The route that changed while we listened
Both texts below are newly written practice sources about an invented community project.
Text One: A visitor's account of a community audio walk
At the library, I was given a card with five street names and a set of headphones. The organiser told us to follow the names in order, but each recording began with a sound from the next place: a gate clicking, a bus braking or cups being put on a table. I kept hearing the future route before I reached it. The walk was not simply a set of instructions; it made me listen for clues in the street around me.
The recordings had been made by residents. One woman described waiting outside the old bakery with her father, while a man remembered the same corner as the place where he first met his neighbours. Their voices were different, and neither account was presented as the single meaning of the street. At the fourth stop, I expected a story about the closed cinema, but the recording began with ten seconds of silence. I checked my card, wondering whether I had missed something, before the speaker explained that the silence was how the place sounded after the doors shut.
People in our group did not move together. Some stopped to listen again; others went ahead and waited. We met at the final bench, where the organiser asked us to write one detail we had noticed. I wrote down the squeak of a gate that had not appeared on the recording. The walk had made the neighbourhood feel both collected and unfinished: the headphones carried selected memories, while the street continued to supply sounds of its own.
Text Two: Extract from the audio walk archive
The project collected 36 resident recordings from five streets. The organiser selected 15 recordings and placed them in a fixed route. Each selected recording was checked by its contributor before the walk opened. The project team kept the following records.
| Archive record | What it contains |
|---|---|
| Audio files | The 15 recordings used on the route |
| Route cards | The five street names in the intended order |
| Contributor notes | Residents' short explanations of why they chose each sound or memory |
| Visitor notebooks | 42 written responses collected at the final bench, each describing one detail the visitor noticed on the walk |
The organiser later claimed, “The audio files are the best record of the project.”
Synthesise what you learn from both texts about making and experiencing the audio walk. Evaluate the organiser's claim that the audio files are the best record of the project.
382 exam-style questions on WJEC GCSE English Language 3.1.3 Short and extended response question types. Each one has a worked solution and a mark scheme showing where the marks go.