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Interview
Community Profile

Forty Years on the Allotment: A Conversation with Mr Okafor

📂 Long Practice And Ordinary Expertise 🎭 What Is Learned By Doing The Same Thing For A Long Time ⏱ 20–55 min
About this text
🎯 Learning objectives
  • Students can read and follow a community-style profile interview.
  • Students can use question forms appropriate to interviewing an older person about their work or practice.
  • Students can describe a practice or skill that has been built over many years.
  • Students can use simple past, present, and present perfect to describe a long-running activity.
  • Students can write a short profile interview with someone in their community.
  • Students can recognise the conventions of a community newsletter or local-paper profile.
  • Students can discuss what we learn from people who have done one thing for a long time.
💡 Ideas for using this in a lesson
  • Students read the interview in pairs, taking the roles of the journalist and Mr Okafor. Practise the dialogue.
  • Cultural sharing: 'Is there someone in your community who has done one thing for a very long time? What do they do?' Students share in small groups.
  • Vocabulary work: students collect every gardening word in the text (soil, seed, weed, harvest). Add five more from their own knowledge.
  • Sequencing: students cut the interview into separate exchanges and put them back in an order that makes sense. Discuss why this order works.
  • Writing task: students write a short profile interview (10–15 lines) with an older person they know, real or imagined.
  • Discussion (B1+): 'What can we learn from people who have done one thing for forty years that we cannot learn from books?'
  • Pair role-play: in pairs, students invent a different long-serving community figure (a fisherman, a baker, a teacher) and interview each other.
  • Compare with the Marina Bell interview: students discuss how the two interviews are different — celebrity vs community, managed vs direct, journalist's role.
  • Reflective task (B2+): students write about a practice they have built up over time, however small, and what it has taught them.
  • Real-world application: if possible, students go and interview a real older person in their community, writing up the conversation as a small profile.
🏷️ Context
Low ResourcePairworkGroupworkDiscussionDialogue PracticeSpeaking PracticeIntergenerationalCultural SharingCommunity FocusWorks Anywhere
📦 Materials needed
Paper And Pen
⚠️ This text is gentle, warm, and practically useful. It deals with an older man being interviewed about forty years of allotment gardening. There is nothing distressing in the content. The main thing to be aware of is that the practice described — allotment gardening — is a specifically British and Northern European tradition, though similar practices exist worldwide under different names. The cultural_note discusses these equivalents. The text is genuinely useful for students who will need to read and write community-style profiles in their own work or studies, and the warm direct register at the higher levels is a useful counterpoint to the more careful celebrity-interview register some students may already know. The C1 and C2 versions are deliberately less self-consciously literary than some interview writing; they aim for the kind of careful warm community journalism that good local newsletters and magazines actually produce, rather than for elaborate philosophical reflection.
⏱ Duration by level
A1
20 min
A2
25 min
B1
35 min
B2
45 min
C1
50 min
C2
55 min
🎚️ Differentiation tip
For A1 and A2, focus on simple question and answer forms, gardening vocabulary, and basic past and present tenses. For B1, work on present perfect ('I have been doing this for forty years') and on the texture of a real conversation that pauses for the work to continue. For B2, the focus shifts to the texture of a person who speaks plainly — the surprising insights that come from someone not used to packaging their experience for journalists. For C1 and C2, the interview becomes a fuller community profile, but written in a warm direct register rather than a self-consciously literary one — the kind of careful local journalism that good newsletters actually produce. The piece works well for paired reading aloud at every level. It is also a useful model for students who may need to write profile interviews for their own work or studies, in any language.
🌍 Cultural note
The 'allotment' in the title refers to a small piece of land rented by an individual or family, usually from the local council, for growing vegetables and flowers. Allotments are common in the UK, the Netherlands, Germany, the Scandinavian countries, and parts of Eastern Europe. The equivalent practice exists in many other parts of the world but takes different forms. In some countries, families grow vegetables on small plots near their homes (the 'kitchen garden'); in others, communal village gardens are common; in others, urban community gardens have grown up in recent decades; in others again, a small balcony or rooftop garden serves the same function. The deeper question — what an older person learns from many years of growing food in the same patch of ground — is universal, even where the form varies. When teaching this text, invite students to share what equivalent practices exist in their own context. Some students will recognise allotments immediately; others may know only a different version of the same idea; both are useful.
Beginner
Intermediate
Advanced
⏱ Duration: 20 min 🎯 Focus: Simple present and past; question forms; gardening and food vocabulary; numbers and time periods; 'how long' and 'since'
Before You Read / Listen
  • Q1Do you grow any vegetables or plants?
  • Q2Did your grandparents grow food?
  • Q3What is your favourite vegetable?
  • Q4Do older people in your area grow things in the garden?
  • Q5What do you know about gardens?
The Text
An allotment is a small piece of land. People grow vegetables and flowers there. The land is not at their home.
Mr Okafor is 75 years old. He has had an allotment for 40 years. The journalist Maya is from the community newsletter. She visits him on a Saturday morning.
MAYA Hello, Mr Okafor. Thank you for talking to me.
MR OKAFOR Hello, Maya. Sit down. I will work and we will talk.
MAYA How long have you had this allotment?
MR OKAFOR Forty years.
MAYA What do you grow?
MR OKAFOR Tomatoes, beans, onions, potatoes. Some flowers too.
MAYA Why did you start?
MR OKAFOR I wanted to grow food for my family. And I like to be outside.
MAYA Do you come every day?
MR OKAFOR Most days. Maybe five days a week.
MAYA Thank you, Mr Okafor.
MR OKAFOR You are welcome. Take some tomatoes home.
Key Vocabulary
allotment noun
a small piece of land where people grow vegetables and flowers
"Mr Okafor has an allotment."
land noun
ground; a piece of earth
"A small piece of land."
to grow (plants) verb
to make plants get bigger by giving them care
"He grows tomatoes."
vegetables noun (plural)
plants like carrots, onions, and potatoes that we eat
"Vegetables and flowers."
tomato noun
a red round fruit that we eat in salads
"He grows tomatoes."
newsletter noun
a small magazine for a community or group
"The community newsletter."
to visit verb
to go to see someone
"She visits him on a Saturday morning."
outside adverb
not inside a building; in the open air
"I like to be outside."
Questions
Comprehension
  • What is an allotment?
    Answer
    A small piece of land where people grow vegetables and flowers, usually not at their home.
  • How old is Mr Okafor?
    Answer
    75 years old.
  • How long has he had the allotment?
    Answer
    Forty years.
  • What does he grow?
    Answer
    Tomatoes, beans, onions, potatoes, and some flowers.
  • Why did he start?
    Answer
    He wanted to grow food for his family. He also likes being outside.
  • How often does he go to the allotment?
    Answer
    Most days — about five days a week.
  • What does he give Maya at the end?
    Answer
    Tomatoes — he tells her to take some home.
Vocabulary
  • What does 'to grow' mean?
    Answer
    To make plants get bigger by giving them care.
  • What is a 'newsletter'?
    Answer
    A small magazine for a community or group.
Discussion
  • Do people in your country have small gardens for vegetables?
    Discussion prompts
    Common answers: 'Yes, near the house'; 'Yes, in the village'; 'No, but my grandmother does'; 'In my country, families have a small garden behind the house'. A useful cultural-share.
Personal
  • Have you ever grown a vegetable or a flower?
    Teacher guidance
    Students' own experience. Common answers: 'Yes, tomatoes at school'; 'Yes, on my balcony'; 'No, but I want to'; 'My mother has many plants'. Be warm. All answers are good.
  • Who is the oldest person you know? What do they do?
    Teacher guidance
    Students' own answer. Common answers: 'My grandmother — she cooks'; 'My grandfather — he reads'; 'A neighbour — he walks every day'. A warm question.
Writing Task
Prompt
Write 5 questions and answers for an interview with someone older you know. Use these starts: 'How long have you ___? What do you ___? Why did you ___? Do you ___ every day? What do you like about ___?'
Model Answer

How long have you been a teacher? Forty years. What do you teach? I teach history. Why did you start? I love history and I love children. Do you teach every day? Yes, I do. What do you like about teaching? I like the questions children ask.

