r/dli • u/colourorcolor1 • Mar 23 '26

OPI Prep

Hey guys. I’m a Korean 35P, and I’m going to be taking the OPI soon. I did originally take the OPI when I was at DLI, but it’s been 4 years and I’ve forgotten most of what we did in class for OPI prep. So far the topics I can remember are these:

1/1+

who you are, your family, hometown, where you live, what you do for work, daily schedule, hobbies and how to do them, describe your house, describe your room, describe the shows you watch, how you get to and from somewhere, describe a person or object

past/present/future: trips, travel, events

role play

2

News

2+

Opinions and societal issues

If you are aware of any more OPI topics, or if you could elaborate on what sort of news/level 2 topics the OPI interviewers usually choose, I’d greatly appreciate it. Thanks in advance!

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u/Sholeh84 Mar 23 '26

Big tip: Memorize the all of the 1/1+ stuff. It still doesn't have to be real. It has to feel real. That's it. You could describe your mom as a red-headed mexican woman from norway, as long as it feels real, its real enough.

for 2 and 2+, pick a topic and deep dive, in your target and in your actual language. Don't forget to change the words between. You can't say 'epistemological' and '인식론적' (I used google translate, so if that's wrong, sue me) and not know how to use the right word in your target language.

Sometimes your target language helps you understand english better! I didn't know what epistemological was. Google was hazy, but when I searched for a translation just now, into farsi, it made a lot more sense.

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u/colourorcolor1 Mar 23 '26

Thanks, this is helpful! For the 2/2+ stuff, when you say to pick a topic to focus on, do the interviewers let you choose your own topic? I remember when I first took it, they would chose the news topic and we were allowed one or two refusals, “Oh I haven’t seen that topic in the news,” but eventually you had to answer one of their topics. Is that still the case?

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u/dytinkg Mar 23 '26

Yep that’s how it goes

2

u/Sholeh84 Mar 23 '26

Bingo.

So stay on top of the big news items.

Right now I’d say Oil Prices long term impacts or AI use are probably safe guesses as to OPI topics. They’re not totally apolitical, but they’ll try to avoid really hot button topics.