Project #1
Oral Interview Paper

Purpose & Goals of This Project:

This interview project and paper has two overarching goals:

• To help you analyze your own interpersonal communication skills and the interpersonal
communication skills of the person you are interviewing

• To begin research for you second project – the Informative Speech Symposium – and
to write about what you have learned about your public policy subtopic from your
interviewee.

Instructions:
1. For your interview, choose an person you are interested in learning more about.

Specifically, you are wanting to learn more about their history. What was their childhood
like? What are some of the life challenges they have experienced? What have been
some of their greatest accomplishments? Generate a list of questions that you want to
ask.

2. Interviews should be one-half to one hour long, and arranged in advance for the
convenience of the interviewee. Interviews may also be via email, Zoom, socially
distanced in-person or telephone.

3. Compose a set of questions to ask during the interview (word-processed)
a. Use the concepts we discussed in Chapters 2, 3, 4, and 5
b. Ten to twenty questions is a guideline.
c. Questions should be mostly open-ended, to allow for more complete answers.
d. Attach a copy of these questions to the essay you turn in.

4. Conduct the interview in a place or medium you both feel comfortable in, the pandemic,
considering privacy, etc.

5. Write a 3-4 page analysis essay of the event using a first person narrative to describe
how the interview went, crucial information you learned from the interviewee and
answering the including the questions about interpersonal communication skills in the
next section. Suggested organizational methods for your essay:

a. Use the interpersonal communication questions below to guide the structure of
your essay and use specific examples from your interview – of verbal and non-
verbal responses – to illustrate the concepts.

b. Simply break the essay into three sections: your own communication
competence during interview (using specific examples from interview); your
interviewee’s communication competence (using specific examples from
interview); and important information you learned about your subtopic from the
interview.

Details: Essay should be three to four pages in length, double-spaced, 12 point type (Arial or
Times New Roman font preferred), with one inch margins. All references to the concepts in our
text should include a footnote or endnote to reference the text used to support your analysis.

Interpersonal Communication Content:

1. Briefly describe the person you have chosen to interview and why.
2. Ask questions to understand the person’s history and how that has led to their identity

formation.
3. Analyze whether the individuals you are interviewing are competent communicators

based on verbal and non-verbal communication concepts discussed in our text. How do
you and the interviewee use the elements of communication competence discussed in
the text? How and why?

a. Keep in mind setting, point of view or orientation; did they
carefully select and interpret verbal and non-verbal messages? Did you?
Describe how.

b. Evaluate participant’s listening skills and types of responses. Determine whether
you have adapted your communication to the other person and visa-versa; what
are the adaptations and how do they meet the ethical standards discussed in the
textbook on pages 23 & 109?

4. Are there cultural influences involved in the interview? Ethnic, social or gender related?
What are they and how do they affect the interview?

5. Is the interviewee a good listener? How about your own listening skills? How do you
know and why or why not?

6. What is the power structure in the interview – describe. Why and how?
7. Analyze your communication competence and that of the person you interviewed, based

upon the chapters we have studies thus far.