Activities
  • Read the interview in pairs. One student is Maya, the other is Mr Okafor. Practise the dialogue.
  • Drawing: students draw an allotment with vegetables and flowers. Compare in pairs.
  • Question word game: students make a question for each word — How long? What? Why? When? Do you?
  • Sequencing: the teacher mixes up the lines. Students put them in order.
  • Class share: each student says one older person they know. 'I know ___. They have done ___ for many years.'
  • Pair role-play: in pairs, students invent a different older person and interview each other using the same questions.
⏱ Duration: 25 min 🎯 Focus: Question forms; present perfect ('I have been doing this for…'); past simple for the start of activities; longer answers with 'because' and 'so'; the small framing of a profile piece
Before You Read / Listen
  • Q1Do older people in your community keep gardens or grow food?
  • Q2Why do some people enjoy gardening?
  • Q3What can a young person learn from someone who has done one thing for a long time?
  • Q4Do you read your local newsletter or local newspaper?
  • Q5What is the difference between gardening for fun and gardening for food?
  • Q6Have you ever helped to grow something? What was it like?
The Text
Our community newsletter is doing a series of short profiles of long-serving members of the local allotment association. (An allotment is a small piece of land that people rent from the council to grow vegetables and flowers.) Mr Joseph Okafor has been gardening on the same plot for forty years. He is 75 years old. He came to live in this country in his early twenties, and he started his allotment a few years later. I went to meet him on a Saturday morning while he was working.
MAYA Mr Okafor, thank you for letting me visit. How long have you been on this allotment?
MR OKAFOR Forty years this April. I started in 1985.
MAYA Why did you start?
MR OKAFOR Two reasons. My family liked the vegetables I grew at home, but our garden was small. I wanted more space. And in my country, my father had grown vegetables. I wanted to grow them too. It made me feel close to him.
MAYA What do you grow?
MR OKAFOR Tomatoes, beans, onions, potatoes, peppers, herbs. I also grow some flowers — for my wife. She likes flowers in the kitchen.
MAYA Forty years is a long time. Has the allotment changed?
MR OKAFOR Yes, many things. The soil is different now — better, I think, because I have looked after it. The other allotments around me have changed too. Older people leave; younger people come. Some only stay for one year. Some stay for twenty.
MAYA Do you come here every day?
MR OKAFOR Most days, especially in summer. In winter, only twice a week. The plants don't need me so much in winter.
MAYA What do you do here, when you come?
MR OKAFOR I weed. I plant. I water. I check things. Sometimes I just sit and look. The looking is also part of the work.
MAYA What advice would you give to someone who wants to start an allotment?
MR OKAFOR Start small. Don't try to grow everything in the first year. And listen to the people who have been doing it longer than you. They know things they cannot easily explain.
MAYA Thank you, Mr Okafor. This was very helpful for the newsletter.
MR OKAFOR You are welcome. Here — take some tomatoes home. They are ready today.
Key Vocabulary
long-serving adjective
(adjective) having done something for a long time
"Long-serving members of the allotment association."
to rent verb
to pay money to use something that belongs to someone else
"Land that people rent from the council."
council noun
the local government of a town or area
"Rent from the council."
plot (of land) noun
a small piece of land for a particular use
"On the same plot for forty years."
soil noun
the earth that plants grow in
"The soil is different now."
to weed verb
to remove plants you don't want from a garden
"I weed."
to look after (something) phrase verb
(phrase verb) to take care of something
"I have looked after the soil."
ready (of food) adjective
(adjective) ripe and good to eat
"They are ready today."
Questions
Comprehension
  • What is the community newsletter doing?
    Answer
    A series of short profiles of long-serving members of the local allotment association.
  • How long has Mr Okafor been on his allotment?
    Answer
    Forty years (since 1985, this April).
  • What two reasons does he give for starting?
    Answer
    (1) His family liked the vegetables he grew at home, but their garden was small, so he wanted more space. (2) His father had grown vegetables in his country of origin; growing them himself made him feel close to his father.
  • Why does he grow flowers?
    Answer
    For his wife. She likes flowers in the kitchen.
  • How has the allotment changed in forty years?
    Answer
    The soil is better, because he has looked after it. The other allotments around him have changed too — older people leave, younger people come. Some only stay for one year; some stay for twenty.
  • How often does he go in summer and winter?
    Answer
    Most days in summer. Only twice a week in winter, because the plants don't need him so much.
  • What does he do when he just sits and looks?
    Answer
    He says: 'The looking is also part of the work.'
  • What two pieces of advice does he give for starting an allotment?
    Answer
    (1) Start small — don't try to grow everything in the first year. (2) Listen to people who have been doing it longer. 'They know things they cannot easily explain.'
Vocabulary
  • What does 'to rent' mean?
    Answer
    To pay money to use something that belongs to someone else. People rent allotments from the council.
  • What does 'long-serving' mean?
    Answer
    Having done something for a long time. The newsletter is profiling members who have been part of the allotment association for many years.
Inference
  • Why does Mr Okafor say 'the looking is also part of the work'?
    Suggested interpretation
    Because gardening is not only physical work like weeding and watering. Some of the most useful work is just paying attention — noticing if a plant is unwell, if the soil is too dry, if something is starting to grow. By calling looking 'part of the work', he is saying that observation matters as much as action. This is something many older people in any practice would recognise.
  • Why does Mr Okafor say 'they know things they cannot easily explain'?
    Suggested interpretation
    Because experienced people often have knowledge in their hands, eyes, and judgement that they cannot fully put into words. They know when a plant needs water, or when the weather is going to change, but they may not be able to explain how. The advice 'listen to them' suggests watching and copying, not just asking questions.
Discussion
  • Why might someone come to an allotment for forty years and never get tired of it?
    Discussion prompts
    Common answers: each year is different; plants are always changing; weather is always different; the same plot teaches you new things over time; you build something slowly that you cannot build quickly. A useful question.
  • What things in your country do older people do that younger people might forget?
    Discussion prompts
    Common answers: traditional cooking, hand sewing, growing food, traditional music, fixing things, particular crafts. Encourage cultural-specific examples.
Personal
  • Is there something an older person in your family knows how to do that you would like to learn?
    Teacher guidance
    Students' own experience. Common answers: 'Yes, my grandmother knows how to make ___'; 'My grandfather can ___'; 'My uncle's traditional craft'. Be warm.
Writing Task
Prompt
Write a short profile interview (about 10 lines) for a community newsletter. Choose someone who has done one thing for a long time — a teacher, a baker, a fisherman, a market trader, a religious figure. Include a short framing introduction and 5–7 questions and answers.
Model Answer

Our community newsletter is doing a series of short profiles of long-serving local people. Mrs Singh has been running the small bakery on Mill Street for thirty-five years. She is sixty-eight. I went to meet her early one morning before the bakery opened.

ME: Mrs Singh, how long have you had the bakery?
MRS SINGH: Thirty-five years this autumn.
ME: Why did you start?
MRS SINGH: My mother was a baker. I learned from her, and I wanted my own shop.
ME: What is the hardest part of the work?
MRS SINGH: Getting up at four o'clock every morning. Even after thirty-five years, it is hard.
ME: What advice would you give to a young baker starting now?
MRS SINGH: Be patient. Bread does not hurry, and you cannot make it hurry.
ME: Thank you for talking to me, Mrs Singh.
MRS SINGH: Take a small loaf home. It is fresh.

