Maria: Explaining football

There are lots of interesting features of Maria’s explanations. The following is a list of some possible ideas; you may have thought of some additional features too. You may wish to compare your observations and thoughts to the feedback below. This feedback is based on our observations and thoughts, and is not necessarily a ‘correct’ answer. Your own observations are very important and will reflect your own learning and experiences.

A. Overall coherency

Maria does try to answer the questions posed by the interviewer. However, her answer is difficult to follow, as she does not stay on one topic (known as topic maintenance skills). She struggles to stay on-topic for more than a few utterances and a further question is required to bring her attention back.

There is little clear structure to her responses, or evidence of sequencing, and Maria often changes the focus of her answer (for example, she relates how she injured her foot by kicking walls in the absence of a ball), or changes topic entirely (she talks about the Olympic torch).

B. Sentences used in the explanation

• This is an area of strength for Maria in terms of expressive language skills. Maria uses several complex sentences, employing subordinate clauses such as ‘when’, ‘if’, or ‘until’ phrases. She also uses shorter phrases such as “no you don’t”, or “it was on the TV”.

• Maria uses sentences in various tenses and uses pronouns, prepositions and number appropriately. She uses some phrases with non-standard grammar, eg “I seen this bloke” or “them plastic ones”, but this is part of Maria’s local dialect.

C. The words that are used

• Maria uses appropriate words, with some subject-specific vocabulary such as “goalkeeper” or “referee”.

• There is some evidence that Maria has occasional difficulty in finding the correct word saying “a kit, I meant to say”, and “what’s it called?”.

D. Body language and other non-verbal characteristics

• Maria may have some difficulties in maintaining attention and eye gaze, though this may be due to her being on camera.

• Maria occasionally talks at the same time as the interviewer. Taking turns in conversations successfully is part of ‘pragmatic’ or ‘social communication skills’.

E. Any other features

The interviewer asks Maria a multi-part question: “Describe to me everything you can about the game football, so how you play it, what you need to do to win, what the rules are.” Maria answers this question but does not address all its parts. It may be that she finds it difficult to hold all the parts of the question in her mind as she answers.