomes cards in the From what you got wrong tray above them, which can also set a paper, a lecture or a station on those points. See cards.

Resit a station a week later to see whether the feedback changed what you say. There is no free-form mode: to be asked something new, write the station first.

What it needs#

Suggesting stations is never counted; on the free plan it uses the small tidying pool.

Writing a station is what counts. A free account is offered one proposal at a time and gets one station, written and answered once as a Question, with the transcript, marking and spoken feedback. After that, suggesting more, a second sitting and Answer the follow-up need a plan.

On either plan you can answer questions and sit vivas as often as you like, and both draw on the same included usage a lecture does. There is nothing separate to buy for the examiner, the viva included. Attempts, transcripts and feedback you already have always stay readable. See plans and usage.