Activities
  • Read the interview in pairs. Take the roles of Maya and Mr Okafor. Practise the dialogue.
  • Find the questions: students underline every question Maya asks. Note what kind of answer each one invites.
  • Reported speech practice: students rewrite three of Mr Okafor's answers in reported speech ('Mr Okafor said that...').
  • Mini-interview: in pairs, students interview each other about a hobby or interest they have had for some time. Write the interview down in speaker format.
  • Cultural sharing: in groups, students discuss what equivalent of an allotment exists in their country.
  • Sentence frames: 'I have been doing this for ___ years. I started because ___. The hardest part is ___.' Each student writes three sentences about a real or imagined long practice.
  • Compare with A1: students compare the A1 and A2 versions and find three things the A2 adds (the framing introduction, the reasons for starting, the advice, the gift of tomatoes).
⏱ Duration: 35 min 🎯 Focus: Present perfect; past simple; descriptive vocabulary; the texture of a real conversation that pauses for the work to continue; the warm direct register of community journalism
Before You Read / Listen
  • Q1Have you ever spoken to someone who has done one job for over thirty years?
  • Q2What kind of things does a person learn from a long, slow practice?
  • Q3Why might it be useful for a community newsletter to do profiles of long-serving local people?
  • Q4Have you noticed older people in your community pass on small everyday knowledge?
  • Q5What is the difference between learning something from a book and learning it from a person?
  • Q6Why do older people sometimes give advice that younger people don't fully understand at first?
The Text
Our community newsletter is running a small series of profiles of long-serving members of the Riverside Allotments. (For readers who do not know — an allotment is a small piece of land, usually rented from the local council, where individuals or families grow vegetables, fruit, and flowers.) Mr Joseph Okafor has been gardening on the same plot at Riverside for forty years. He is 75. I went to meet him on a Saturday morning in April, when the spring planting was just beginning.
He was already at work when I arrived — kneeling at the far end of his plot, doing something careful to a row of small green seedlings. He stood up slowly when he saw me, dusted his hands off on his trousers, and walked across to meet me at the small wooden bench by the gate. He had a thermos of tea ready and offered me a cup before I had asked any questions.
MAYA Thank you for letting me come, Mr Okafor. How long have you been on this allotment?
MR OKAFOR Forty years this April. I came to the country in my early twenties, and I started here in 1985, when my eldest son was small.
MAYA What made you start?
MR OKAFOR Two reasons. The garden at our house was very small, and my wife and I wanted more vegetables for the family. And my father had been a gardener — not on an allotment, but on family land in Nigeria, where I grew up. I thought, when I came here, that I would like to grow some of the same things he had grown. It made me feel close to him, even though he was far away.
MAYA Does he still grow things?
MR OKAFOR He died many years ago. I think of him most when I am planting beans. He used to plant beans in the same way I do now.
Mr Okafor paused, and looked back across the plot. He gestured at it with a slow movement of his hand. The plot was about ten metres long and four metres wide, neatly divided into beds of different sizes. There were small wooden labels in the soil; an old wheelbarrow leaned against a shed; a row of young bean plants was just visible against a line of canes.
MR OKAFOR I should keep working while I talk. The seedlings need to go in today.
MAYA Of course. I can ask while you work.
He went back to his row, knelt down again, and began carefully placing seedlings in the soil — one in each small hole he had already made.
MAYA What do you grow?
MR OKAFOR Tomatoes, beans, onions, potatoes, peppers, herbs. I also grow flowers along that side, for my wife. She likes them in the kitchen.
MAYA How has the allotment changed since you started?
MR OKAFOR Many things. The soil is much better now — that is forty years of looking after it. The other allotments have changed too. People come and go. Some only stay for one season; some stay for twenty years and then their children take over. The association has become more international over time. When I started, I was one of the few from outside Britain. Now there are people from many places.
MAYA Is the gardening different in different communities?
MR OKAFOR A little. People grow what their families grew. The allotment next to mine is run by a Polish family — they grow things I do not grow. We swap plants sometimes.
MAYA What advice would you give someone starting an allotment now?
MR OKAFOR Three things. Start small — do not try to grow everything in the first year. Listen to the people who have been here longer. And be patient. Most of what you learn here, you cannot learn in a week, or a month, or even a year. You learn it by being here, season after season.
MAYA After forty years, do you still learn things?
Mr Okafor looked up from his seedlings and laughed quietly.
MR OKAFOR Every year. The weather is different. The soil is different. The plants are different. I am different. I learned something new just last week — about a problem with my onions that I had never seen before. Forty years is not enough time to learn everything.
MAYA Thank you for the conversation, Mr Okafor. The newsletter will print this in the spring issue.
MR OKAFOR You are welcome. Take some tomatoes home — these ones are ready. And tell the newsletter that we always need new members. Riverside has space for two more this year.
I walked back to my car with a small bag of tomatoes and several pages of notes. Mr Okafor went back to his seedlings. The morning was getting warmer, and the spring planting, as he had said, needed to be done.
Key Vocabulary
to kneel verb
to put your knees on the ground
"Kneeling at the far end of his plot."
seedling noun
a very young plant, just starting to grow
"Small green seedlings."
to dust off phrase verb
(phrase verb) to brush dirt or dust away with the hand
"He dusted his hands off on his trousers."
thermos noun
a special bottle that keeps drinks hot or cold
"He had a thermos of tea ready."
to gesture verb
to make a movement with the hand to show or point at something
"He gestured at it with a slow movement of his hand."
neatly divided phrase
(phrase) carefully separated into clear parts
"Neatly divided into beds of different sizes."
canes noun (plural)
long thin sticks used to support climbing plants
"A line of canes."
season after season phrase
(phrase) over many seasons; year after year
"Season after season."
to take over (something) phrase verb
(phrase verb) to start running or managing something that someone else used to run
"Their children take over."
Questions
Comprehension
  • Where was Mr Okafor when Maya arrived?
    Answer
    Already at work — kneeling at the far end of his plot, doing something careful to a row of small green seedlings.
  • How did he greet Maya?
    Answer
    He stood up slowly, dusted his hands off on his trousers, walked across to meet her at the bench by the gate, and offered her a cup of tea from a thermos.
  • What two reasons did he give for starting the allotment?
    Answer
    (1) Their garden at home was small, and the family wanted more vegetables. (2) His father had been a gardener in Nigeria, and growing the same things made Mr Okafor feel close to him, even when his father was far away.
  • What does Mr Okafor say about his father now?
    Answer
    His father died many years ago. He thinks of him most 'when I am planting beans. He used to plant beans in the same way I do now.'
  • What do we learn about the plot from Maya's description?
    Answer
    It is about ten metres long and four metres wide, neatly divided into beds of different sizes. There are small wooden labels in the soil, an old wheelbarrow against a shed, and a row of young bean plants against a line of canes.
  • How has the allotment association changed?
    Answer
    It has 'become more international over time'. When Mr Okafor started, he was one of the few from outside Britain. Now there are people from many places.
  • What does he say about gardening across different communities?
    Answer
    'People grow what their families grew.' The Polish family next to him grows things he doesn't grow. They swap plants sometimes.
  • What three pieces of advice does he give?
    Answer
    (1) Start small — don't try to grow everything in the first year. (2) Listen to people who have been there longer. (3) Be patient — 'most of what you learn here, you cannot learn in a week, or a month, or even a year. You learn it by being here, season after season.'
  • Does Mr Okafor still learn things after forty years?
    Answer
    Yes — 'every year'. The weather, soil, and plants are different each year, and so is he. He learned something new just last week about a problem with his onions that he had never seen before.
Vocabulary
  • What is a 'seedling'?
    Answer
    A very young plant, just starting to grow.
  • What does 'season after season' mean?
    Answer
    Over many seasons; year after year. Mr Okafor uses the phrase to describe the slow way that allotment knowledge builds up — not all at once, but gradually, with each new spring, summer, autumn, and winter.
Inference
  • Why does the writer describe Mr Okafor's small gestures (kneeling, dusting hands off, offering tea) at the start?
    Suggested interpretation
    Because the small physical details bring him to life as a real person. Without them, he would just be a voice answering questions. The detail of the thermos of tea also tells us he was prepared for the visit and wanted to make Maya welcome — small ordinary signs of care.
  • Why does Mr Okafor say he should keep working while he talks?
    Suggested interpretation
    Because the seedlings need to go in today, regardless of the interview. The detail tells us something about him: he is not used to being interviewed, and he does not stop his work for journalists. The interview happens around the work, not instead of it. This shapes the rhythm of the conversation — questions and answers between handfuls of seedlings.
  • Why does Mr Okafor mention that he and the Polish family next door swap plants?
    Suggested interpretation
    Because it shows the allotment is more than gardening — it is also a small community. People who garden differently can still share, learn from each other, and exchange. The detail makes the allotment feel alive and connected, not just a place where individuals grow their own food separately.
Discussion
  • What does Mr Okafor mean when he says you can only learn allotment work 'season after season'?
    Discussion prompts
    Common answers: each season teaches you something different; you cannot speed it up; you have to live through several years of weather, plants, and problems before you really understand. The advice applies to many practices — language learning, cooking, professional skills. A useful question.
  • Why might a community newsletter want to publish profiles of long-serving members?
    Discussion prompts
    Common answers: to honour their contribution; to record their knowledge before it is lost; to encourage younger people to join; to build community feeling; to recognise people whose work is usually invisible. A useful question.
Personal
  • Is there an older person in your community whose work or skill you have noticed?
    Teacher guidance
    Students' own experience. Common answers: 'Yes, an old man who repairs shoes'; 'A woman who has run a small shop for many years'; 'My grandmother, who knows traditional medicines'. Be warm.
Writing Task
Prompt
Write a short profile interview (200–250 words) for a community newsletter or local paper. Choose someone — real or imagined — who has done one thing in your community for many years. Include: a brief introduction (who they are, where you met them); 5–7 questions and answers in speaker format; one or two small details about what they look like or are doing; a brief closing line.
Model Answer

Our community paper is doing a small series of profiles of long-serving local figures. Mr Diallo has been the caretaker of our community hall for twenty-eight years. I went to meet him on a Tuesday afternoon while he was working on the building's old wooden floor.

When I arrived, he was on his hands and knees, sanding a small section of the floor by the stage. He stood up, brushed off his apron, and shook my hand warmly.

ME: Mr Diallo, thank you for meeting me. How long have you been the caretaker here?
MR DIALLO: Twenty-eight years next month.
ME: How did you start?
MR DIALLO: I came to clean for one week, when the regular man was ill. After that week, they asked me to stay.
ME: What is the hardest part of the work?
MR DIALLO: The roof in winter, when there are leaks. And telling people they cannot have the hall on a date that is already booked.
ME: What do you like best?
MR DIALLO: When weddings happen here. I see the families come back, year after year, sometimes for three generations.
ME: What advice would you give someone starting a job like yours?
MR DIALLO: Get to know the building. It will tell you what it needs.

I left him to his sanding. The wood, in the small bright section he had worked on, looked already different from the rest.

