Assignment #1 for ELS 115G

I interviewed one of my classmates, David Jinkins. He is a first-year student in PhD of Economics. He is a native America, but has visited China twice. He had been a student in Taiwan for 2 years, when he got his master degree. He is even very good at Chinese.

The interview is taken on 4:00 PM Sep 8, 2009, in my home. Here is a short summary.

a) He struck up conversations a lot recently, because there were so many new students in class. Generally, he started the conversation by "Hello."

b) Possibly, he will shake hands when causally introducing himself to others.

c) Generally, he will not use "how do you do". It is too formal. Instead, he used to say "nice to meet you".

d) If the other person being introduced is "higher" than him, he will stand up. By "higher", he means the social status or position is higher than him. For example, he is being introduced to a professor, then he should stand up.

e) The place that he is most likely to start a conversation with some stranger is classroom. This is because he knows he may interact with the guy afterwards, such as discussing homework, borrowing notes.

f) To strike up a conversation with someone in the class, he maight say, "hi, I did not know you. My name is David."

For myself,

g) I may strike up a conversation with some classmate I don't know in classroom. The motivation is the same with David--it is better to get acquainted with classmates.

h) Last week, I was introduced to a new classmate during the orientation. We were in Kern building. We just talked about the forthcoming semester.

The record of the interview: