New Bedford Division of Adult/Continuing Education
455 County Street
New Bedford, MA 02740
MAIN CONCEPT:
Students select a candidate for their oral interview and conduct the interview
themselves.
MATERIALS:
Computer, modem, CD-ROM drive, a telecommunications network providing access to the World
Wide Web and a bookmark for Oral History sites
Word Processing Software
World Map
CD-ROM (such as Grolier's Encyclopedia)
Tape recorders and tapes
Cameras
Portraits of Our Mothers
Journals for students to record information
Sheet listing sample questions
OBJECTIVES:
To help the students enhance their listening, oral and written skills.
To help the students practice asking questions.
To help the students become familiar with note-taking.
To practice changing statements into interrogative sentences in order to ask the "right question".
To help the students discover more about their family heritage.
To learn about the diversity in the United States.
To have the students explore immigration.
To help the students enhance their research and communicative skills.
PROCEDURES:
Each student selects a candidate for an oral interview.
Using Portraits of Our Mothers, students read about the questionnaires on ethniticity and
Interviewer Report. Some questions include: What were the conditions like in the place you
came from? Why did your family come here? What did you expect the U.S. to be like?
Each student decides which questions he/she will ask during the oral interview. Students are
given a list of sample questions. By referring to the sheet listing sample questions students
decide which would be the "right" questions to ask during the oral interview.
Using the journal the student prepares and writes the list of questions in the appropriate order.
Given the tape recorder, tape and camera and following an explanation and demonstration of
their use, the students are allowed to practice.
Using a tape recorder, tape and camera each student conducts an oral interview and takes
photographs of the person interviewed.
Upon completion of the taping of the oral interview each student brings the tape recorder, tape
and camera to the following class.
Students share their interviews with their classmates. The students listen to each other's
interviews on tape.
Following a brief introductory explanation on the person whom he/she interviewed, each
student plays his tape of the oral interview as the classmates listen.
Discussion, questions, complements and comments take place following each presentation of
the oral interviews.
Students are later asked to evaluate themselves as an interviewer from a questionnaire. As a
means of evaluation students read and answer questions such as: What was the most difficult part
of interviewing?
ACTIVITIES:
Using "who-what-where-when-why" type questions the students may interview President
Clinton, Madonna, and Michael Jackson, as portrayed by their classmates.
A short reading segment in Side by Side details the lives of immigrants who happily recall
their native lands and customs as they worry about their grown children who no longer use their
parents' native tongue, move to the suburbs, and eat fast food. This story holds high interest for
ESOL students.
A story about Rosa Parks in Begin in English (Jag Publications) may be read by the students
during January when focusing on Martin Luther King. A video of Rosa Parks such as seen on
A&E Biography may be shown also as an example of how a reporter does an interview.
Discussion should follow.
The video, The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, based on the novel by Ernest J. Gaines, may be
viewed by the students. A chapter of American history is presented very dramatically and
accurately.