Activities
  • Reading aloud in pairs: students take the roles of Maya and Mr Okafor. Try the dialogue with the rhythm of someone working while talking — pauses, restarts, returning to the seedlings.
  • The setting: students underline every detail Maya gives about the allotment itself (size, beds, labels, wheelbarrow, canes). Why does the journalist include these?
  • Plain wisdom: students collect the three or four things Mr Okafor says that could be advice for many kinds of practice (start small; listen; be patient; season after season). Discuss where else this advice applies.
  • Cultural comparison: in pairs, students discuss what an equivalent of Mr Okafor's allotment is in their country.
  • Profile writing: students write their own community-newsletter-style profile of a real or imagined long-serving local person.
  • Sentence frames: 'I have been doing this for ___ years. I started because ___. What I have learned is ___.' Each student writes three sentences for an imagined profile subject.
  • Pair role-play: in pairs, students invent a long-serving local figure and interview each other.
  • Compare with A2: students compare the A2 and B1 versions and identify three things the B1 adds (the description of Mr Okafor working, the details of the plot, the Polish neighbours, the closing image).
⏱ Duration: 45 min 🎯 Focus: Sustained warm community profile; layered description and dialogue; the journalist's clear but not heavy presence; small specific physical detail; the texture of a person who answers directly; the careful organisation of a longer profile piece
Before You Read / Listen
  • Q1What can you tell about a person from how their workspace looks?
  • Q2Why might older people in any community know things that are not written down anywhere?
  • Q3What is the difference between someone who has done one thing for forty years and someone who has done many different things?
  • Q4Why might a community newsletter profile feel different from a magazine interview with a famous person?
  • Q5What does it mean to be 'expert' in something where most of the work is hidden — like growing vegetables?
  • Q6Why might a younger journalist find it easier or harder to interview a much older person?
  • Q7How does an interview change when the subject keeps working while talking?
The Text
Our community newsletter is running a series of profiles of long-serving members of the Riverside Allotments. (For those who don't know: an allotment is a small piece of land — usually rented from the local council — where individuals or families grow vegetables, fruit, and flowers. The Riverside site has fifty plots, behind the old factory on Meadow Lane.) Mr Joseph Okafor has been gardening the same plot at Riverside for forty years. He is seventy-five. I went to meet him on a bright Saturday morning in April, when most of the allotment-holders had begun their spring planting.
He was already at work when I arrived — kneeling at the far end of his plot, doing something careful to a row of small green seedlings. The plot itself was easy to recognise from the description he had given me on the phone: ten metres by four, neatly divided into beds, with a small wooden shed at one end painted dark green, and a row of bean canes already up against the south side. He stood up slowly when he saw me, dusted his hands off on the front of his trousers, and walked across to meet me at the wooden bench near the gate. A thermos of tea was already there, and two small enamel cups beside it.
Joseph Okafor came to Britain in 1971, when he was twenty-one, to study engineering. He had stayed; he had worked at the factory whose old buildings were now visible behind the allotments; he had married, raised three children, and retired ten years ago. The allotment was, he told me, the longest commitment of his adult life — longer than the marriage, longer than any of the jobs, longer than the country itself, in the sense that the country he had arrived in 1971 had become, over the course of those forty years, considerably different from the country he was now growing vegetables in.
MAYA Thank you for letting me come, Mr Okafor. How long have you been on this allotment?
MR OKAFOR Forty years this April. I started in 1985, when my eldest son was small. I had been on the waiting list for nearly two years.
MAYA That seems like a long wait.
MR OKAFOR It was. But the wait is part of how an allotment association works — older people leave, plots come free slowly. By the time I got mine, I had been thinking about what to grow for a long time. That helped.
MAYA What made you want one?
MR OKAFOR A few things together. The garden at our house was small. My wife wanted to grow vegetables for the children, and we did not have the space for that at home. And my father had been a gardener in Nigeria — not in this organised English way, with a small rented plot, but on land near our village. I had grown up watching him. When I came to Britain, I missed him. I thought, if I could grow some of the same things, I would feel less far from him. It worked. It still works.
Mr Okafor paused for a moment and looked back across the plot. He gestured at it with a slow movement of his hand. The morning sun was coming through the line of canes, and the new bean plants made small clear shadows on the soil.
MR OKAFOR I should keep working while we talk. The seedlings need to go in today. Otherwise they will not be ready in time.
MAYA Of course. I can ask while you work.
He went back to his row of holes — perhaps thirty of them, made the day before — and began placing the seedlings, one by one, with the slow careful movement of someone who has done this many thousands of times.
MAYA What do you grow?
MR OKAFOR Tomatoes, beans, onions, potatoes, peppers, courgettes, herbs. I also grow some flowers — for my wife, mostly. She likes them in the kitchen. And I grow some things from home that other people here do not grow — bitter leaves, certain peppers. Some seeds my brother sends me from Lagos.
MAYA How has the allotment changed in the years you have been here?
MR OKAFOR In several ways. The soil is much better. That is forty years of looking after it. The association has changed too. When I started, I was one of the few people on the site who had not been born here. Now we are from many places — Polish, Caribbean, Bangladeshi, Romanian. People grow what their families grew. We talk over the fence; we swap plants. There is a Polish family next to me who grow things I had never seen until they showed me. They grow them well.
MAYA What is the most surprising thing you have learned, in forty years?
Mr Okafor straightened up and rested for a moment, his hand on his back. He thought for some time before answering.
MR OKAFOR I think it is that the garden teaches you when you are not paying attention. I used to come here with a list of things I wanted to do — weed the beans, plant the onions, water the lettuces. I did them. But I noticed, over the years, that the most useful things I learned were not on the list. They came when I was just looking at the soil, or watching the weather, or fixing something else. The deliberate work was important — but the slow learning, the kind that lasts, was a different kind of attention.
MAYA Is there anything you wish you had done differently?
MR OKAFOR Nothing important. Some years I tried to grow too many things and most of them failed. Some years I was lazy in autumn and the soil suffered the next spring. Small mistakes. Nothing I would change about the bigger choices. Coming here, staying here — those were good decisions.
MAYA What advice would you give to someone starting an allotment now?
MR OKAFOR Three things. Start small — do not try to grow everything in the first year. Most new people try too much and become tired. Listen to the people who have been here longer. Some of them will not say much, but if you watch what they do, they will teach you. And be patient. Most of what you learn on an allotment, you cannot learn in a week, or a month, or even a year. You learn it by being here, season after season.
MAYA After forty years, do you still learn things?
Mr Okafor looked up from his seedlings and laughed quietly.
MR OKAFOR Every year. The weather is different. The soil is different. The plants are different. I am different — I am older now, and I work more slowly than I used to. I learned something new last week about a problem I had never seen before with my onions. Forty years is not enough time to learn everything you can learn from one piece of land. Nobody has long enough.
MAYA Thank you for the conversation, Mr Okafor. The newsletter will print this in the spring issue.
MR OKAFOR You are welcome. Take some tomatoes home — these are ready today. And tell the newsletter we always need new members. Two plots came free this winter. Some young person should take them.
I walked back to my car with a small bag of tomatoes and several pages of notes. Mr Okafor was already back at work, kneeling among his seedlings, the morning sun strong now on the back of his head.
Key Vocabulary
the longest commitment phrase
(phrase) the activity to which one has been faithful for the longest time
"The longest commitment of his adult life."
to be on a waiting list phrase
(phrase) to be waiting for one's turn for something
"I had been on the waiting list for nearly two years."
to come free phrase
(phrase, of a plot or position) to become available
"Plots come free slowly."
in this organised English way phrase
(phrase) in the particular structured manner that English allotments have
"Not in this organised English way."
to swap (plants) verb
to exchange one thing for another
"We swap plants."
deliberate work phrase
(phrase) work done with conscious intention and planning
"The deliberate work was important."
slow learning phrase
(phrase) the kind of understanding that builds up gradually over a long time
"The slow learning, the kind that lasts."
to suffer (of soil) verb (figurative)
(figurative) to be in poor condition
"The soil suffered the next spring."
the bigger choices phrase
(phrase) the major decisions in one's life
"Nothing I would change about the bigger choices."
Questions
Comprehension
  • What did Mr Okafor have ready when Maya arrived?
    Answer
    A thermos of tea and two small enamel cups beside the wooden bench near the gate.
  • What does the writer say is the longest commitment of Mr Okafor's adult life?
    Answer
    The allotment — 'longer than the marriage, longer than any of the jobs, longer than the country itself, in the sense that the country he had arrived in 1971 had become... considerably different from the country he was now growing vegetables in.'
  • How long was Mr Okafor on the waiting list before getting his plot?
    Answer
    Nearly two years. He says the wait was part of how an allotment association works — older people leave, plots come free slowly. By the time he got his, he had been thinking about what to grow for a long time, which helped.
  • What three things does Mr Okafor say came together to make him want an allotment?
    Answer
    (1) The garden at home was small; the family wanted vegetables but didn't have space. (2) His father had been a gardener in Nigeria, on land near their village. (3) When he came to Britain, he missed his father; growing some of the same things made him feel less far from him.
  • How has the allotment association changed?
    Answer
    When Mr Okafor started, he was 'one of the few people on the site who had not been born here'. Now members are 'from many places — Polish, Caribbean, Bangladeshi, Romanian'. People grow what their families grew. Mr Okafor mentions a Polish family next to him who grow things he had never seen until they showed him.
  • What does Mr Okafor say is the most surprising thing he has learned in forty years?
    Answer
    That 'the garden teaches you when you are not paying attention'. The most useful things he learned were not on his list — they came when he was 'just looking at the soil, or watching the weather, or fixing something else'. 'The deliberate work was important — but the slow learning, the kind that lasts, was a different kind of attention.'
  • Does Mr Okafor wish he had done anything differently?
    Answer
    'Nothing important.' Some years he tried to grow too many things and most failed; some years he was lazy in autumn and the soil suffered. 'Small mistakes. Nothing I would change about the bigger choices.'
  • What three pieces of advice does he give?
    Answer
    (1) Start small — most new people try too much and become tired. (2) Listen to people who have been there longer — 'some of them will not say much, but if you watch what they do, they will teach you'. (3) Be patient — 'most of what you learn on an allotment, you cannot learn in a week, or a month, or even a year. You learn it by being here, season after season.'
  • What does Mr Okafor say about whether forty years is enough time?
    Answer
    'Forty years is not enough time to learn everything you can learn from one piece of land. Nobody has long enough.'
Vocabulary
  • What does the journalist mean by 'the longest commitment of his adult life'?
    Answer
    The activity that Mr Okafor has stayed with longer than anything else in his adult life — longer than marriage, jobs, and even longer than residence in a country that has, in some sense, changed around him. 'Commitment' is precise: it suggests an active choice to keep returning, not just a passive habit.
  • What does 'slow learning' mean in Mr Okafor's account?
    Answer
    The kind of understanding that builds up gradually, often without being noticed at the time. It is the opposite of deliberate study — it happens when you are doing something else, or just looking. Mr Okafor distinguishes it from 'the deliberate work' that fills the daily list. The phrase captures something true about long practice in many fields.
Inference
  • Why does the writer note that Mr Okafor had been on the waiting list for nearly two years?
    Suggested interpretation
    The detail tells us several things. It shows that the allotment has long been wanted — not a passing interest. It also tells us that the long wait was useful: by the time the plot came free, Mr Okafor 'had been thinking about what to grow for a long time'. The detail makes the eventual forty years feel earned, not accidental. It also gives the reader a sense of how allotment associations actually work.
  • Why does the writer mention that the country Mr Okafor arrived in had become 'considerably different' over forty years?
    Suggested interpretation
    Because the writer wants to gently locate Mr Okafor in time. Forty years is not just a long time on a single plot of land — it is also a period during which the country itself has changed substantially. The detail makes Mr Okafor's continuity more meaningful: he has stayed faithful to one piece of ground while everything around it has shifted. It also subtly raises the question of belonging, without making it a big point.
  • Why does Mr Okafor say 'the most useful things I learned were not on the list'?
    Suggested interpretation
    Because he is making a careful distinction between two kinds of work. The deliberate, listed tasks (weed the beans, water the lettuces) were necessary, but the most lasting knowledge came from a quieter kind of attention — looking at the soil, watching the weather. He is suggesting that the real learning of long practice comes from a state of ongoing observation rather than from particular tasks. This is the kind of insight only a long-time practitioner can offer.
  • Why does Mr Okafor say 'some of them will not say much, but if you watch what they do, they will teach you'?
    Suggested interpretation
    Because he recognises that experienced gardeners often cannot easily articulate what they know. They have knowledge in their hands and habits, not in words. Watching them work is a more reliable way to learn than asking them questions. The advice is also a small piece of cultural wisdom — in many traditions, learning happens through observation and copying rather than through direct instruction. It is also possibly self-aware: Mr Okafor may be one of those people himself.
Discussion
  • Why might a community newsletter profile feel different from a magazine interview with a famous musician or actor?
    Discussion prompts
    Common observations: the journalist's role is different (drawing the person out rather than negotiating around their carefulness); the subject is not used to being interviewed; the answers are more direct; the focus is on the work rather than on personality; the writing tends to be warmer and less self-aware. A useful question, particularly if students have read the Marina Bell interview.
  • Mr Okafor says 'forty years is not enough time to learn everything from one piece of land'. Where else in life does this kind of long, never-quite-finished learning apply?
    Discussion prompts
    Common answers: language learning; teaching; raising children; making bread; running a small business; learning a musical instrument; meditation or religious practice. The principle — that mastery is asymptotic — applies to many serious practices.
Personal
  • Has someone older taught you something through watching rather than telling? Who, and what?
    Teacher guidance
    Students' own experience. Common answers: 'My grandmother — I learned to cook by watching her'; 'My father — he showed me how to fix things without speaking much'; 'A craftsperson in my village'. Be warm. The question often produces real memories.
Writing Task
Prompt
Write a community-newsletter profile (300–400 words) of a long-serving local figure in your community — real or imagined. Include: a brief opening framing paragraph; one paragraph of physical description and small detail; 6–8 questions and answers in speaker format; a brief closing scene as you leave. Aim for a warm, direct register — careful but not literary.
Model Answer

Our community paper is running a small series on long-serving figures at the Hill Street Library. (For readers new to the area: the Hill Street Library has been on its current site since 1958, and is run with the help of about a dozen long-time volunteers.) Mrs Rosa Mendez has been a volunteer librarian at Hill Street for twenty-six years. She is seventy-three. I went to see her on a Wednesday afternoon, when she was on duty at the front desk.

