Dialogue+Interviews

//I came upon this exercise more or less by accident, but it has come to be an important part of my repertoire as a teacher. The basic dynamics are simple. Divide the class into pairs. One of the two is designated as the interviewer, the other is the interviewee. It is the job of the interviewer to keep the interviewee talking for seven minutes. The interviewer is essentially going to ask as many questions as s/he can think of about the topic at hand. The subject matter of the interview can be anything you as the teacher want it to be: the passage we just read, the experience we just had, a memory, a concept, a personal belief. After seven minutes, the members of each group switch roles and continue.

The writing that results from this dialogue exercise is generally much more alive and dynamic and engaged than most of what students are used to writing. There's something about the dialogue form that is both natural and liberating.

Assignment: Write a dialogue in which two people are talking about the subject you discussed today in class. You can attempt to re-create the dialogue you actually had, or you can make it all up fresh. Each person needs to talk ten times.//

Sample student dialogues here and here.