Technology in the O-Level English oral: what the clips have shown and how to talk about them

How many technology clips are on record, and how reliable are they?

Our corpus has 3 technology rows among its 31 current-format rows, from the July sittings 2023 to 2025. All 3 are corroborated: two publishers that did not copy each other agree on each theme. With only 3 rows, read them as examples rather than a pattern. Each year's rows are listed on the O-Level English oral topics page.

• 2023 · Students doing science practical experiments in a lab · Planned Response · two or more independent sources
• 2023 · Robot exhibition - robots singing / drawing portraits · Planned Response · two or more independent sources
• 2025 · Cleaning robots operating at Changi Airport · Planned Response · two or more independent sources

The rows record themes reliably and wording loosely, and we omit days, which the compilers dispute. The family is our grouping, not SEAB's, so it needs a plain gloss: these rows are about robots, machines and hands-on learning, and no current-format row we hold is about phones, apps or social media. The lab practical is filed here rather than under school and study because its prompt was about hands-on learning as against other ways of learning.

What does the syllabus ask you to respond to?

A clip and a prompt together. The part is worth 15 marks, and the syllabus puts it this way:

The prompt sets the question; the clip supplies the evidence. Two of the three recalled technology clips put machines in public places, so our guidance is to look at the people around the machine (who it serves, who works beside it, who ignores it) and to use something seen, not something said. For a full written answer on a recalled technology clip (cleaning robots operating at changi airport, 2025), annotated against the descriptors, see the worked answers on the Planned Response page.

What kinds of question have technology prompts asked?

Here is our paraphrase of the three technology prompts (our wording and our grouping, not SEAB's). They asked candidates to:

• say whether they and their friends would prefer one way of learning over another;
• say whether what they saw changed their opinion of a technology;
• judge whether machines like the one shown are useful.

Each of these can be answered with a flat yes. Each also contains a hidden question (useful to whom? preferred for what? changed from what?) and finding it is the quickest route to a well-considered response.

What can you say about technology? Talking points of our own

Starting points of our own, for thinking rather than reciting; they are guidance, not SEAB's view.

• Useful to whom? A machine can help the company that owns it, the worker beside it and the public using it in very different amounts. Say which you mean.
• Jobs changed, not only jobs lost. A cleaning robot may take the dull part of a job and leave the part that needs judgement. Or it may not. Pick a side and give a reason.
• Machines doing human things. A robot that sings or draws portraits raises the question of what we value in art and performance: the result, or the person who made it?
• Real and simulated. A lab experiment you can touch and a simulation on a screen teach different things. Which matters more depends on what you are trying to learn.
• Who is left behind. Older people, people without a smartphone, people who simply prefer to ask someone. A service that goes fully digital chooses who it serves.
• Before and after. When a prompt asks whether something changed your mind, the structure is ready-made: what you thought, what you saw, what you think now.