The library was quiet — three young people working at the back tables, an older man reading the newspaper. Mrs Mendez was at the front desk, putting cards back into a small wooden tray. She is a small woman in her early seventies, with neat grey hair and what I can only describe as the most attentive eyes I have seen in some time. She gestured to the chair next to the desk and asked if I had time for tea.

ME: Mrs Mendez, how long have you been a volunteer here?
MRS MENDEZ: Twenty-six years next September. I started after my husband died.
ME: How did it begin?
MRS MENDEZ: My friend Anna was a volunteer. She said it would help. She was right.
ME: What do you do here?
MRS MENDEZ: A bit of everything. I help people find books. I show new readers how the system works. I run a small reading group on Thursday afternoons. I make tea for the staff.
ME: What is the most rewarding part?
MRS MENDEZ: Watching children become readers. Some of the children who came here twenty years ago bring their own children now. I remember most of them.
ME: What advice would you give to someone wanting to volunteer?
MRS MENDEZ: Do not start by trying to be useful. Start by being here. The being-useful comes later, by itself, if you are patient.
ME: Thank you, Mrs Mendez.
MRS MENDEZ: Take a book home. Bring it back when you have finished.

I left her sorting the cards, in the slow careful way of someone for whom such tasks are no longer interruptions but the work itself.

Activities
  • Reading aloud in pairs: students take the roles of Maya and Mr Okafor. Try the pacing of someone working while talking.
  • The opening paragraphs: students examine the introduction and the physical description of Mr Okafor and his plot. What do these paragraphs do that the dialogue alone could not?
  • Direct vs managed: students compare Mr Okafor's answers with Marina Bell's (if they have read both). What is different about how Mr Okafor answers? Why?
  • The advice: in groups, students discuss the three pieces of advice Mr Okafor gives. Are they specifically about gardening, or about many things?
  • Cultural sharing: in pairs, students discuss what equivalent of an allotment exists in their country. Who runs it? Who uses it?
  • Profile writing: students write their own community-newsletter profile of a real or imagined long-serving local person, using the warm direct register of this piece.
  • Compare with B1: students compare the B1 and B2 versions and identify three places where the B2 adds depth (the writer's framing of Mr Okafor's biography; the description of the morning light; Mr Okafor's distinction between deliberate work and slow learning).
⏱ Duration: 50 min 🎯 Focus: A fuller community profile in warm direct prose; layered description and dialogue; the journalist's clear but unobtrusive presence; precise observation; the natural rhythm of a real conversation
Before You Read / Listen
  • Q1What makes a good community profile different from a celebrity interview?
  • Q2Why do older people sometimes give the most useful advice in a few short sentences?
  • Q3What can you tell about a person from how they keep their workspace?
  • Q4Why might a long quiet practice produce a kind of expertise that is harder to recognise than an obvious career?
  • Q5What does it mean for a community newsletter to take an ordinary person seriously?
  • Q6Have you noticed differences in how different generations talk about their work?
  • Q7Why might a person's first decade in a new country shape choices they make for the next forty years?
The Text
Our community newsletter is running a series of profiles of long-serving members of the Riverside Allotments. (For readers unfamiliar with the term: an allotment is a small piece of land — usually rented from the local council — where individuals or families grow vegetables, fruit, and flowers. The Riverside site, behind the old factory on Meadow Lane, has fifty plots and a waiting list that has been at least eighteen months long for as long as anyone can remember.) Mr Joseph Okafor has been gardening the same plot at Riverside for forty years. He is seventy-five. I went to meet him on a bright Saturday morning in April, the weekend most of the allotment-holders had begun their spring planting.
He was already at work when I arrived — kneeling at the far end of his plot, doing something careful to a row of small green seedlings. The plot was easy to recognise from his description on the phone: ten metres by four, neatly divided into raised beds, with a small dark green shed at one end and a row of tall bean canes already in place along the south side. He stood up slowly when he saw me, dusted his hands on the front of his trousers, and walked across to meet me at the wooden bench near the gate. A thermos of tea was already there, with two small enamel cups beside it.
Joseph Okafor came to Britain in 1971, at twenty-one, to study engineering. He stayed; he worked at the factory whose old buildings are now visible behind the allotment site; he married, raised three children, and retired ten years ago. His allotment, he told me at one point during the morning, was the longest commitment of his adult life — longer than the marriage, longer than any of his jobs, longer in some ways than the country itself, in the sense that the country he had arrived in 1971 had become considerably different from the country he was now growing vegetables in.
Most of the conversation that follows happened while he was working. He had thirty seedlings to plant that morning, and the timing mattered — much later in the spring and they would not come on properly. We talked across the row of holes he had prepared the day before, with him kneeling and placing seedlings, and me sitting cross-legged on the path with a notebook on my knee.
MAYA Thank you for letting me come. How long have you been on this allotment?
MR OKAFOR Forty years this April. I started in 1985, when my eldest son was small. I had been on the waiting list for nearly two years before that.
MAYA That's a long wait.
MR OKAFOR It was. But the wait is part of how an allotment association works. People stay for decades; plots come free slowly. By the time I got mine, I had been thinking carefully about what to grow, where things would go, which corners would get the morning sun. That helped.
MAYA What made you want one?
MR OKAFOR A few things together. The garden at our house was small. My wife wanted to grow more vegetables for the children, and we did not have the space at home. And my father had been a gardener in Nigeria — not on an allotment, but on family land near our village. I had grown up watching him work. When I came to Britain in my twenties, I missed him a lot. I thought, if I could grow some of the same things he had grown, I might feel less far from home. It worked, I think. It still works, though he died many years ago. I think of him most when I am planting beans.
MAYA Why beans particularly?
MR OKAFOR He loved beans. He had a particular way of planting them — three seeds per hole, in a small triangle. I do it the same way, even though I know the modern advice is one seed per hole. I cannot bring myself to plant beans the way other people plant them.
He paused for a moment and looked across the plot, with the small smile of someone who has just noticed something about himself.
MR OKAFOR That is something I had not put into words before.
MAYA How has the allotment changed in forty years?
MR OKAFOR In several ways. The soil is much better — that is forty years of looking after it. The association has changed too. When I started, I was one of the few people on the site who had not been born here. Now we are from many places. Polish, Caribbean, Bangladeshi, Romanian, several others. People grow what their families grew. We talk over the fence; we swap plants. The Polish family next to me grow things I had never seen before they showed me. They grow them well.
MAYA Has the council been a good landlord?
MR OKAFOR Mostly. They have tried to close the site twice — once in the early nineties, once about ten years ago — and both times we organised against it and won. The site is on land they could sell for housing. We are aware, all the time, that we are here partly because nobody has yet found a better use for the land in their accounting. That is one of the things you learn in forty years on an allotment — that what looks permanent is not, and what people protect, they have to protect actively.
MAYA What is the most surprising thing you have learned in those forty years?
Mr Okafor straightened up and rested his hand on his back. He thought for some time before answering.
MR OKAFOR I think it is that the garden teaches you when you are not paying attention. I used to come here with a list of things to do — weed the beans, plant the onions, water the lettuces. I did them. But the most useful things I learned were not on the list. They came when I was just looking at the soil, or watching the weather, or fixing something else. The deliberate work was important — but the slow learning, the kind that lasts, was a different kind of attention. I do not know how to recommend that to a younger person, exactly. You cannot put 'pay attention to what you are not paying attention to' on a list.
MAYA Is there anything you wish you had done differently?
MR OKAFOR Nothing important. Some years I tried to grow too many things and most of them failed. Some years I was lazy in autumn and the soil suffered the next spring. Small mistakes. Nothing I would change about the bigger choices. Coming here, staying here, getting the allotment when I did — those were good decisions.
MAYA What advice would you give to someone starting an allotment now?
MR OKAFOR Three things. Start small. Most new people try to grow everything in the first year and become exhausted by August. Listen to the people who have been here longer. Some of them will not say much, but if you watch what they do, they will teach you. And be patient. Most of what you learn on an allotment, you cannot learn in a week, or a month, or even a year. You learn it season after season, and there is no shortcut.
MAYA After forty years, do you still learn things?
MR OKAFOR Every year. The weather is different. The soil is different. The plants are different. I am different — I am older, and I work more slowly than I used to. I learned something new last week about a problem I had never seen before with my onions. Forty years is not enough time to learn everything you can learn from one piece of land. Nobody has long enough.
MAYA When you go, what do you hope happens to the plot?
MR OKAFOR Someone takes it on. They do not have to do what I have done. They will do their own work. But I hope the soil — which is the part of this place that will keep — passes on to someone who will look after it. The soil is the thing I am proudest of. Everything I have grown in the last twenty years, I have grown out of forty years of caring for the soil. That is what I would want a new person to inherit.
By the time we finished, Mr Okafor had planted all thirty seedlings. He stood up slowly, brushed the soil off his hands, and walked with me back to the gate. He gave me a small bag of tomatoes — early ones, from the greenhouse — and told me to mention in the article that the association had two plots free this winter.
MR OKAFOR We always need new members. Some young person should take them.
MAYA I will mention it.
MR OKAFOR Thank you. And come back in the summer. The beans will be tall by then.
He went back to his plot. As I drove away, I could see him through the gate — kneeling again, this time on a different row, doing something to a bean cane. The morning sun was strong now on the back of his head.
Key Vocabulary
to come on (of plants) phrase verb
(phrase verb) to develop and grow well
"They would not come on properly."
raised beds phrase
(phrase) garden beds built up above ground level for easier growing
"Neatly divided into raised beds."
to organise against (something) phrase
(phrase) to come together as a group to oppose something
"Both times we organised against it and won."
in their accounting phrase
(phrase) according to their way of measuring or valuing things
"Nobody has yet found a better use for the land in their accounting."
the deliberate work phrase
(phrase) work done with conscious intention and planning
"The deliberate work was important."
shortcut noun
a quicker way to achieve something
"There is no shortcut."
to take (something) on phrase verb
(phrase verb) to accept responsibility for something
"Someone takes it on."
to inherit verb (figurative)
(figurative) to receive something from someone who comes before you
"What I would want a new person to inherit."
to brush off (dirt) phrase verb
(phrase verb) to remove dirt by lightly hitting or wiping
"He brushed the soil off his hands."
Questions
Comprehension
  • How many plots does the Riverside Allotment site have, and how long is the waiting list?
    Answer
    Fifty plots. The waiting list 'has been at least eighteen months long for as long as anyone can remember'.
  • What does the writer say is 'the longest commitment of his adult life'?
    Answer
    Mr Okafor's allotment — 'longer than the marriage, longer than any of his jobs, longer in some ways than the country itself'.
  • Why does Mr Okafor still plant beans the way his father did?
    Answer
    Three seeds per hole, in a small triangle, even though modern advice is one seed per hole. 'I cannot bring myself to plant beans the way other people plant them.' He notes after saying this that it was 'something I had not put into words before'.
  • What does Mr Okafor say has happened twice with the council?
    Answer
    The council has tried to close the site twice — once in the early nineties, once about ten years ago. 'Both times we organised against it and won.' The site is on land the council could sell for housing.
  • What lesson does Mr Okafor say comes from forty years of allotment work, in terms of what 'looks permanent'?
    Answer
    'What looks permanent is not, and what people protect, they have to protect actively.'
  • How does Mr Okafor describe the difference between 'deliberate work' and 'slow learning'?
    Answer
    Deliberate work is the listed tasks (weed the beans, plant the onions, water the lettuces). Slow learning is what comes 'when I was just looking at the soil, or watching the weather, or fixing something else'. The deliberate work was important, but the slow learning is 'the kind that lasts'. He adds: 'You cannot put pay attention to what you are not paying attention to on a list.'
  • What does Mr Okafor say he is proudest of?
    Answer
    The soil. 'Everything I have grown in the last twenty years, I have grown out of forty years of caring for the soil. That is what I would want a new person to inherit.'
  • What does Mr Okafor say about how long is 'enough' to learn from a piece of land?
    Answer
    'Forty years is not enough time to learn everything you can learn from one piece of land. Nobody has long enough.'
  • What does Mr Okafor ask Maya to mention in the article?
    Answer
    That the association has two plots free this winter and 'always needs new members. Some young person should take them.'
Vocabulary
  • What does the writer mean by 'in their accounting' when describing the council's view of the allotment site?
    Answer
    'In their accounting' means according to the council's way of measuring value — probably mostly in money. The council has not yet found a more profitable use for the land. Mr Okafor's phrasing is gently knowing: he understands that the allotment exists not because the council values it, but because nobody has yet figured out how to value the land more highly.
  • What does Mr Okafor mean by 'season after season'?
    Answer
    Year after year, slowly, with each spring, summer, autumn, and winter teaching something new. The phrase captures the fact that some kinds of knowledge cannot be hurried — they accumulate gradually, with the actual passing of time.
Inference
  • Why does the writer note that Mr Okafor said 'that is something I had not put into words before' after talking about the bean-planting?
    Suggested interpretation
    The detail shows that the interview is making him think. By being asked the right questions, he has articulated something he had felt but never said. The journalist is gently signalling that this is one of the moments when the conversation has produced something new — for both Mr Okafor and the reader. It is a small mark of a genuine conversation rather than a rehearsed account.
  • Why does the writer include the detail about the council twice trying to close the site?
    Suggested interpretation
    Because it adds a political dimension to what would otherwise be a purely personal story. Mr Okafor's forty years on the plot are not just his own commitment — they have been protected, twice, by collective action. The detail makes the profile less sentimental: the allotment has not survived simply because Mr Okafor stayed; it has survived because people fought for it. This is honest about how community spaces actually persist.
  • Why does Mr Okafor say his pride is in the soil, not in the vegetables he has grown?
    Suggested interpretation
    Because the vegetables of any single year are temporary — they are eaten and gone. The soil is the slow accumulation of forty years of work. By being proud of the soil, Mr Okafor is being honest about what really lasts in his practice. He is also implicitly making a point about inheritance: the next person will not eat his tomatoes, but they will inherit the soil he has built. The deepest pride is in what passes on.
Discussion
  • Why might Mr Okafor say 'I do not know how to recommend that to a younger person, exactly' about the slow learning that comes from not paying attention?
    Discussion prompts
    Common observations: it is genuine wisdom but not transmissible by instruction; you cannot tell someone to learn what they are not paying attention to; the only way is to do the work over time and be open to noticing. The honest acknowledgement that some advice cannot be given is itself wisdom.
  • How is this profile interview different from a celebrity interview (like with Marina Bell)?
    Discussion prompts
    Common observations: Mr Okafor is not used to being interviewed; his answers are more direct and less 'managed'; the interview happens while he works rather than over a careful prepared meeting; the journalist's role is to draw him out rather than to negotiate around carefulness; the focus is on his work and the place rather than on his personality. A useful comparison.
Personal
  • Is there an older person in your community whose long practice has produced a particular kind of expertise that doesn't fit normal categories of recognition?
    Teacher guidance
    Students' own experience. Common answers: 'Yes, my neighbour who has fixed shoes for sixty years'; 'A market trader I have known since childhood'; 'My grandmother, whose knowledge of plants and remedies is enormous but unrecorded'. Be warm.
  • What in your own life — a small practice, place, or activity — would you say you have 'cared for the soil of'?
    Teacher guidance
    Students' own experience. Common answers: 'My friendships'; 'My morning routine'; 'A small garden I have tended'; 'A skill I have practised for years'. The metaphor extends easily. Allow students to think about what they have built up slowly.
Writing Task
Prompt
Write a community-newsletter profile (450–550 words) of a long-serving local figure in your community — real or imagined. Include a brief opening framing paragraph; a description of where you met them and what you noticed; 7–9 questions and answers; a short biographical paragraph somewhere in the middle; a brief closing scene as you leave. Use a warm, direct register — sophisticated but not literary.
Model Answer

