After reading serveal pages from my textbook, I learned valubable information about how I should conduct an interview. The first section discusses how to ask questions when conducting an interview. There are two tyes of interview questions: closed questions and open questions.
The book describes closed questions as "like those we answer on application forms or in magazines." These kind of questions do have the setbacks of being easily answered using single phrases and can halt further conversation.
Open questions are questions that are open ended and required more than just single phrased answeres. When asking these kind of questions, an interview should be actively listening and engaged in the informant's answere becasue the answere to these question can spark future questions.
The second sections describe how to be a good listener when interviewing. Good listeners actively pay attention to what their informant is saying. They also do not interrupt their informant and they encourage their informant with verbal acknowledgments to keep the conversation flowing.
The final sections give great examples of how to listen and what a succesful interview looks like usuing helpful techniques like balancing the writer's voice and the informants vioce when documenting and writing about the interview. The examples also show to let the informant remain in the forground telling their story as the main focus.
I founf this reading to be really helpful in guiding me in the right direction in conducting my interview and I will definitely use the techniques stated.
I agree that the information was very helpful in order to conduct interviews for my project as well. The open question strategy was one I liked to because I always thought you had to use direct questions.
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