Writing Task Two

English 100

Task Two – Interview Paper

Introduction:

Have you ever wondered what your older family members have gone through to get an education or why some family members may have been denied an education? Do you have a family member or friend who has told you engaging stories about school or learning to read and write? Have you wondered if your experiences and opinions about education are similar to or different from others? And what do those similarities and differences mean? Why is literacy and education so important to some people and not to others?

This interview project can provide you with these answers.

After you have researched your subject(s) and found the answers to your questions, you must write a formal paper integrating the results of the interview. This assignment will allow you to take part in a form of research – interviewing – and will help you to formulate your own perspective about education while learning about other’s ideas and experiences regarding education.

Purposes of this assignment:

• To practice interviewing methods.
• To add to your own knowledge and opinions about education
• To meet and learn from others.
• To collect interesting and vivid stories and histories.
• To strengthen and refine your critical thinking and writing skills.
• To prepare you for the next writing assignment.

Writing Assignment:

You must interview at least one subject (If you wish to interview more than one subject to examine the response to which you will be drafting a minimum two page paper, that would be appropriate; however, you will only include one interview in the task paper).

This interview must be done on your own and must provide you with a different perspective on education (For example, interview an older family member to learn about educational experiences and opportunities in a past generation or interview someone who overcame an obstacle in order to learn). Take careful notes.

After you have interviewed your subject(s), you must write a formal paper integrating the results of the interview.

Guidelines and Strategies:

You will need to sort and arrange the material from an interview, but you must not take material out of context or change the meaning of the material. You can use revealing comments by your subject to set the scene or provide background.

You want to make sure that your paper makes it very clear who says what – what came from you and what came from your subject. You can utilize direct quotes and paraphrases.

The writing task will focus heavily on organization and structure. Your introduction should contain a focused thesis statement that interests and informs the reader. The thesis statement should also both identify the subject and explain or forecast the meaningfulness of the subject. Your body paragraphs should describe your interview subject, the subject’s own words and ideas and what you learned. Your conclusion should cohere to the rest of your essay and will emphasize the meaning of the interview and what you learned. In addition, you should display an increasing control of mechanical correctness and an improvement in style.

Format and Organization for this task paper:

Introduction: Introduce your topic and interview subject. Provide some useful background information on your interview subject. Include a thesis statement that states the purpose of the interview and what you learned from the interview. The thesis should also control the entire paper.

Body: This is where you will incorporate the information, direct quotes and paraphrases from your interview along with your own commentary. You can tell your reader what question you asked and then provide the response you received. You can also explain or comment on this response. Make sure who says what is clear and all punctuation (e.g. quotation marks) is accurate and correct. Do NOT set your paper up as a “Q and A” format. If it is set up in this format or is not a minimum of two and half pages, I will hand it back to you until you have written it in the correct format.

Conclusion: Sum up what you have learned from this interview/subject. If this interview also gave you some new ideas, perspectives or questions in regard to education, you can also include that information. Use this interview paper to truly help you to form your own and, possibly, new ideas about education as well as to help you to reflect upon and make sense of your past educational experiences.

Requirements:

This essay must be written in a formal academic format and be at least 2 ½ full pages in length, word-processed, double-spaced, spell-checked and edited for any grammatical or mechanical errors that may distract your reader such as sentence fragments and/or run-on sentences.

Rough draft due for peer review: Friday, Oct. 8

Final draft due for evaluation: Wednesday, Oct. 13