Our community paper is running a small series on long-serving figures at the Hill Street Library. (For readers new to the area: the Hill Street Library has been on its current site since 1958 and is run, alongside its small paid staff, with the help of about a dozen long-time volunteers.) Mrs Rosa Mendez has been a volunteer librarian at Hill Street for twenty-six years. She is seventy-three. I went to see her on a quiet Wednesday afternoon, when she was on duty at the front desk.

She was at the desk when I arrived, sorting small white cards into a wooden tray with the practised care of someone who has done this many thousands of times. The library was quiet — three young people working at the back, an older man reading the newspaper near the window. Mrs Mendez gestured to the chair next to the desk and offered me tea before I had asked anything.

Mrs Mendez came to the area in her twenties, originally from a small town in southern Spain. She married, raised two children, and worked for many years at the local primary school. She started volunteering at the library in her late forties, after her husband died. The library, she told me later, had been part of how she had come back to herself in those first hard years.

ME: How long have you been a volunteer here?
MRS MENDEZ: Twenty-six years next September.
ME: How did you start?
MRS MENDEZ: My friend Anna brought me. She said it would help. She was right.
ME: What do you do here?
MRS MENDEZ: A bit of everything. I help people find books. I show new readers how the system works. I run a small reading group on Thursday afternoons.
ME: What is the most rewarding part?
MRS MENDEZ: Watching children become readers. Some of the children who came here twenty years ago bring their own children now. I remember most of them.
ME: Has the library changed in twenty-six years?
MRS MENDEZ: A great deal. We have computers now, which most of the older readers still ask me to help them with. We have many more readers in languages other than English than we used to. The biggest change is that the library now does many things — not just lending books. We are a quiet space for people who need one. Some afternoons that is the most important thing we do.
ME: Has the council been a good landlord?
MRS MENDEZ: Mostly. They tried to reduce our hours four years ago, and the community wrote to them. The hours were not reduced. We are aware that the building exists partly because we have, twice now, organised against being smaller.
ME: What advice would you give to someone wanting to volunteer?
MRS MENDEZ: Do not start by trying to be useful. Start by being here. The being-useful comes later, by itself, if you are patient.
ME: Thank you, Mrs Mendez.
MRS MENDEZ: Take a book home. Bring it back when you have finished.

I left her sorting the cards in the slow careful way of someone for whom such tasks are not interruptions but the work itself.

