Class Observation

My day to observe the class was Thursday, October 13^th. The first ten minutes of class was spent proofreading our rhetorical analysis papers before we turned them in. After that, we discussed our new assignment: an argument essay. A requirement of the paper was to choose a topic that covers something we truly care about. Within this essay, we will need to have three primary sources in order to support our argument, one of which needs to be an interview to provide a second opinion. We then had a power point lecture over “positioning yourself as a researcher,” in other words, interviewing. Three questions to help you monitor your assumptions are: “What surprised me? What intrigued me? And what disturbed me?” We also learned about closed and open questions. Closed questions require a “yes,” “no,” or very short answer. In order to avoid these types of questions, do research ahead of time. Learn about the topic, as well as your informant’s background. Open questions help provoke your informant’s perspective and allow for more conversational exchange. The real key to interviewing is being a good listener. You must have a structured plan containing focused questions. In the last part of class, we were paired up with someone that we had never really talked to before, and interviewed them. I thought it was a great way to get people to know each other and make new friends.