What happens in the 10 minutes of preparation before the O-Level English oral?

What does SEAB say happens in the preparation time?

The syllabus says only that the preparation happens and how long it lasts. Paper 4 of the O-Level / SEC G3 English oral (1184 / K300) is worth 30 marks and 20% of the subject, and lasts about 20 minutes, including 10 minutes of preparation. Part 1 is the Planned Response; Part 2 is the Spoken Interaction, a discussion with the examiners.

The step-by-step description of the room is not in the syllabus. It is in SEAB's Instructions to Candidates for the 2026 O-Level English oral (1184/04), printed in the Examination Rules and Regulations. In order, they say:

1. You sign the attendance sheet with the Assistant Oral Examiner, who gives you an Exam Centre Key to type in to start the silent preparation.
2. You watch the video clip quietly, through headphones, and prepare a response of up to two minutes on a given topic, using the video as a stimulus.
3. You are given a piece of paper to write notes on while you watch. The notes are not assessed.
4. At the end of the preparation time you are logged out automatically.
5. You may not carry on writing on the paper while you wait to be examined.
6. You take the paper into the exam room and may refer to it during the Planned Response. It goes into a box at the end of the oral.

Is the preparation time only for the Planned Response?

SEAB's instructions describe the preparation as planning your two-minute response, and that is its main job. But it is also the only preparation in the paper. The Spoken Interaction follows straight on from the response, and nothing in SEAB's instructions says you see its questions beforehand. The syllabus says the discussion is on "a topic broadly related to the video clip used in Part 1" and that the two parts "may be thematically linked". Anything you think about the wider topic, you think about now.

Our guidance: spend most of the time on the response, which is 15 marks you can plan for. Keep the last part of the time for the wider topic: who else the issue affects, and what someone who disagrees with you would say. The discussion is worth 15 marks, the same as the response. The kinds of follow-up question candidates recall can help you guess where it might go.

Can you watch the clip more than once?

The English documents do not say. Neither the syllabus nor the 2026 instructions say whether the clip can be replayed during the preparation. The Chinese syllabus (K320) says plainly that its candidates may watch the clip more than once. The English one has no such sentence. Because nothing official says you can, our guidance is to plan as though you see it once: write notes while it plays, and treat any second viewing as extra.

How should you use the preparation time?

SEAB does not set a method. The method below is ours, built backwards from what the Response criterion rewards. Its top band asks for a response that is "well-considered" and "well-developed and organised". The full scale is on how Response, Delivery and Spoken Interaction are marked, band by band.

1. Read the prompt as soon as you can see it. Underline the question words. "Is this a good way to…" asks for a judgement; "Who would want to…" asks you to think about particular people. Watch the clip with that question in mind, not as general viewing.
2. Note details while the clip plays. Three or four things you actually saw: who is there, what they are doing, where it is, anything that looks like a cause or a result. These become your evidence. Using what you saw as evidence goes into this step in detail.
3. Decide your answer before you plan anything else. One line: yes, no, or "it depends on…". A plan with no position turns into a description.
4. Choose two or three points, and give each one a reason it matters. Each point gets a detail from the clip or your own life, and a "so what". Write a keyword for each, not a sentence.
5. Write your first sentence and your last as keywords. The first answers the prompt. The last comes back to it, sharper than when you started. How to structure the two minutes sets out shapes that work.
6. Use what is left on the wider topic. One note on the strongest opposing view and one on a group of people the clip did not show. The recalled discussion questions on our follow-up questions page move outward in this way, though recall cannot tell you what you will be asked.

What should your notes look like?

Write them to glance at, not to read from. You may refer to the paper during the Planned Response, so it works as a prompt card. It is not marked, so it does not need to be neat or complete. Our guidance: keywords in a numbered order, large enough to find in a second. A script tempts you to read it, and then you are reading to the examiners instead of speaking to them. The criterion is about presenting ideas "to engage the listener", and a script works against that.

The prompt is a recalled one: candidates reported it afterwards, and two independent compilers agree on it. SEAB publishes no past oral papers. Full answers to this prompt, at two bands, are on the Planned Response page.

What happens when the preparation time ends?

The 2026 instructions say you are logged out automatically and wait to be called, without writing anything more. In the exam room the examiners raise the same prompt and invite you to give the response you prepared. If they show you a card to signal that your two minutes are up, you finish quickly. The discussion follows. The paper of notes goes into a box when the oral ends.