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D) Summarize in your own words what you believe to be the best technique for interviewing people (see Appendix, p. 292).
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11. Read the following extract on the use of interviews in the foreign language classroom:
The success of an interview depends both on the skill of the interviewer, on his ability to ask the right kinds of questions, to insist and interpret, and on the willingness to talk on the part of the person being interviewed. Both partners in an interview should be good at listening so that a question-and-answer sequence develops into a conversation.
In the foreign language classroom interviews are useful not only because they force students to listen carefully but also because they are so versatile in their subject matter.
Before you use an interview in your class make sure that the students can use the necessary question-and-answer structures. A few sample sentences on the board may be a help for the less able.
As a rule students should make some notes on the questions they are going to ask and on the answers they get. If they write down all the questions in detail beforehand they have a questionnaire. Survey with the help of a questionnaire is one of the easiest ways of interviewing people.
A) Pair work.
Student A:
You are doing research into the types of television programmes people watch. You stop people in the street to ask them questions and write down their answers. Student B is a passer-by.
Television Questionnaire
1.How many hours less than 5 hours
a week do you 5-10 hours
spend watching 10-15 hours
television? 15-20 hours
more than 20 hours
2. What sort of programmes do you like watching?
3. Are there any sorts of programmes you don't like?
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the news
discussion programmes
documentaries
plays
films
serials
quiz shows
classical music programmes
pop music programmes
children's programmes
variety shows
sports programmes
others
4. What is your favourite programme?
5. Are there any sort of programmes you would like
a) more of? b) less of?
You can begin like this, "Excuse me, I am doing research into the types of television programmes people watch. Can I
ask you some questions about television?" And don't forget to finish with, "Thank you very much for answering my questions."
Student B:
Student A is going to ask you questions about the types of television programmes you watch. Answer his/her questions. Before starting, here are some of the most common types of programmes on television: the news, films, discussion programmes, quiz shows, pop music programmes, documentaries, classical music programmes, serials, plays, children's programmes, variety shows, sports programmes.
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B) Summarize your observations and report them to the group.
c) Work out a suggested weekly viewing guide based on the recommendations of group members. Beside each programme write the reasons for its appeal: humorous, realistic, unusual, exciting, good story, pop music, relaxing, well-acted, etc. Little-known programmes could be described by students familiar with them.
Write a newspaper criticism of a TV programme that you have seen of any of the following types: a) a news programme, current affairs review, etc.; b) a documentary; c) an entertainment programme, show, etc.; d) a children's programme; e) a film shown on TV; f) a sports programme; g) an educational programme or any other.
13. Group work. Your TV company needs a TV host/hostess for a children's programme. Work in groups of three or four. One of the group is a candidate for the job, and the others are interviewing him/her. Before starting, the interviewers should prepare a list of questions and the interviewee should prepare, his/her curriculum vitae.1 The interviewers should ask questions about the candidate's previous job; the certificates/diplomas/degrees/experience he/she has had; his/ her personal situation (married, with children); the candidate's reasons for applying for the place in a children's TV programme and other questions. (Use appropriate cliches and techniques). After about ten minutes the applicants change to another interviewing panel and so on. Each group decides on the best applicant and gives reasons for the choice.
14. Do library research and prepare an essay on one of the following topics:
1. Television and cinematography. Will one oust the other?
2. Television in the USA: a) news programmes; b) educational programmes; c) children's programmes; d) entertainment programmes.
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1 curriculum vitae — a list of qualifications (education, degrees, experience, references, interests) used when applying for a job in some academic field, i. e. teachers, exchange students, deans, etc.
Unit Seven
From: THE TIME OF MY LIFE
By Denis Healey
TEXT
DRAWING BACK THE CURTAIN
Denis Healey was bom in 1917 and brought up in Yorkshire. After gainig a double first at Balliol College, Oxford, for six years he was a soldier learning about real life.
Another six years as International Secretary of the Labour Party taught him much about politics, both at home and abroad. From 1952 to 1992 he was a Labour Member of Parliament for Leeds.
He is a prolific journalist and broadcaster. He has published Healey's Eye, a book on his life as a photographer, and has contributed essays to many publications for the Fabian Society1 including New Fabian essays and Fabian International Essays.
When Shrimps Leant to Whistle, Signposts for the Nineties, also published by Penguin, include a selection of his earlier writings which are relevant to the world after the Cold War.
In the early years after the war, when we first heard the truth of what Russia was doing in Eastern Europe, and began to look more objectively at the Soviet Union itself, my generation was powerfully influenced by George Orwell's 1984, and by a flood of books which purported to analyse the nature of totalitarianism.
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My visits to Eastern Europe cured me of any erratic illusions. No power could destroy national traditions which were rooted in centuries of history. Moreover, these peoples yearned to return to the Europe in which Chopin and Bartok were part of a common civilisation with Bach and Verdi. Once Stalin died, it was clear that Soviet Communism already carried the seeds of its own destruction. The Russia of Tolstoy, Tchaikovsky and Herzen was still there beneath the surface. Stalin could no more expunge it from the consciousness of its people than Hitler could liquidate the Germany of Beethoven, Goethe, and Kant.
I had been fascinated by Russia since I readits great novelists as a schoolboy. My years in the Communist Party at Oxford had given me sufficient understanding of Stalinism to reject it even while I still saw Russia as a socialist state and a necessary ally against Hitler. I was also impressed by much of pre-war Soviet culture.
