An interview essay is a detailed analysis of an interview and depicts its themes, highlights and main points. Interview essays are used in many facets of academia including psychology, education studies and anthropology. Creating a sample interview essay is a great way to teach students how to produce them. Sample interview essays require you to perform an interview and compose an essay so that students can see the relationship between the two parts.
- Skill level:
Other People Are Reading
Things you need
Find someone that will agree to be interviewed by you. Form journalistic questions to ask them. Journalistic questions are always some form of who, what, how, where or why. Depending on who you talk to, the details or your questions will vary. Use your questions to obtain the most vital information from your interview as possible.
Perform the interview by asking the questions you prepared earlier. Pay special attention to everything the interviewee says, and do your best to express your interest in what they are talking about. If you feel the interview is beginning to go off-topic, carefully guide it back to your questions list. If you are so bold, you can even ask how you did as an interviewer, inquiring about the strengths and weaknesses.
Record the interview with both a voice recorder and a notepad. Do your best to write down the important quotes from the interview, in case the voice recorder malfunctions. Inquire of the interviewee whether it is OK to call for follow-up questions later. If it is OK, be sure to get the contact information of the interviewee.
Write several paragraphs about your impressions of the interview as soon as you can after the session. This does not need to be formal writing, just notes about what was said in the interview and what you found to be important.
Pick out the main points of the interview, along with quotes that back them up. Organise these points in an outline. As a rule of thumb, it is best to put forth the best or most interesting point first and the second most important point last. The weaker points can go in between. In doing this, the essay will begin and end with the strongest analyses.
Write an introduction to the essay, giving an overview of the main points of the interview. Organise the main points into paragraphs to come after the introduction. Write a conclusion that paraphrases the essay and brings it to a close. Refine the essay by proofreading it for grammar and content errors.
Finish the Interview Essay Sample by presenting the highlights of the interview with the essay itself. With both of these works together, students can see how you took the content of an interview and made a detailed analysis of it. For a shorter sample, match one or two key points of the interview with the corresponding parts of the essay.
- 20 of the funniest online reviews ever
- 14 Biggest lies people tell in online dating sites
- Hilarious things Google thinks you're trying to search for