Interviews as effective method of teaching English in pedagogical experiment

Traditional Wisdom

Our job is to facilitate process and clarify conflicts. This ability depends less on formal education than on common sense and traditional wisdom.

The highly educated leader tends to respond in terms of one theoretical model or another. It is better simply to respond directly to what is happening here and now.

Make sure that any model you do have is compatible with traditional wisdom: admire the wise of all religions.

For example, most people act in order to fulfill their desires. They believe that the world serves them. But the wise leader serves others and is relatively desireless, even defenseless.

Most people are plagued by endless needs, but the wise leader is content with relatively little. Most people lead busy lives, but the wise leader is quite and reflective. Most people seek stimulation and novelty, but the wise leader prefers what is common and natural.

Being content permits simplicity in life. What is common is universal. What is natural is close to the source of creation.

This is traditional wisdom.

Don’t Stir Things Up

Run the group delicately, as if you were cooking small fish.

As much as possible, allow the group process to emerge naturally. Resist any temptation to instigate issues or elicit emotions which strike out and hit any available target.

If you stir things up, you will release forces before their time and under unwarranted pressure. They may be emotions that belong to other people or places. They may be unspecific or chaotic energies which, in response to your pressure, strike out or hit any available target.

These forces are real and exist within the group. But do not push. Allow them to come out when they are ready.

When hidden issues and emotions emerge naturally, they resolve themselves naturally. They are not harmful. In fact, they are no different from any other thoughts or feelings.

All energies naturally arise, take form, grow strong, come to a new resolution, and finally pass away.

Soft and Strong

Water id fluid, soft and yielding. But water will wear away rock, which is rigid and cannot yield.

As a rule, whatever is fluid, soft and yielding will overcome what is rigid and hard.

The wise leader knows that yielding overcomes resistances, and gentleness melts rigid defenses.

The leader does not fight the force of the group’s energy, but flows and yields and absorbs and let’s go. A leader must endure a great deal of abuse. If the leader were not like water, the leader would break. The ability to be soft makes the leader a leader.

This is another paradox: what is soft is strong.

The Reward

It is more important to tell the simple, blunt truth than it is to say things that sound good. The group is not a contest of eloquence.

It is more important to act in behalf of everyone than it is to be able to win arguments. The group is not a debating society.

It is more important to react wisely to what is happening than it is to be able to explain everything in terms of certain theories. The group is not a final examination for a college course.

The wise leader is not collecting a string of successes. The leader is helping others to find their own success. There is plenty to goi around. Sharing success with others is very successful.

The single principle behind all creation teaches us that true benefit blesses everyone and diminishes no one.

The wise leader knows that the reward for doing the work irises naturally out of the work.

John Heider. The TAO of Leadership [1., p.39, 119, 155, 161].

The Wisdom of TAO is a great contribution to all the best findings of mankind, having been experienced through a long history of teaching and learning as a true natural base of understanding the world and recognizing and estimating the personal duty and place in the sphere of creation living values.

All our life is exam, even in the process of learning, upbringing, teaching and producing professional art required while learning and practice.

Pedagogical experiment due to its structural scheme of conducting and result’s foreseeing is a fruitful sphere of learning-teaching, based on possessing new words and notions on the base of true wisdom. As interviewing-process is a start -up to understanding not only the core of a subject, but yourself as adapted and understandable self-evaluation, it must be organized maximally rationally and logically. We may say about as “observation of the phenomena in action”.

Paying into attention the main personal first achievement as formal education, teaching must let the student’s opportunity of answering the life-exam-questions’ on all directions of personality’ establishment in society’s reality. That is why at the preparatory stage of our experiment we used brilliant material, lighting all structural positions of personality’s development characteristics and features, emotional and psychological stability needs and demands, mental development, habits and skills of communication in different spheres and in different situations.

The brilliant texts of TAO, placed in the beginning of our text, we listen to, read, translate, discuss, play, learn by heart, write down compositions on it and ask questions to each other in our experiment. The analysis of such approach to effective interviews showed good and excellent results in growing up motivation of those learning not automatically, but intellectually oriented to prolonged personal self-development as incentive from the very life, not less.

Approaching to the core of our task, we take into account Data sources as interviewing participants of our experiment, involved in the phenomena of study. In order to come to the real life problem ‘items we touch autobiographies, newspaper accounts, depositions, sport and art events, literature, drama, family life, military and society in interaction. Our task is to define the sequences of the notions due to their importance as significance to discuss then each of these data sources in turn.

This starting moment is one of the most difficult because of lack of vocabulary to discuss, readiness to be open to mistakes and drawbacks in presentation of answers and points of view, personal psychological characteristics and level of family upbringing coming from communication possibilities as skills to be polite, open and interesting to those around. The main motto is “not be afraid, you are not alone and single in the life of questions and fears, you are as a part of a strong engine, ruling the world.” The students greatly appreciate the words of great Martin Luther King Jr., repeating them when in need or trouble:” If you can’t fly then run, if you can’t run then walk, if you can’t walk then crawl, but whatever you do you have to keep moving forward”.

Having read all the TAO texts proposed, the participants define on their own “an interview schedule”, as a basis for interpretation of the Interviews phenomenon.

Coming back to our TAO texts, we follow the types of interview, asking specific questions. Our main task is not to simply hear answer. We select questions in a specific way. We should ask not only about intentions of the main figures of the texts (here- a leader), or participants of the group pedagogical experiment. We ask about What actually Occurs. This is a key-problem of interviewing-communication.

The researchers in this sphere of pedagogical science and practice suppose that “interviews will be your major source of information about intentions and other subjective elements of the phenomena”. So, they propose such questions, really effective and logical for situation of interviewing. They look like:

1. Describe the behavior that is going on here. Describe your own behavior (in different situations given by a teacher in the course of experiment).
2. Describe the reasons behind the behavior that is going on here. Why are you behaving the way you are? Why do you suppose others are behaving the way they are? How are these reasons interrelated? How are they affected by the setting?
3. Describe the effects of the behavior that is going on here. Describe the effect of your behavior. Describe the effects of the behavior of other participants. Are these effects interrelated?
4. Why are the participants behaving as they are?
5. What effect is the behavior of the participants having on one another and on future events or outcomes?
6. What was the sequence of events?

Each of the participants will have a different perspective on the phenomenon. The participants might occupy distinguishably different roles, as, for example, in the life of a society: adults and children, agents and clients, providers and recipients, authority figures and followers. So, in accordance with students in a classroom study, it was useful to ask questions like these ones: 1. Describe your experience to me (your friend, your mother, your teacher, etc.). Tell me about what actually happened. How did the teacher behave? How did the other students behave? 2. What caused things to happen as they did? Why did you behave the way you did? Why did the teacher behave the way he or she did? 3. Were there incidents, either good or bad, that occurred and that stand out in your mind? 4. Did you enjoy the experience? Was it interesting? Did you learn from it? [3, p. 19-22].

Answering the questions and discussing them in the field of correctly organized pedagogical experiment the students learn to estimate all situations taking place through inner context, react rightly and witty, appreciate those around for good thinking and correct decisions, be a useful part of communicative process oriented to perfect personal development of an individuality and a world around. It is possible if we learn to understand and use the importance of making decisions based on Ethical Principles.

1. John Heider. The TAO of leadership. The USA, Atlanta, Georgia, 1997.
2. Bruce W.Tuckman. Conducting educational research, the USA, 1994.
3. Azarenkova M.I. Teaching English as the spirit of Living. International Teacher Post, Kopenhagen, Denmark 201