O-Level Oral Practice 1: The Shared Footpath
Read the clip description, then give yourself the real ten minutes before you look at anything below it. Speak your answer aloud and time it. Reading the model without doing that first is worth very little.
The clip
A covered footpath beside a row of shops on a weekday evening. It is busy. An elderly man walks slowly on the left with a trolley bag. Two schoolchildren come the other way, side by side, taking up most of the remaining width.
A food delivery rider comes up behind the old man on an electric bicycle, moving faster than walking pace. There is no room to pass. The rider slows, sounds a small bell twice, and the old man does not appear to hear it. The rider swings out around him, close, and the old man stops and puts a hand against the shopfront.
The rider does not look back. One of the schoolchildren says something to the other. The clip ends with the old man still standing there, resettling his grip on the trolley.
The prompt on screen
Some people say bicycles and delivery riders should be banned from footpaths altogether. Others say the footpath is the only safe place for them.
What do you think should be done, and why?
Plan it yourself first
Ten minutes. Do not read on until you have spoken your answer aloud once.
A worked plan
The situation, in one sentence. A path built for walking is being shared with something much faster, and the person least able to react is the one who gets hurt.
What the prompt actually asks. Not "are riders inconsiderate". It asks what should be done. So the answer has to end with a proposal, not a complaint.
Position. A total ban is the wrong answer, because it pushes riders onto the road where the danger is worse. Separate the two properly and enforce a speed.
Reason 1: a ban moves the danger, it does not remove it. Example: the rider in the clip is on an electric bicycle. Put him on that road, next to buses, and a collision is no longer a stumble against a shopfront.
Reason 2: the real problem is speed and width, not the vehicle. Example: the footpath in the clip has an old man, two children walking abreast and a rider, and there is simply not enough width for all of them. On a wide path with a painted lane, nothing in that clip happens.
The other side. The strongest argument for a ban is that an elderly pedestrian cannot be expected to get out of the way, and should not have to. That is fair, and it is why the answer cannot just be "be more careful": it has to be a rule someone enforces.
Close. Separate them where the path is wide enough, cap the speed where it is not.
A model response
Reveal a two-minute model
About 290 words, which is close to two minutes at an ordinary speaking pace. Time yourself against it: if you are finishing in ninety seconds you are rushing, and the delivery marks will show it.
I do not think banning them is the right answer, although I understand why people want it.
My first reason is that a ban does not remove the danger, it just moves it. The man in that clip was startled and put his hand out against a shop window. If you push that same rider onto the road, he is next to buses and lorries, and the next version of that moment is not a stumble, it is a hospital. We would have made the footpath safer and the rider's job far more dangerous, and I do not think we should trade one for the other.
My second reason is that the real problem in that clip is not the bicycle. It is the width. There is an elderly man with a trolley, two children walking side by side, and a rider, all on a path built for about two people. On a wider path with a painted lane, nothing in that clip happens at all. The vehicle is not what made it dangerous. The space did.
The strongest argument against me is the one the clip shows: the old man did not hear the bell. An elderly pedestrian cannot be expected to react in time, and it is not fair to ask him to. That is why my answer is not simply that riders should be more considerate. Being considerate is not a rule anybody enforces.
So what I would do is this. Where a path is wide enough, separate them with a marked lane. Where it is not, cap the speed to something close to walking pace, and enforce it. Keep them on the footpath, but slow them to the speed of the people already there.
Where the marks are in that answer
Reveal the marking notes
Response, 10 marks. Development and organisation of ideas; expression of ideas.
- It takes a position in the first sentence, so everything after it has a job.
- Two reasons, each developed rather than listed. The first follows the consequence through to what would actually happen. The second reframes the problem, from the vehicle to the space, which is the kind of move the top band means by "well-considered".
- It uses the clip as evidence without retelling it. The hand on the shopfront and the unheard bell each appear once, doing work.
- It concedes the other side properly: it agrees with the strongest opposing point and shows why it leads somewhere other than a ban.
- It answers the question asked. The prompt says "what should be done", and it ends with two specific measures.
- Vocabulary is ordinary but precise: startled, trade one for the other, enforce, close to walking pace. You do not need difficult words. You need words that are exactly right.
Delivery, 5 marks. Pronunciation, fluency, intonation.
- It is written in speakable sentences. Read it aloud and you will not run out of breath. That is why it was planned as notes and not as an essay.
- The repeated shape, "My first reason", "My second reason", "So what I would do is this", gives you places to pause and change pitch, which is where the intonation mark is won.
- The last sentence is short on purpose. A response that fades out loses the impression it built.
Try it again with a different position
The model argues against a ban. Now argue for one, using the same clip and the same ten minutes. Almost everything in the plan is reusable: the elderly man who cannot hear a bell, the width of the path, the rider who did not look back. A strong case exists on both sides, which is how these prompts are written, and practising the side you disagree with is the fastest way to find what your own argument is missing.
Back to Planned response · Next: Part 2: Spoken Interaction