Your task is to understand the communication skills that help people succeed in other college courses, jobs, family responsibilities, or community activities. You will interview someone who is further along in their academic, professional, family, or civic roles than you are now. You should choose someone you admire and someone who is doing the kind of work you imagine yourself doing someday. In the interview, you are trying to understand how this person uses rhetoric, genre awareness, information literacy, and mindfulness in their everyday lives. You might consider asking them questions like these:
Who do you communicate with regularly?
What goals do you have for your communication?
How do you use communication to identify with or influence other people?
What kind of arguments (C+R+A) do you make?
How do you appeal to your audience?
How do you communicate ethically and charitably?
What genres of communication do you use? How did you learn those genres?
How do you find the information you need?
What kinds of sources do you trust? How have you come to trust them?
How do you reflect on your writing and learning?
After the interview, you will write a 1000-word essay (about 4 double-spaced pages) describing how the learning outcomes for this class transfer to another writing context. Your essay should focus on what kind of rhetorical knowledge, genre awareness, information literacy, and mindfulness the person you interviewed uses as they communicate with others. YOUR ESSAY SHOULD USE TERMS AND CONCEPTS FROM OUR CLASS READINGS AND DISCUSSIONS.
YOUR ESSAY SHOULD NOT JUST BE A TRANSCRIPT OF THE INTERVIEW.
Your paper should also reflect on how your current knowledge prepares you for this future communication roles and what you still need to learn about communication.