[gumby]

Lots of good advice here. One important one is not to be afraid to pause* and think. Someone asks you a question and of course you want to answer right away to be responsive, enthusiastic, and all the other things people correctly tell you to be which are all swirling in your head.

So the interviewer asks you "I see you're a Java programmer: what are the most common library datastructures you use?" You could easily jump into "Yes, I have a lot of java experience, having worked on X and Y, and once I had to implement a custom hashmap because we had some unusual constraints blah blah". Just take a second to make sure you are answering the question actually asked: "Well in my Java code it sometimes feels like the only datastructure is ArrayList! Which is funny because when I write Python code I predominantly use maps".

This is good when you have some pre-planned answers (as has been suggested elsewhere) to make sure you use the right one. Also good when you have to think up the right answer: when you know what you want to say you can concentrate on saying it.

This problem affects those interviewing in their native language as well as those not in their native language, as with you. Everybody is nervous.

* I originally typed "stop and think" but really we're talking just for a second or two at most.