Premise

The indications below presuppose that you have made a questionnaire that really helps you understand an Anglo culture – specifically, In the case of Trinity College students, the culture of a generally White, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant (WASP) American .  If your questionnaire does not do this, you cannot write your Report. 

Your questionnaire does not do this if it asks banal questions (“Do you like music?” “What's your favorite food?”) or questions about habits (“Do you and your friends 'help each other' during exams?”, “At what age do young people leave home in your country?”) but not about the WHY of those habits.  Of course, the “why” is impossible to know directly, so you must use indirect questioning and make guesses.  But at least your questions should focus on your interlocutor's culture. (Remember: his/her psychology is personal; his/her culture is what makes him/her similar to the other American students in the room, and dissimilar to the Italian students in the room.)

So if your questionnaire does not have the right focus, what should you do? 

Change your questions during the evening and do another interview.   Do this as many times as necessary, until you find questions that give you the answers you need to write your Report.

How to write your report
in 5 paragraphs

1. First paragraph. Start with the conclusion. Say immediately what your interviews of an Anglo speaker showed you about Anglo culture. Say whether this insight is new to you or whether you already realized this particularity with respect to Anglo culture.

2. Second paragraph. Explain how you got your data. It is not necessary to list your questions since you will attach the questionnaire (in English) that you used.  But it IS necessary to explain what your questionnaire tried to show, who you interviewed (where is s/he from, what background does s/he have, etc.), what particular reactions s/he had (if any). If you have made not an audio recording but a video recording, much of this information will appear in the video – but say it anyway, because there are a lot of things to see in the video and in your Report you have to decide what is essential.

3. Third paragraph. Explain what are you trying to discover, why is an interview a good (or not-so-good) instrument for discovering it, why your questions are effective. Hypothesize the answers to your questions.

4. Fourth paragraph. Then explain
        -- if your hypotheses were verified;
        -- if the answers you got reveal a particular cultural mind-set. If so, say what that mind-set is. Then say if you think it is typical of most of the people in your interviewees' country, or if it is just a stereotype or even just a myth.

5. Fifth paragraph. Repeat briefly the conclusion you already gave at the beginning. Then say what this experience is worth and if the knowledge you got is knowledge that will help you in life. DO NOT say that you interviewed too few people to make a valid statistic – this is obvious since the task serves to learn a method, not to produce scientific evidence.

     GIVE YOUR REPORT TO YOUR GROUP LEADER, WITH YOUR TRANSLATED QUESTIONNAIRE AND THE AUDIO OR VIDEO RECORDING OF AT LEAST ONE INTERVIEW.