LESSON IDEAS #1: THE THREE QUESTION INTERVIEW IDEA

Coursebooks very often contain strange, abrupt transitions that don’t make much sense. Life Upper Intermediate Unit 10 says it’s a unit about talent and begins that journey by focusing on the work on an Indian mahout and then jumps to a reading about Neil Armstrong before tying the elephants and astronauts together to focus on their natural bedfellow – articles. It feels disjointed and clunky. Back of the envelope stuff.

Anyway, since the book had a photo of a mahout I thought we could spend time on that. I found a stunning video about a mahout in Thailand which brought the subject to life. After we completed the book exercises I got the students to do some writing. Here’s the idea – it’s very simple.

THE IDEA

1 Tell the students to imagine they are going to interview their partners about a topic
2 Give the students some lined paper
3 Tell students they will write three questions one at a time
4 After writing each question, the students must answer the questions they receive from their partners
5 Follow up by getting students to read out their interviews to the whole class.

What I noticed about this activity was how incredibly imaginative the students were. They were all able to imagine what the work of a mahout might be like and to write not just interesting questions but rich, detailed answers as well.

The three-question interview is one that you apply to virtually anything you have been studying and it’s very effective.

And guess what?

It wasn’t even in the book.