My International Interview Project Essay Reflection
My assignment: To write an essay about women's issues in Japan. It had to be at least 600 to 800 words(I did 1,405 words) and had to contain at least 6 quotes that our interviewee said during our group's encounter with her. Her name was Matsui Timoko, and she told us everything she knew about japan, we asked her many questions, we got our answers. There were four categories, or themes, we could choose from, this would determine what each group member would be focusing on. Women's Issues, Health, Education, and Religion were the main categories. My focus was to find out about wome's Issues in Japan.
This assignment took about one whole quarter of the second semester. It was a lot of hard work and it needed a lot of thought put in to it. My favorite part of this project was definitely the interview with Matsui Timoko, she was really funny and wasn't afraid to let everything out. We all bonded and really enjoyed the whole interview with her. The interview took place in ISA on a Saturday moring. It was at 10 in the morning on April 26th, 2008. That interview was an interesting start for my day.
But my least favorite part of this project was the digital story. Besides the essay we had to construct, we also had to make a slide show video talking about our interview with Matsui, and it was really strange how we didn't make it in time for the deadline, but I still think our group did a good job. I was basically the poster-maker which was a really fun and pretty easy job. I think I should've helped out my teammates a little more with the technical stuff.
Some of the skills I gained doing this assignment was learning how to make transitional sentences in the beginning of my paragraph. Also, how to squeeze in a quote in an essay and give the readers the context of the quote, the paraphrased version of the quote, and the analysis, which involved critical thinking.
This project should definitely be assigned again! It was challenging but very doable!
A rubric is the format and criteria that the students would have to follow for an assignment or project in order to get a grade. The teacher can give it to us in different ways; internet, paper, verbally, and many more. It shows what will get you and A, a B, C, D, and a F for that assignment.
The rubric that was given to us for the IIP Essay, was very clear and really set the standards high; it challenged my classmates and I to be able to construct and successfully build and essay from scratch. And all the research, interviews, and personal knowledge came together and was all linked together into an essay that we could be proud of. This was, indeed, a group project, the essay, ont he other hand, was completely individual.
My group was:
Katherine Chavez
Romayne Williams
Cecilia Johnson
When I first got my group, I really felt like we were strong an every member of our group was going to get their task done, but that didnt happen. We were missing a few pieces to our final digital story, the group that I thought was going to be on top...wasn't. But I really enjoyed working with them, they were all great people to experience this project with.