Activities
  • Reading aloud in pairs: students take the roles of Maya and Mr Okafor. Try the rhythm of an interview that pauses for the work.
  • The bean-planting moment: students examine the moment when Mr Okafor realises he has put something into words for the first time. What does this moment do for the reader?
  • Three pieces of advice: in groups, students take Mr Okafor's three pieces of advice and discuss where else they apply (language learning, professional skills, friendships).
  • The political dimension: students discuss the inclusion of the council's two attempts to close the site. Why is this in the profile? What would change without it?
  • The pride in the soil: in pairs, students discuss why Mr Okafor's pride is in the soil rather than the vegetables. What does this say about long practice?
  • Cultural comparison: in groups, students discuss what equivalent of an allotment exists in their context, and how a profile of a long-serving practitioner might look.
  • Profile writing: students write their own community-newsletter profile of a real or imagined long-serving local figure.
  • Compare with B2: students compare the B2 and C1 versions and identify three places where the C1 adds depth (the bean-planting moment, the political dimension, the pride in the soil).
⏱ Duration: 55 min 🎯 Focus: Sustained warm community profile; layered description, biography, and dialogue; the journalist's clear but unobtrusive presence; precise observation; the natural rhythm of a real conversation; sophisticated journalism in a normal warm register
Before You Read / Listen
  • Q1What makes a really good community profile — neither hagiography nor cool detachment?
  • Q2Why might a long quiet practice produce a kind of expertise that is harder to recognise than an obvious career?
  • Q3How does the inclusion of small political detail (council, money, land) change a profile that might otherwise be purely personal?
  • Q4What kind of wisdom is most often produced by long practice, and why is it sometimes hard to articulate?
  • Q5Why might a journalist choose to keep their own voice clear but unobtrusive in a community profile?
  • Q6What does it mean for a profile of an immigrant who has been somewhere forty years to handle the question of belonging carefully?
  • Q7How can a profile honour a person without sentimentalising them?
  • Q8Why might 'who inherits the soil' be a more interesting question for a community profile than 'who inherits the vegetables'?
The Text
Our community newsletter is running a series of profiles of long-serving members of the Riverside Allotments. (For readers unfamiliar with the term: an allotment is a small piece of land — usually rented from the local council — where individuals or families grow vegetables, fruit, and flowers. The Riverside site, behind the old factory on Meadow Lane, has fifty plots, a waiting list that has been at least eighteen months long for as long as anyone can remember, and a small wooden hut by the gate where members can leave a kettle on for visitors.) Mr Joseph Okafor has been gardening the same plot at Riverside for forty years. He is seventy-five. I went to meet him on a bright Saturday morning in April, the weekend most of the allotment-holders had begun their spring planting in earnest.
He was already at work when I arrived. He had told me on the phone that he would probably be at the far end of the plot when I came, and he was — kneeling, in a green jumper and old trousers, doing something careful to a row of small green seedlings. The plot itself was easy to recognise from his description: ten metres by four, neatly divided into raised beds, with a small dark green shed at one end and a row of tall bean canes already in place along the south side. He stood up slowly when he saw me, dusted his hands on the front of his trousers, and walked across to meet me at the wooden bench near the gate. A thermos of tea was already there, with two small enamel cups beside it.
Some biographical context, briefly. Joseph Okafor came to Britain in 1971, at twenty-one, to study engineering at a polytechnic that no longer exists by that name. He stayed; he worked at the factory whose old buildings are now visible behind the allotment site; he married a local woman in 1976, raised three children in a small terraced house ten minutes from the allotment, and retired ten years ago. His three children are now in their forties; his five grandchildren range from three to fifteen. The allotment, he told me at one point during the morning, was the longest commitment of his adult life — longer than the marriage, longer than any of his jobs, longer in some ways than the country itself, in the sense that the country he had arrived in 1971 had become, over the course of those forty years, considerably different from the country he was now growing vegetables in.
Most of the conversation that follows took place while he was working. He had thirty seedlings to plant that morning, and the timing mattered: much later in the spring and they would not come on properly. We talked across the row of holes he had prepared the day before, with him kneeling and placing seedlings, and me sitting cross-legged on the path with a notebook on my knee. He answered each question carefully, but without the rehearsed quality that experienced interview subjects often have. Several times he paused before answering and afterwards said, with a small smile, that he had not put a particular thing into words before.
MAYA Thank you for letting me come. How long have you been on this allotment?
MR OKAFOR Forty years this April. I started in 1985, when my eldest son was small. I had been on the waiting list for nearly two years before that.
MAYA That's a long wait.
MR OKAFOR It was. But the wait is part of how an allotment association works. People stay for decades; plots come free slowly, usually because someone has died or moved into care or become too unwell to garden any more. By the time I got mine, I had been thinking carefully for two years about what I would grow, where things would go, which corners would get the morning sun. That helped. Some new members start at full speed and exhaust themselves; my two-year wait was, in some ways, the first stage of my gardening.
MAYA What made you want one?
MR OKAFOR A few things together. The garden at our house was very small. My wife wanted to grow more vegetables for the children, and we did not have the space at home. And my father had been a gardener in Nigeria — not on an allotment, but on family land near our village. I had grown up watching him work in the early mornings before he left for his other job. When I came to Britain in my twenties, I missed him a lot. I thought, if I could grow some of the same things he had grown, I might feel less far from home. It worked, I think. It still works, though he died many years ago. I think of him most when I am planting beans.
MAYA Why beans particularly?
MR OKAFOR He loved beans. He had a particular way of planting them — three seeds per hole, in a small triangle. I do it the same way, even though I know the modern advice is one seed per hole. I cannot bring myself to plant beans the way other people plant them.
He paused, looked across the plot, and gave a small smile.
MR OKAFOR That is something I had not put into words before, actually. I have just been doing it. I had not noticed I was being faithful to him.
MAYA How has the allotment changed in forty years?
MR OKAFOR In several ways. The soil is much better — that is forty years of looking after it. The association has changed too. When I started, I was one of the few people on the site who had not been born here. Now we are from many places. Polish, Caribbean, Bangladeshi, Romanian, several others. People grow what their families grew. We talk over the fence; we swap plants; we share advice in summer when something we have grown is doing surprisingly well. The Polish family next to me grow things I had never seen before they showed me. They grow them well. I have learned things from them I would not otherwise have learned, and I think they have learned a few things from me.
MAYA Has the council been a good landlord?
MR OKAFOR Mostly. They have tried to close the site twice — once in the early nineties, once about ten years ago. Both times we organised against it and won. The site is on land they could sell for housing, and we are aware, all the time, that we are here partly because nobody has yet found a more profitable use for the land in their accounting. That is one of the things you learn in forty years on an allotment: what looks permanent is not, and what people protect, they have to protect actively. A community space exists because people insist on it. If they stop insisting, it stops existing.
MAYA What is the most surprising thing you have learned in those forty years?
Mr Okafor straightened up, rested one hand on his back, and looked across the plot for some time before answering.
MR OKAFOR I think it is that the garden teaches you when you are not paying attention. I used to come here with a list of things to do — weed the beans, plant the onions, water the lettuces, tie up the tomatoes. I did them. But the most useful things I learned, looking back, were not on the list. They came when I was just looking at the soil, or watching the weather, or fixing something else. A good year for tomatoes had a particular feel to the ground in March, and I did not learn that by being told; I learned it by noticing it without trying. The deliberate work was important — that is most of what I do — but the slow learning, the kind that lasts, was a different kind of attention. I do not know how to recommend that to a younger person, exactly. You cannot put 'pay attention to what you are not paying attention to' on a list. But I think it is most of what older people in any practice know that younger people do not.
MAYA Is there anything you wish you had done differently?
MR OKAFOR Nothing important. Some years I tried to grow too many things, and most of them failed because I could not properly care for them all. Some years I was lazy in autumn and the soil suffered the next spring. Small mistakes. Nothing I would change about the bigger choices. Coming here, staying here, getting the allotment when I did, sticking with it through the years when work was difficult — those were good decisions, even if I could not always see, at the time, that they were.
MAYA What advice would you give to someone starting an allotment now?
MR OKAFOR Three things. Start small. Most new people try to grow everything in the first year and become exhausted by August. Listen to the people who have been here longer. Some of them will not say much, but if you watch what they do, they will teach you. Most of what I learned from the older men who were here when I started, I learned by watching, not by asking. And be patient. Most of what you learn on an allotment, you cannot learn in a week, or a month, or even a year. You learn it season after season, and there is no shortcut. Allotments do not reward people who hurry.
MAYA After forty years, do you still learn things?
MR OKAFOR Every year. The weather is different. The soil is different. The plants are different. I am different — I am older now, and I work more slowly than I used to. I learned something new last week about a problem I had never seen before with my onions. Forty years is not enough time to learn everything you can learn from one piece of land. Nobody has long enough.
MAYA When you eventually stop, what do you hope happens to the plot?
MR OKAFOR Someone takes it on. They do not have to do what I have done — they will do their own work, and I hope they enjoy it. But I hope the soil — which is the part of this place that will keep — passes on to someone who will look after it. The soil is what I am proudest of. Everything I have grown in the last twenty years, I have grown out of forty years of caring for the soil. The vegetables of any single year are temporary; they are eaten and gone. The soil lasts. That is what I would want a new person to inherit, more than anything I could write down.
By the time we had finished, Mr Okafor had planted all thirty seedlings. He stood up slowly, brushed the soil off his hands, and walked with me back to the gate. He gave me a small bag of tomatoes — early ones, from the small greenhouse he had built at the back of the plot — and asked me to mention in the article that the association had two plots free this winter.
MR OKAFOR We always need new members. Some young person should take them. Tell them the wait is part of it.
MAYA I will mention it.
MR OKAFOR Thank you. And come back in the summer. The beans will be tall by then. They are always taller than I expect.
He went back to his plot. As I drove away, I could see him through the gate — kneeling again, this time on a different row, doing something to a bean cane. The morning sun was now strong on the back of his head, and his shadow on the soil was small and steady, a shape I imagine has been there, in slightly different forms, on a great many spring mornings over the past forty years.
Key Vocabulary
in earnest phrase
(phrase) seriously and with full effort
"Begun their spring planting in earnest."
the rehearsed quality phrase
(phrase) the polished, practised feel of an answer that has been given many times before
"Without the rehearsed quality that experienced interview subjects often have."
to come on (of plants) phrase verb
(phrase verb) to develop and grow well
"They would not come on properly."
to be faithful to (someone) phrase (figurative)
(phrase, here figurative) to keep faith with someone, even in their absence
"I had not noticed I was being faithful to him."
to organise against (something) phrase
(phrase) to come together as a group to oppose something
"Both times we organised against it and won."
to insist on (something) phrase
(phrase, of a community) to maintain the existence of something through active commitment
"A community space exists because people insist on it."
the slow learning phrase
(phrase) the kind of understanding that builds up gradually, often without conscious attention
"The slow learning, the kind that lasts."
to take (something) on phrase verb
(phrase verb) to accept responsibility for something
"Someone takes it on."
to be temporary phrase
(phrase) to last only for a short time; not permanent
"The vegetables of any single year are temporary."
small and steady phrase
(phrase) modest in scale and reliable over time
"His shadow on the soil was small and steady."
Questions
Comprehension
  • What detail does the writer note about the small wooden hut at the allotment site?
    Answer
    It is by the gate, where members can leave a kettle on for visitors. (A small specific detail of the site's atmosphere.)
  • What biographical context does the writer give about Joseph Okafor's life in Britain?
    Answer
    He came in 1971, at twenty-one, to study engineering at a polytechnic that no longer exists by that name; he worked at the factory whose buildings are now behind the allotments; he married a local woman in 1976; raised three children in a small terraced house; retired ten years ago. Three children now in their forties; five grandchildren ages three to fifteen.
  • How does the writer describe the texture of Mr Okafor's answers?
    Answer
    Carefully, but 'without the rehearsed quality that experienced interview subjects often have. Several times he paused before answering and afterwards said, with a small smile, that he had not put a particular thing into words before.'
  • Why does Mr Okafor say his two-year waiting list time was useful?
    Answer
    He had been thinking carefully about what to grow, where things would go, which corners would get the morning sun. 'Some new members start at full speed and exhaust themselves; my two-year wait was, in some ways, the first stage of my gardening.'
  • What does Mr Okafor realise about his bean-planting?
    Answer
    That he plants beans the way his father did (three seeds per hole, in a small triangle), even though modern advice is one seed per hole. 'That is something I had not put into words before, actually. I have just been doing it. I had not noticed I was being faithful to him.'
  • What does Mr Okafor say about why community spaces continue to exist?
    Answer
    'A community space exists because people insist on it. If they stop insisting, it stops existing.'
  • What surprising thing does Mr Okafor say about a good year for tomatoes?
    Answer
    It 'had a particular feel to the ground in March, and I did not learn that by being told; I learned it by noticing it without trying'.
  • What does Mr Okafor say about the slow learning, in relation to younger people?
    Answer
    'I do not know how to recommend that to a younger person, exactly. You cannot put pay attention to what you are not paying attention to on a list. But I think it is most of what older people in any practice know that younger people do not.'
  • Why does Mr Okafor want the new person to inherit the soil rather than anything written down?
    Answer
    Because 'everything I have grown in the last twenty years, I have grown out of forty years of caring for the soil. The vegetables of any single year are temporary; they are eaten and gone. The soil lasts.'
  • How does the closing image describe Mr Okafor in the morning sun?
    Answer
    'Kneeling again, this time on a different row, doing something to a bean cane. The morning sun was now strong on the back of his head, and his shadow on the soil was small and steady, a shape I imagine has been there, in slightly different forms, on a great many spring mornings over the past forty years.'
Vocabulary
  • What does the journalist mean by 'the rehearsed quality that experienced interview subjects often have'?
    Answer
    The polished, practised feel of answers that have been given many times before. Famous people often have rehearsed-sounding answers because they have been asked the same questions repeatedly. Mr Okafor doesn't have this — his answers come freshly, sometimes after a pause, and he sometimes notices something he had not noticed before. The contrast tells us about the kind of interview this is.
  • What does Mr Okafor mean by 'I had not noticed I was being faithful to him'?
    Answer
    He means that for forty years, by planting beans the way his father planted them, he had been quietly keeping faith with his father — keeping his memory alive in his own practice — without ever consciously framing it that way. 'Faithful' is doing important work here: it is the language of a relationship one continues to honour, even after the other person has died.
Inference
  • Why does the writer note that Mr Okafor's answers come 'without the rehearsed quality that experienced interview subjects often have'?
    Suggested interpretation
    To distinguish this profile from the kind of celebrity interview where every answer has been polished by repetition. Mr Okafor is not a celebrity; his answers are slower, more searching, sometimes surprising even to him. The detail prepares the reader to read the conversation as fresh thinking rather than as practised material. It also makes the reader more inclined to trust what he says.
  • Why does the writer give a paragraph of biography between the introduction and the dialogue?
    Suggested interpretation
    The biographical paragraph provides essential context for understanding Mr Okafor's answers later. Without knowing he came from Nigeria, his attachment to his father's bean-planting method would be less meaningful. Without knowing he worked at the factory whose buildings are visible from the allotment, his sense of the place's history would be flatter. Placing the biography here keeps the rest of the dialogue uncluttered, while ensuring the reader has what they need to understand it.
  • Why does the writer include Mr Okafor's observation that older men taught him 'by watching, not by asking'?
    Suggested interpretation
    It is a small but precise comment on how knowledge passes between generations in a practice like this. The older men did not lecture; the new gardener watched. By including this, the writer reinforces Mr Okafor's central insight about slow learning — and also subtly suggests that Mr Okafor himself is now in the role those older men once occupied for him. The detail honours the chain of practice without making the point heavily.
  • Why does the writer end with the image of Mr Okafor's shadow being 'small and steady', a shape that has been there 'on a great many spring mornings over the past forty years'?
    Suggested interpretation
    The closing image generalises Mr Okafor's morning into something repeated and continuous. The shadow on the soil is small (modest, undramatic) and steady (reliable, present), and it has been there on countless previous mornings — and, by implication, will be there on countless mornings to come, until it isn't. The image is warm without being sentimental: it honours forty years of presence without claiming it as more than what it is.
Discussion
  • What kind of expertise does Mr Okafor represent, and why is it sometimes harder to recognise than other kinds?
    Discussion prompts
    Common observations: he is expert in a quiet practice that doesn't produce fame, money, or formal qualifications. His expertise is hard to test in standard ways and lives mostly in his hands and judgement. Society tends to recognise expertise that fits its formal categories; the kind Mr Okafor has is real but easy to overlook. Older people in many practices have this kind of expertise. A useful question.
  • How does this profile compare with the Marina Bell interview, in terms of what each can do?
    Discussion prompts
    Common observations: the Marina Bell interview shows what celebrity interviews can do (and what they have to negotiate around — the managed answers); this profile shows what community journalism can do (drawing out a person not used to being interviewed, with answers that are sometimes new even to the subject). Both are valid; they teach different things. A useful question, especially if students have read both.
Personal
  • Is there a small practice in your own life that you have, like Mr Okafor's bean-planting, been quietly faithful to without putting it into words?
    Teacher guidance
    Students' own experience. A reflective question. Common answers: 'Yes, the way I make tea like my mother did'; 'A daily walk I have taken for years'; 'A small religious or family practice'. Be warm. Allow students to think before answering.
  • Is there an older person in your community whose forty years of doing one thing has produced expertise that is rarely recognised in formal ways?
    Teacher guidance
    Students' own experience. Common answers: 'Yes, an old man who repairs furniture'; 'My grandmother's cooking'; 'A market trader who knows everyone'; 'A neighbour who has tended the same plants for decades'. Be warm.
Writing Task
Prompt
Write a community-newsletter profile (550–700 words) of a long-serving local figure in your community — real or imagined. Include: a brief opening framing paragraph; a description of where you met them and what you noticed; a biographical paragraph in the middle of the piece; 7–9 questions and answers that include at least one moment when the subject realises something they hadn't quite articulated before; a brief closing scene that includes a final small image of them at their work. Aim for warm, direct, sophisticated journalism — careful but not literary.
Model Answer

