English · Class 12

Active learning ideas

The Interview: Ethics and Impact

This topic thrives on active participation because ethical communication cannot be taught through theory alone. Students need to experience the tension between intrusion and revelation firsthand to understand why interviews carry such weight in public discourse.

• CBSE Learning Outcomes
• CBSE: Flamingo - The Interview - Class 12

• 40–60 min
• Pairs → Whole Class
• 3 activities

Activity 01

• Expert Panel
• 60 min · Pairs

Role-Play: The Author Interview

Students prepare by researching a famous author and their views on interviews. Then, they pair up, with one acting as the author and the other as an interviewer, focusing on crafting insightful questions and responding thoughtfully. Pairs can then swap roles.

Why do many famous authors view the interview as an intrusive 'thumbprint on the wind'?

Facilitation Tip

During Role-Play: Celebrity Interviews, assign roles carefully so shy students can start with interviewer positions to build confidence before switching.

• Understand
• Apply
• Analyze
• Evaluate
• Self-Management
• Relationship Skills

Activity 02

• Formal Debate
• 45 min · Whole Class

Formal Debate: Interview Ethics

Divide the class into two groups to debate the statement: 'The interview format is inherently intrusive and damaging to an artist's privacy.' Students must use arguments and examples from literary texts and real-world scenarios.

How does Umberto Eco's approach to the interview differ from his literary contemporaries?

• Analyze
• Evaluate
• Create
• Self-Management
• Decision-Making

Activity 03

• Expert Panel
• 40 min · Small Groups

Question Crafting Workshop

Present students with hypothetical interview scenarios for figures like Umberto Eco. In small groups, they brainstorm and refine a list of five profound questions designed to elicit unique insights, justifying their choices.

What makes a question effective in eliciting a profound response from a subject?

• Understand
• Apply
• Analyze
• Evaluate
• Self-Management
• Relationship Skills

A few notes on teaching this unit

Start with the group debate to surface misconceptions, then use the role-play to test those ideas in real time. Avoid lecturing about ethics—instead, let students discover the nuances through structured conflict. Research shows that when students argue opposing views, their understanding of ethical dilemmas deepens permanently.

By the end of these activities, students should confidently distinguish between intrusive and purposeful questioning, articulate how interview dynamics shift power, and craft questions that reveal rather than exploit. Their reflections should show sensitivity to both interviewer’s intent and interviewee’s boundaries.

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Watch Out for These Misconceptions

• During Role-Play: Celebrity Interviews, watch for students assuming all interviews feel equally intrusive. Redirect by asking them to adjust their question tone or topic based on the interviewee’s comfort level.

  During Group Debate: Ethics of Intrusion, students often claim intrusiveness is universal. Counter this by having them reference specific lines from Eco’s text where the interviewer’s bias shapes the conversation.

• During Question Craft Workshop: Effective Queries, some students write overly long questions. Gently remind them that Eco’s interviewees often gave profound answers to single, clear questions.

  During Group Debate: Ethics of Intrusion, when students defend long, complex questions as deeper, ask them to test those questions in the Question Craft Workshop to see if brevity yields richer responses.

• During Text Mapping: Perspectives Collage, students may assume interviewees always control the narrative. Point to Eco’s argument that interviews reveal the interviewer’s worldview more than the subject’s.

  During Role-Play: Celebrity Interviews, assign some students to play journalists with strong biases and have the class observe how the conversation shifts away from the interviewee’s intended message.

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Methods used in this brief

• Expert Panel
• Formal Debate