The great Soviet film-makers of those days — Einstein, Pudovkin, and Dovzhenko — seemed superior to their Western rivals. Though I loathed "Socialist Realism", I admired the paintings of Deineka. They were in a book given me by a friend; she also introduced me to Shostakovich's opera, The Lady Macbeth ofMtsensk.
After the war I found that my friend had disappeared during the great purges, and that Lady Macbeth had been banned.
This helped to reinforce the bitter hostility I had developed for Soviet policies both at home and abroad.
Most of our visit was spent in sightseeing. We were of course, with our consent, taken to schools, factories, and collective farms. It also included the visits to the Hermitage in Leningrad and the magnificent summer palace of Peter the Great overlooking the Gulf of Finland, its fountains sparkling in the autumn sun, its rococo buildings gleaming with white and gold; like most other palaces, it had been meticulously restored to its former glory after almost total destruction by the Nazis. In Leningrad we were given a concert at what had originally been the club where members of the first Russian Parliament, or Duma, used to meet, hi those nineteenth-century surroundings, the concert itself was like a salon at the court of Queen Victoria, as sopranos and baritones in evening dress sang ballads and songs by "Kompositori Verdi" in voices of remarkable purity.
By comparison with the eighteenth-century canals of Leningrad, which might have been part of Amsterdam or Bremen, the Kremlin brought us to the heart of old Russia. I had imagined it a building as grimly functional as the Party it housed, and was quite unprepared for the mediaeval splendour of its palaces and churches, scattered among copses of birch and lilac.
My visit to Russia in 1959 began to give me some sense of these cultural changes. I was immensely impressed by the
charm and quality of the young sixth formers we met in Leningrad at school.
In manner and appearance they could have come from any of the upperclass families described by Turgenev or Tolstoy. Similarly, the colleges which taught foreign languages and international affairs were giving a rounded education to able young men and women, who are now in key positions in their country, where their knowledge of the outside world is invaluable.
The creative intelligentsia, such outstanding people as Sa-kharov, with his strong opposition to using the hydrogen bomb, Solzhenitsyn, exposing the life in a labour camp (A Day in the life of Ivan Denisovich), Yevtushenko with his poem Babiy Yar on anty-Semitism in the Soviet Union — were giving a headache to the authorities.
And yet we saw signs of the cultural thaw all around us.
Jazz was officially disliked, but they didn't use the power of the state to prevent it. Its public performance was then largely confined to the circus and music hall. In Leningrad we saw an ice-spectacular in which the girls were half-naked, in costumes reminiscent of the pre-war Folies Bergere.
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The theatre and ballet had changed little since the revolution, the best had been preserved.
The Moscow Arts Theatre performed Chekhov as Stanislavsky had produced it half a century eariler — as sad comedy rather than as tragedy with humour. The only ideological change I noticed was in Uncle Vanya: Astrov was presented as a handsome, vigorous young prophet of a better future, rather than as the wrinkled cynic of Olivier's2 interpretation at the Old Vie3. We saw the aging Ulanova at the Bolshoi in a ballet based on a novel by Peter Abrahams about Apartheid4 in South Africa, which called on her to act rather than to dance. On the other hand we saw Plisetskaya at her best as prima ballerina in Prokofiev's The Stone Flower. Ishall never forget her rippling sinuosity.
In 1963, when I next visited Russia, the general atmosphere was more liberal than on my first visit, and as I was not on official delegation, but attending an informal conference between Soviet and Western politicians, I had a good deal more freedom.
Our guide was a gentle young man called Kolya who had just got his degree in foreign languages. He had been at the World Youth Congress that summer in Moscow, and greatly enjoyed reciting phrases of hair-raising obscenity which he had picked up from his American comrades. Jazz was now all the rage, and since imports of Western records had been stopped, a disk by Dave Brubeck was beyond price. Since then the international youth culture has swept the whole of Russia like a hurricane.
I learned much from these visits to Russia, restricted though they were, and was to learn more still from later visits. I do not accept the view that short visits to foreign countries are more likely to mislead than to educate. On the contrary, providing you have done your home-work before you go, they not only enable you to check some of your views, but also provide you with a library of sense-impressions which give reality to any news you read later.
However, for this purpose I think three days is better than three weeks.Anything over a week and less than three years is liable to confuse you. But series of short visits, at intervals of over a year, can give you a sense of the underlying trends in a foreign country which no accounts in the press can provide. Above all, I learned that the Russians, like us, were human beings, although they were not human beings like us.
Commentary
1. The Fabian Society — a British organisation of left wing thinkers which was a founder or the Labour Party and used to have an important influence on it.
2. Oliver Sir Lawrence, also Larry (1907-1989). English actor thought of by many people as the greatest of the 20th century. He was the first director of the National Theatre and the first actor to be made a life peer. Most people know his films of Shakespeare's plays Hamlet, Henry V, Richard III.
3. Old Vic — a London theatre originally opened in 1818, the full name of which is the Royal Victoria Theatre.
4. Apartheid in South Africa.
The system established by the Government of keeping different races separate so as to give advantage to white people. The South African government is now removing the apartheid laws and ending the system.
SPEECH PATTERNS
1. I learned much from those visits, restricted though they were.
Hard working though he was, there was never enough money to pay the bills.
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Strange though it may seem I am a great admirer of the great film-makers of those days.
2. The Moscow Arts Theatre performed Chekhov as sad comedy rather than as tragedy with humour. Astrov was presened as a young prophet rather than as the cynic of Olivier's interpretation at the Old Vic.
3. The ballet... called on her to act rather than to dance.
These short visits are more likely to mislead rather than to educate.
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