Our community paper is running a series of profiles of long-serving figures at the Hill Street Library. (For readers new to the area: the Hill Street Library has been on its current site since 1958, and is run, alongside its small paid staff, with the help of about a dozen long-time volunteers, several of whom have been there for over twenty years.) Mrs Rosa Mendez has been a volunteer librarian at Hill Street for twenty-six years. She is seventy-three. I went to see her on a quiet Wednesday afternoon, when she was on duty at the front desk.

She was at the desk when I arrived, sorting small white cards into a wooden tray with the practised care of someone who has done this many thousands of times. The library was quiet — three young people working at the back tables, an older man reading the newspaper near the window. Mrs Mendez gestured to the chair next to the desk and offered me tea before I had asked anything.

Some biographical context, briefly. Rosa Mendez came to the area in her early twenties, from a small town in southern Spain, originally to learn English for two years. She stayed; she married a local man in 1978; raised two children in a small flat half a mile from the library; worked for many years at the local primary school. Her husband died of a sudden heart attack in 1996. She started volunteering at the library a year later, in her late forties. The library, she told me later, had been part of how she had come back to herself in those first hard years.

Most of the conversation that follows took place at the front desk, in the slow afternoon rhythm of a small library. She kept sorting the cards while we talked, and when occasional readers came to the desk, she paused to help them with the practised quietness she has clearly developed over decades.

ME: How long have you been a volunteer here?
MRS MENDEZ: Twenty-six years next September.
ME: How did you start?
MRS MENDEZ: My friend Anna brought me. She said it would help. She was right.
ME: What do you do here?
MRS MENDEZ: A bit of everything. I help people find books. I show new readers how the system works. I run a small reading group on Thursday afternoons, mostly for older readers, but lately a few younger people have started coming. I make tea for the staff in the back room.
ME: Has the library changed in twenty-six years?
MRS MENDEZ: A great deal. We have computers now, which most of the older readers still ask me to help them with. We have many more readers in languages other than English. The biggest change is that the library now does many things that are not exactly about books — quiet space for people who need one, a warm room in winter for people who don't have one at home, a place where children come after school. Some afternoons that is the most important thing we do.
ME: What is the most rewarding part?
MRS MENDEZ: Watching children become readers. Some of the children who came here twenty years ago bring their own children now. I remember most of them.

She paused for a moment, and looked across the room at the older man with the newspaper.

MRS MENDEZ: That is something I had not, actually, put together until just now. The children who came here when I was new are bringing their children. I have been here long enough for that.

ME: What advice would you give to someone wanting to volunteer?
MRS MENDEZ: Do not start by trying to be useful. Start by being here. The being-useful comes later, by itself, if you are patient.
ME: Thank you, Mrs Mendez.
MRS MENDEZ: Take a book home. Bring it back when you have finished.

I left her sorting the cards in the slow careful way of someone for whom such tasks are no longer interruptions but the work itself.

Activities
  • Reading aloud in pairs: students take the roles of Maya and Mr Okafor. Try the rhythm of someone working while talking — pauses, the kneeling and standing.
  • The bean-planting moment: students examine the moment Mr Okafor realises he has been being faithful to his father. What does this moment do for the reader, and how does the writer present it?
  • The biography paragraph: students examine the biographical paragraph in the middle of the piece. Why is it placed there rather than at the start or end?
  • Inheriting the soil: in groups, students discuss Mr Okafor's distinction between the temporary vegetables and the lasting soil. Where else does this distinction apply?
  • The political dimension: students discuss the inclusion of the council's attempts to close the site, and Mr Okafor's reflection on community spaces existing because people 'insist on' them.
  • Cultural comparison: in groups, students discuss what equivalent of an allotment exists in their context.
  • Profile writing: students write their own community-newsletter profile of a real or imagined long-serving local figure, in a warm direct register.
  • Compare with Marina Bell interview: in groups, students discuss the differences between this profile and the celebrity interview format. What does each form do well?
  • Compare with C1: students compare the C1 and C2 versions and identify three places where the C2 adds depth (the small wooden hut, the biographical detail, the moment about being 'faithful', the political reflection on community spaces, the closing image of the shadow on the soil).

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