Daycare Center Lay of the Land

I really felt that Chantelle’s paper was well written and contained great information regarding the structured schedule of a daycare, children that attend and the physical set up of the day care. Her paper was flowy in that everything she wrote about was set up well and led into the proceeding paragraphs. One thing that I found distracting was her grammatical spelling errors and will act as another reason for my double proofreading of my final draft because although it takes minimal effort it does have a large impact on the writers credibility. I also enjoyed how she used oral histories which were mentioned in the field working book and make the story more personal and realistic. It actually felt like I was with the writer watching the little girl with the Uggs and pink vest dart over to the closet to get her pony stuffed animal to nap with. She also did a good job creating a setting because she described the area with the pictures of children or pictures drawn with children as well as including a time so we could better understand where the writer was in her day. She did a great job creating a piece that will mesh better with the other essays for a final ethnography essay.

I Can Read and I Can Write

After reading the interview conducted by Jennette Edwards I found myself surprised by how well she incorporated material from her interview into her essay. Although she did not include her questions to the interviewee, the answers she received from Lee flowed well giving the essay an easier to read and story-like feel. What I enjoyed most out of her writing was her use of scene indicators which described the interviewee’s actions and made the reader feel like they were actually there with her.
In the interview section “Learning How To Ask” the interviewer provided readers with very useful information on what kinds of questions to ask, how to listen and how to learn. In teaching us about questions the author used great examples of what open and closed questions are useful to information the interviewer is trying to receive. Closed questions are short answered and require additional research to use such properly whereas open questions tend to be longer and more interactive with the interviewer listening and interviewee speaking. Open ended questions allow the material to be turned into oral histories which is an example of Jennette’s “I Can Read and I Can Write” essay. The author also gave us some reminders regarding proper interview etiquette about listening which many students may forget during their chaotic lives in college. Some I found simple to remember but easy to forget included: no fiddling, no watch-checking show the interviewee you’re interested by maintaining eye contact and using verbal acknowledgments.
I found all the reading useful and am now better prepared for my upcoming interviews.