Regina, a teacher that attended one of my BER seminars last year, is using Special Person interviews in her Spanish 1 and Spanish 3 classes. She has some implementation questions:

Hi Regina,

These are good questions. For more information, look on the Special Person Interviews section on the Free Stuff page of my website, BryceHedstrom.Com. I’ll answer your specific questions one at a time:

1) You said that after the interview, you list the information from the interview on the board with the class…

Yes, you can do that, but once students get the hang of it, they will not always need that kind of explicit help. Writing the answer once every couple of weeks can help them with spelling, conjugation and syntax, but it is not always necessary. Most students can get it with just a few new words in the target language and English written on the board.

With a middle school class or with a rowdy class of 9th graders that are new to the Special Person interview process, I would have them write down every sentence you “report back” to them during the interview. Let them know that writing it down after the interview is done will eventually be more powerful because they will give themselves many more repetitions to themselves in their heads as they focus on what they will soon write. I teach and often remind them of the ancient Latin dictum: “Repetitio mater studiorum est.” (Repetition is the mother of all learning).

2) Do you have students copy the information off the board? 

When I write out the information on the board, yes. But most of the time they write down the information from the interview from memory when they are working with a partner as a culminating activity.

3) Do they use their notes on the quiz? 

I do not allow students to use their notes on the quiz. Almost all students can remember most of the details from the interview because they are connected to a real person. When they can see their classmate answering questions during the interview everything is much more real and memorable.

The “quiz” is students writing out statements that the interviewee said in the interview. After the interview and before the quiz, I negotiate with the class how many sentences they should write. Just two sentences? No. Too few. Every single sentence? No. Too many. Usually it is about 80% of the sentences the interviewee said.

I do not give extra credit for those who remember and write more than the agreed upon number of sentences, but I tell them to impress me. Writing more that the expected number will get my admiration and respect, which is worth much more that a few extra credit points. I feel like that helps students to move away from only working for a grade and begin to learn as much as they can and dig deeper to show what they know.

Also, what counts on the quiz is only what the interviewee said during the interview. If the interviewee didn’t say it, an answer, even if the language is flawless and factually correct, does not count. “She has black hair,” for example, is an invalid answer on the quiz, as would be, “He lives in a yellow house.”

To me it also makes sense to follow the 80/80 rule on almost every assessment: If at least 80% of students do not get an 80% or higher on an assessment, it is invalid. I have not taught the concept or lesson thoroughly enough. I jokingly like to say that when the 80/80 threshold is not met there is somebody clueless in the class… me! When most students do not understand pretty well, I haven’t done enough checks for understanding along the way. I haven’t done enough “teaching to the eyes” (a precept I learned from Susan Gross). I haven’t read their reactions and body language closely enough. I figure my job is to teach them and if they do not learn, it is largely my issue—not completely, but mostly.

4) What do you do about kids who just don’t remember what was said?

The information is compelling which makes it memorable. It’s interesting and it’s real. It sticks because it is about a classmate right in front of them in the class and is not made-up facts about some character in a textbook.

Also the information/specific language is repeated about eight times during the interview so most kids will get it. Here is a simplified example of multiple repetitions in an interview with an absolute beginning class of the phrase “His/Her name is _______”:

1)  [Teacher] “What is your name?”  [Student, with help from the poster] “My name is ______.”  [Teacher] “Your name is _______? Nice to meet you______. My name is Señor Hedstrom.”

2)  [Teacher, turning and “reporting back” to the class] “Class, this girl/boy is called _______________.”

3)  [Teacher, a few moments later] “OK, let me get this straight. Your name is _______.”

4)  [Teacher, a bit later] “What do we know about this girl?”  [Student raises hand and says; “Her name is ________.”

5)  [Teacher, to interviewee] “Is that right? Your name is ________?”

6)  [Teacher, to the class] “Ok, what all do we know about this girl? Let’s count the sentences…”  [Students] “Her name is _____________.” (and other answers, if any)

7)  [Teacher, to the whole class] “OK, get with your assigned partner and write down as many sentences as you can remember that ___________ said about herself.” Partners work together repeating what they can remember and…

8)  [Students, each in their own notebooks]  … are writing down those sentences with help from one another, the teacher circulating around the classroom, and new words in the target language and in English on the board.

9)  [Teacher, after 2-3 minutes, when most are done writing] “Ok class, what sentences have you written down?”  [Students] “Her name is _____.”

After this may repetitions most students will get it. We are not just saying a statement once or twice. All students will have written down the sentences so they can review on their own at home the night before the quiz. I will also help any students that didn’t get everything after school, before school or during lunch.

By the way, I have them write the information in complete sentences. They can do this with the help of the posters like this and this on the classroom wall. There are posters in 13 world languages available for free download on the Special Person dropdown on my Free Stuff page.

5) Is the quiz always the same day as the interview?

No. It seems to me that would be too much just short term memory. I want them to soak up the vocabulary and grammar in the quiz sentences, and also to absorb the interpersonal knowledge about their classmates, so I give the quiz the next day or the day after that.

6) It says to point to the student(s) who were interviewed and have the other students write about them.

That would be just for the first three or so interviews in a class of absolute beginners. When students start at zero target language ability, they can only handle one or two sentences. Those first couple of questions and answers are “What is your name?” and “Do you have a nickname?” You can ask those two questions to three or so students in one short interview time. After that, the number of questions and answers will increase and the number of interviewees will decrease until there a re many questions and just one interviewee. Once the receptive vocabulary of the class increases, there will be 20 to 30 sentences per interviewee.

7) What do you do with kids who are absent that day?

Some teachers that are adept at technology and organized record each interview and post them on a special school website for absent students to access. If you can do that, go ahead, but I am all about making your teaching life easier and that seems like a lot of extra work. I just tell absent students to look for somebody that seems smart and responsible and ask to copy their notes and then study them. Absent students have one week to make up the quiz.

Student language ability increases incredibly fast when the communication is focused on one actual student at a time and is meaningful. Students acquire vocabulary much more quickly when it is purposeful, real and contextualized—much fast than they do from lists of random vocabulary words. Here are a couple of examples from beginning classes that demonstrate how much language they can acquire in a short time:

• Students Interview the Student Teacher

• Some Pig!

Also, interviews are not just for beginning classes.

8) Interviews with Upper-Level Classes.

You mentioned you were starting Special Person interviews with your Spanish 3 students. Here is an example interview with a Spanish 3 class and here is an article I wrote about interviews with upper level classes.

Also, please keep in mind that I do hands-on training and demonstrations about Special Person interviews, with a free accompanying handbook for all participants. remote or in-person training is available.  

If you want personal training I offer individual professional coaching for teachers.

Special Person interviews are incredibly powerful to help students acquire modern languages and I want to help as many teachers to acquire the techniques as possible. If you have follow up questions here, just email me, I will help you.