How to do special-person Interviews in language classes

If you’re a language teacher, you’ve probably heard of special person interviews, also called student of the week or star student interviews.

As someone that mostly taught high school classes, I admit that I was a bit skeptical about trying these in my own classroom. When I moved to a school where I was teaching more middle school classes for the first time, I had no more excuses to not experiment, and I found that I loved them!

Here’s what I’ve found to work for my classes and some things to keep in mind if you implement them in your own classroom.

In the beginning, I was worried that special-person interviews would feel too much like elementary school, so I created slide decks in French and in Spanish with high-interest photos, not drawings or cartoons. I wanted the photo to clearly communicate what the question was about to the students.

Additionally, I wanted each slide to have a lot of sentence stems and vocabulary support to make sure that the lower-level students could be successful, too. Responding to multiple questions in front of the whole class, on the spot, can be very scary for some students, so I would rather have too much support than not enough.

The school I was teaching at had class for 2 90-minute periods a week, so we had a different star student each class. If I were teaching at a school with class everyday, then I would have one student each week.

I had the student come and sit in a chair at the front of the class and I stood and asked them questions. As they became more comfortable, other students would raise their hands to ask the question, and I would move around the class.

What I Learned after two years of star student interviews:

I was blown away by how much my students liked doing these interviews. I took volunteers, so the students that wanted to do it went first. This meant the students who were less excited about it had more time to listen to the interviews and more time to process the questions and answers. But in the end, I did make everyone do it, and the other students were very encouraging.

I thought that after 20+ times this would get boring, but it didn’t. I did add some new questions as the year went on, and this helped to keep it interesting.

The repetition was very helpful for acquisition. Students knew what the language meant (comprehensible) and were exposed to it multiple times (repetition) and then were able to use it to create meaningful language. It’s the perfect formula for language acquisition!

Doing these interviews was such a good way to learn more about my students, especially things that I might not normally know, like their pets or a food they hate. It was great for building classroom community and learning about each other.

My 7th and 8th grade classes got really into these, but the 6th graders and 10th graders liked them too.

Ideas for Modifications for Special Person Interviews

If a student really doesn’t want to do it, try letting them do it with a friend sitting with them.
You don’t need to ask all of the questions each time, and you don’t need to do the same number of questions for each student. See how comfortable the student is and how the class is responding and adjust accordingly. It could take three minutes or 13 minutes.
Start with easier questions and slowly add some new questions throughout the year. It keeps it fresh and interesting.
Once the class has heard the questions a few times, call on students to ask the special person the question. Consider switching off teacher-student-teacher asking the question so the class is still hearing the correct pronunciation.
As the year goes on, ask for student ideas for new questions, or have the students write the questions themselves for more authentic exchanges.
Add a slide at the end for students to talk about what they learned about the person and summarize in the third person.
I haven’t done this with heritage speaker classes, but I think you definitely could. It would be a good way to get students used to hearing and using subjunctive and imperfect subjunctive (If I won the lottery, I would…).