The IPT Oral Tests are individually administered, structured oral interviews, where the examiner asks the student questions or gives prompts. The examiner follows a script in a printed test booklet, and scores the student's answers as correct or incorrect as each item is administered. The student interacts with the examiner, and for some questions, the examiner and student refer to a picture book as directed in the examiner's script. Other questions are simply oral prompts and responses between the examiner and the student. For example, students identify objects or actions in pictures, listen to brief stories and answer questions about them, and answer questions about themselves and their opinions and experiences.

The IPT Oral tests assess proficiency in four domains of oral English or Spanish: vocabulary, grammar, comprehension, and verbal expression. The test questions are divided into levels of increasing difficulty. At the end of each level, the examiner tallies the number of errors at that level and compares this to a scoring rule that tells the examiner to either stop testing or continue on to the next level. In this way, students advance through the test levels until the test is completed or until they stop at the highest level they can attain based on their language proficiency. The average test length is 15-20 minutes, though some tests may be much shorter if the student's proficiency is very low, while others may be longer.