Olwyn's interview writing

I'd like to pass on my attempt at this kind of teaching. My writing class wrote about the conference *I* attended. I gave them the first sentence and said they could ask me any questions they liked so long as they were a) written down and b) gramatically correct. I handed back any incorrect questions for reformulation. After an initial uncertainty, questions flew thick and fast from the writing groups. I answered any general questions with general answers: e.g. 'Can you give your opinion of the conference?' 'Yes.' After half an hour they had to organise the material they had collected into an essay and had an opportunity at the end to fill in any gaps. The students commented that the questions helped them to write a lot more than they normally would and they felt supported in the writing task by the error correction of their questions. Next week we'll look a little bit more at how they organised the mass of answers into a coherent text.