Ergänzungsprüfung Deutsch (EPD) in Vienna: the oral exam, its topics and a plan for your talk

The oral part of the EPD, the German exam for admission to Vienna's universities, comes after the written part, and only those who passed the written part are invited. It's a conversation with a commission: first you give a talk on a task you chose yourself, then you discuss new material that you can't prepare for in advance. Below is how the exam runs, what tasks and topics come up, and what the commission wants to hear.

Everyone sits the oral part, including those whose coursework on the German course at the VWU itself was credited in place of the written part.¹

How the EPD oral exam works

Preparation starts when you receive two tasks from two different topic areas and choose one. You get at least 15 minutes to prepare, and for all of that time you can use a monolingual dictionary provided by the VWU and jot down key words.²

Then you speak freely for about five minutes on the questions printed with the task, the Leitfragen in German. Reading out a text written in advance or reciting something learned by heart doesn't count. Only after the talk are you given new material, and you discuss it for another five minutes or so without preparation.²

The commission has three members: your examiner, a second VWU teacher and a representative of the university. The result is announced straight after the exam.²

Each session has its own window for the oral exams, and all the windows are in the table in the article on dates and registration.

Prompts and Leitfragen

The material each part starts from is called an Impuls, a prompt, in the model. For the talk it's a chart, a short text or a cartoon. For the conversation the prompt can be a picture, a simple chart, a quotation or a statement, and with a statement you get two opposing positions and argue for one of them.²

In the model, each talk task comes with 5 Leitfragen, and they always follow the same pattern. If you know it, you walk into the exam with a ready-made plan for your talk. Say you chose a chart from the Medien area, for example about artificial intelligence. Then your five minutes break down like this:²

1. What is the prompt about? Briefly sum up its main point.
2. What is the situation in your country or in your everyday life?
3. What advantages and disadvantages do you see?
4. How will the topic develop in the future?
5. What measures do you propose, and why?

Topics of the EPD oral exam

The model names ten topic areas that the tasks of both the written and the oral exam are drawn from:²

• Arbeitswelt und Wirtschaft: work and the economy.
• Beziehungen und Geschlechtergerechtigkeit: relationships and gender equality.
• Gesellschaft und soziales Engagement: society and social engagement.
• Konsumgesellschaft: consumer society.
• Körperliche und mentale Gesundheit: physical and mental health.
• Lernen, Bildung, Studium, Wissenschaft: learning, education, university, science.
• Medien: media.
• Tourismus und Reisen: tourism and travel.
• Wohnen: housing.
• Umwelt: the environment.

Each topic can be approached from one of four angles: Globalisierung, Digitalisierung, Nachhaltigkeit and Zukunftstrends (globalisation, digitalisation, sustainability and future trends). So the same topic can come up as a question about its future or about its sustainability.

What the commission looks for in the oral EPD

The model publishes no points table for the oral part. Instead it describes what you need to show, starting with the sentence „Nicht Ihr Wissen, sondern Ihre Deutschkenntnisse werden geprüft.“ (It is not your knowledge but your German that is being tested.) What's assessed is how you speak German, and your knowledge of the topic itself doesn't count towards the grade.²

Short sentences full of mistakes and a thin vocabulary aren't enough, and neither is a memorised text recited mechanically. You don't have to speak perfectly or without mistakes, though. What you need to show is that you can:

• Apply what you've learned the way the task or the conversation requires.
• Understand the examiners and respond to them.
• Make it clear when you haven't understood something, disagree, or know little about the topic.
• Correct your own mistakes with the examiners' help.
• Express yourself so that you're understood without effort or misunderstandings.

How to practise for the EPD oral

Take each of the ten topics in turn and give a five-minute talk on it out loud from key words, with a clock and no paper. Then ask someone to put a question to you that you weren't expecting, and answer straight away.

In the oral trainer you choose a task, set the preparation time on the timer and record your talk. In the second part you answer follow-up questions from an AI on the spot, and you can run both parts back to back, as in the exam. Oral practice is added to the EPD subscription separately, and the terms are listed with the plans on the course page.

The written part, with all its sections, is covered in the EPD overview.

Sources

· 2 checked 25.09.2026

1. 1Statut des Vorstudienlehrganges der Wiener Universitäten (VWU) · checked 25.09.2026
2. 2Modell Ergänzungsprüfung Deutsch (gültig ab Juni 2026) · checked 23.09.2026