Zack – the bike incident (TU12)

Speaker: Zack, male, 16, white British

Background
This is an extract from a recording of two male friends, Alex and Zack. Both boys are 16 years old and live in inner London. They were talking to the interviewer about their experiences of school. Here Zack explains to the interviewer why he had been thrown out of his secondary school. He tells a short story about an argument he had with a teacher when he was leaving school at the end of the day. Both boys are skilled storytellers (see Alex’s story about the airport). Zack’s story contains several features typical of the structure of narratives of personal experience.

Resources
Transcript
Discussion points
Audio: You can download the sound clip using the embedded player below. The download button is in the top right of the player window.

Linguistics Research Digest links
Irregular past tense verbs
Quotatives
Was/were levelling