English Learner Interview
Due next class (Tues. Oct. 3)
Since our goal in this class is to become more effective English learners, a good place to start is to understand clearly what we are like as English learners right now.
To contribute to this project, each of you will conduct a detailed interview of a classmate about their English study, focusing on their habits, their history, and their goals for the future. You will record this interview (using your cell phone recorder), generate a transcript using the transcription software like Xunfei 讯飞 (iflyrec.com) or Otter (otter.ai), and upload both the audio file and the transcript to our class’s shared Box folder.
The goal here is to document the class’s English-learning experiences in as much detail as possible, so that we can use these interviews as evidence later on when writing papers in this class. For this reason, if doing so would allow you to speak more freely and in more detail, you can feel free to conduct your interview in Chinese if you wish. (If you would find it more interesting and meaningful to do it in English, needless to say, you’re welcome to do that too.)
There’s no limit to how long these interviews can be, but I’d suggest 20-30 min. as a good length for each interview. (I mean 20-30 minutes per person. If you prefer to record your interview as a single back-and-forth conversation rather than two separate standalone interviews, then probably 40-60 minutes would be a good length for the combined conversation.)
(For an example of a nice, detailed, in-depth interview, you can listen to the sample interview of Shuhan Li, our former WLS coordinator, by former student Cammie Li, which you can find in our Box folder. The questions in this interview are different from the ones you’ll ask your classmate, but the length and level of detail is about what I’m looking for.)
Interview questions
(Some of these questions are related, so your interviewee may end up answering some of them simultaneously. If you get to a question and the interviewee feels like they've already answered it, feel free to skip it.)
What part of learning and using English do you find easiest? What part do you find most challenging?
What part of learning and using English do you most enjoyable? What part do you find least enjoyable?
Do you currently have any habits or routines related to English learning that you do on your own, outside of class requirements? If so, what are they, and why do you do them?
How was English taught in your middle school and high school? In what ways (if any) did studying English in school have a positive effect on you, as an English learner? In what ways (if any) did it have a negative effect on you, as an English learner?
While you were in middle and/or high school, did you have any English-learning habits or routines that you kept up on your own, independent of in-class English study?
What are your hopes for English in the future? What do you hope to be able to use English to do in college? What do you hope to be able to use English to do after college?
Tips and reminders
Please conduct your interview face to face! No WeChat interviews, please.
Be honest! The more faithfully we document reality, the more interesting and useful the lessons will be we can draw from this exercise.
When recording, don’t forget to test your recorder first. It would be no fun to conduct the entire interview only to discover at the end that you forgot to press “record” and ended up recording none of it, or that the volume was too low to hear, etc.
