Student Name: Hyeonseong Shin

Date: May 16, 2015

Title of Artifact: The Record File of My First Interview
Context: IOF (Improving Oral Fluency)
A brief description of the artifact: What is it? How is it used?
This artifact is the record file which was recorded on January 29, 2015 when I was
interviewing an American student. In winter quarter, I was taking IOF (Improving Oral Fluency).
The theme of IOF in winter quarter was Oral History Project, which encouraged students to go
out of the class and to try interviewing American. Students were asked to report their interview
to the class such as who they interviewed and what they talked. In order to complete this
interview project, I went to UCR campus and tried interviewing some American students on
campus. At that time, I was really nervous because it was the first time for me to approach to
strangers in America and to interview American students.

Explanation of what new ideas, information, or awareness came from this artifact
Learners cannot realize by themselves what their problems are when they are speaking
other language. However, listening to the record file, I could diagnose my problems on my
accent, intonation, and pronunciation. Not only could I recheck my problems but I also could
recheck what the information he said was, rewinding the record file. I think that it is very
beneficial for language learners to try an interview with someone because they have opportunity
to be able to listen to the real language; spoken language, and they have chance to speak what

they have learned in the class. Also, the interview enables students to get involved in the
communicative situation. According to Larsen-Freeman and Anderson (2011), CLT
(Communicative Language Teaching) asserts that, when students learn other language, they
should be able to express their opinions and share their ideas and feelings, i.e. learn to
communicate by communicating. So, it is the valuable experience that students try interviewing
because they can learn other language in order to communicate in communicative situation.

Reflection on how this will impact your approach to teaching and learning
After interviewing, I realized that I needed to make many efforts to improve my English
because I was able to understand only 60 percentages of what the American students said. A lot
of words came into my ears, but I was not able to catch all of them because they were speaking
so fast even though I already knew those words. When I was doing the interview, I depended on
the record file, not my ears because I thought that I would not catch every word that the
interviewee said during the interview. So, after the interview, I was motivated to improve English
in order to communicate with others. The most significant achievement that I fulfilled from this
interview was to eradicate a fear to talk to American students. After this interview, I was eager to
approach to someone and to try talking. Not only this experience gave me a motivation and
encouraged me to learn English more but also it made me think that my English will be getting
better if I try to have more opportunities to talk to American.

References
Larsen-Freeman, D., & Anderson, M. (2011). In Techniques and principles in Language
Teaching. New York, N.Y., USA: Oxford University Press.