Tips on How to Write an Interview Essay Properly

As it can be inferred from the name, an interview essay is based on an interview.Read on this article and find out the main features of an interview essay.

The Main Steps in Writing an Interview Essay:

Choose a Subject

You will be either given a clear assignment from your professor or will be provided with an option to choose a topic yourself. Thus, it will depend on the assignment who you will interview. Another important thing is that the topic of interview should be interesting and appropriate for the interviewee. He/she should be eager to be interviewed. Actually, the success of the task will mainly depend on how full and clear the provided information is. If the person you have initially chosen for interview is not willing to cooperate with you, it is highly advisable to choose another person.

Conduct the Interview

To achieve the best results in the interview, make sure that the chosen topic is comfortable to discuss for your interviewee. Besides, if you need to use any equipment, such as a voice or video recorder, ask the interviewee whether he/she is OK with that. If you do not inform your interviewee about it in advance, he/she might feel a little rigid or nervous. If the person has agreed on the use of additional equipment, then make sure its usage does not cause any obstructions or does not cause any uncomfortable feelings. The conversation between you and the person you are interviewing should flow freely and be natural. To feel more confident in the process of interviewing, try to prepare some questions in advance.

Organize the Information into an Essay

Create an outline to make it easier to structure the gathered information. After this step, it’s high time for you to bring the information together in order to create a well-structured and coherent interview essay. The biggest challenge that students may face is that they simply don’t know where to start. The best advice, which I can give, is the following: first, just write everything that comes to your mind. Do not expect that you will immediately write a flawless, perfectly structured paper. After putting all the information on paper, you will have the opportunity to proofread it once again and make the necessary changes. Remember that you will never finish until you start writing. Even if you have writer’s block and keep staring at the blank piece of paper or blank screen, don’t let yourself remain in this state. Just write even if you are unsure about your ideas.

Polish Your Paper

As soon as you have written all your ideas on paper, make a break, and then return to proofreading and editing your paper. Even if your spellchecker has highlighted some mistakes, do not rely merely on it. Pay careful attention to grammar, spelling, and punctuation.

Some of the Сommonly Made Mistakes:

• Incorrectly written possessive pronouns. Do not mix up it’s and its. Make sure that hers, his, theirs, etc. do not have an apostrophe.
• Poor paragraph development. Divide your paper into paragraphs logically. Each paragraph should refer to a separate idea presented in the paper.
• Frequent cases of run-on sentences, misplaced modifiers, etc.
• Inconsistent voice. Make sure that your paper is written in the same tense.