4 ms·
"oral exam" sounds funny. I can't help but imagine a person (whom I visualize as Bryan Cranston for obvious reason) examining someone with their mouth or having
by qwerty456127 4y ago
"oral exam" sounds funny. I can't help but imagine a person (whom I visualize as Bryan Cranston for obvious reason) examining someone with their mouth or having their mouth examined :-]
- not_gpt4 4y agoHes correct. It should be "verbal exam".
- tom-thistime 4y agoIn fact, though, it's "oral exam." But it does sound funny.
- not_gpt4 4y agolanguage, in fact, evolves. a rectal exam involves examining the examining the rectal cavity, so a oral exam should be reserved for examining the oral cavity.
- tom-thistime 4y agoI agree in general, but disagree on the details. In an oral exam, a student answers questions orally. That's how language has evolved so far. I can't imagine a situation where a committee of professors would need to examine a granduate student's rectum to evaluate knowledge, so the "rectal exam" above is poorly named. To further advance linguistic evolution, "rectal exam" should be reserved for occasions when the student is required to pronounce words rectally in response to questions in his or her field of study. That happens more often than you might think, plus it makes everything consistent.
- Retric 4y agoNo, oral is more clear. We also say something is an oral tradition not a verbal tradition because one of the definitions of oral is “Spoken rather than written.” One of the mean songs for Verbal is “Of, relating to, or associated with words.” So a written test could be a verbal test.
- macintux 4y ago“verbal” can be applied to either spoken or written word, but I get the sense that people default to “verbal” over “oral” just out of discomfort.
- mannykannot 4y ago'Oral' is also ambiguous. 'Vocal' might be better than either, though it sounds awkward, perhaps simply because it is not used. Then there's 'interrogation', which Heisenberg might have concurred with...
- msla 4y agoNo, verbal contrasts with written, as in verbal instructions versus written instructions. Is English your first language?
- macintux 4y agoYes, first and effectively only. First definition at MW: > of, relating to, or consisting of words https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/verbal https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/verbal
- msla 4y agohttps://www.lawdepot.com/blog/are-verbal-agreements-legally-binding/ https://www.lawdepot.com/blog/are-verbal-agreements-legally-... > When two or more parties come to an agreement without any written documentation, they create a verbal agreement (known formally as an oral contract). I think that alone demonstrates that verbal contrasts with written.
- macintux 4y agoThe fact that many people use it in opposition to written is insufficient proof that all dictionaries are wrong. Eventually it may only mean oral, but today it doesn’t.
- stuaxo 4y agoIt's how it's described in the UK system, so you get people taking their "French orals" which always sounded funny to me.
- kwhitefoot 4y agoPeople don't say viva any more? For viva voce. I must be getting old.
- mattkrause 4y agoAre all oral exams vivas? My (distant, secondhand) impression was that it was mostly used for the thesis defense.
- kwhitefoot 4y agoWell the original topic was Heisenberg's doctoral defence. And yes, it is mostly use for that even though the term itself is quite general.
- BeetleB 4y agoIt's how it is in the US as well.
- useryman 4y agoWhen I was in school, all of my teachers referred to language listening exams (a tape is played, you have a sheet of questions to answer) as "aural" which mirrors calling the spoken exams "orals". Having not heard the word before, I could barely even tell the words apart when mentioned.