Writing IV: an outline

Hi everybody,

Here are some details regarding Writing IV.

Basically, there are three types of work:

1. Gofun ha Juubun: This is a kind of timed writing that we will do at the beginning of each class. Please be sure to come on time so that you can do the timed writing with everyone.
2. Reading and book reviews: Reading English regularly is probably the most important thing if you want to improve your writing. You should write 12 book reviews during the semester, basically one a week. When possible, I will give you time to write one in class. But most of the time it will be necessary to read a book and write a book review for homework. Very short books are fine, but if you have extra time I recommend reading something a bit longer and more difficult.
3. Essay-related work: There will be about three major topics during the semester. These will lead up to writing an essay, but we will do lots of activities before you have to write the essay, so that you can read, listen to, or talk about the topic, or do short writing tasks to prepare you for the essay.

End of the semester

Before next week, please:

• Study your self-introduction/homestay letter, so that you can write it again without any notes.
• Write any missing posts, or extra posts that you would like included in your grade.
• Make sure that your different kinds of posts have appropriate tags (labels).
• Make a note of the total number of posts you have written, as well as the number of book reviews.

Midnight Run: sentences and mindmap frame

Ryuji Okada

Mai Hirakawa

Getting Booklog onto your blog

Check out these pages:

• ブログパーツはどこから取得できますか
• ブログパーツの貼り方を教えてください

2nd session: April 20th

Hello everyone,
Most of you sent me your rewritten essays (homestay letters) during last week's lesson or soon after. Most of them had quite a lot of information, so they are a good base for talking and writing about yourself in several different ways.
Because that was your first assignment of the semester, I wrote fairly detailed feedback. Also, because the essay is a base for more work writing about yourself, I wanted to make sure that you understood the feedback.
With most assignments, though, the most important consideration will be helping you improve your writing over time. So, rather than give specific advice on individual errors, the focus will be on helping you to recognize TYPES of errors that you often make.
I don’t know if we’ll have time to talk about that today, but we will soon. So when you read through the comments, look out for errors that you made twice or more in the same essay.
KEY POINTS FOR GETTING A CREDIT

• Come to class.
• Make sure you have written 4 posts on your blog over the course of a week. (Three is OK if you have submitted an assignment by email, etc., that week.) Currently, there is no specific length requirement for each post. 
• Hand in assignments on time.

ON TODAY’S MENU

• Reading and writing blog comments
• Timed writing (七分は十分)
• Second book review (including a quotation and a picture)
• Talking about feedback on the 1st assignment (if time allows)

Welcome to Writing III!

Hello, everyone,

Nice to meet you. I’m Rick, and I’ll be your writing teacher this year. I’m looking forward to teaching you.

Students get confused when I tell them all the details of the course in the first class session, so today we’ll practice some of the activities we’ll be doing through the semester as well as making sure you’re set up to study through the year.

A few key details on the course and what’s expected of you:

• In the first semester, I want you above all to improve your writing fluency. To do that, you need to write at least 3 or 4 posts a week on your blog. Some of those posts will be done in class but you need to do the rest at home. When trying to improve your fluency, missing classes or forgetting to post for a week are the worst things. There is a risk that you will just stay at the same level rather than gradually improving…so when grading students absences and weeks with no posts are the things that will I am most strict about. 
• To improve your writing, you need to link it to your reading. By writing about your reading, you can pick up some expressions to use yourself. Therefore, you should read a book from the English Reading Garden each week and write a review of it.
• The main topic this semester will be writing about yourself. We will start by improving the letter to a homestay family then move on to writing about yourself more broadly. Sometimes we will revisit the homestay letter, looking for ways to incorporate information from your other writing. 
• Although fluency and quantity are the main things 

Also, a couple of remarks about grades and so on:

• If you come to class on time and write some posts on your blog every week—even if the amount of each post is small and the quality is low—you shouldn’t have any problems getting a credit. The key thing in the first semester is continuing engagement with the course through the 15 weeks. Try not to fall into the "Golden Week Trap”!
• Of course, for higher grades, you should try to write more posts or longer posts, or show that you’re trying to improve your writing quality too.

Anyway, let’s enjoy Writing III together!

Progress check

1. Check your Gofun ha Juubun performance over the year. 
2. Make a new My Errors post*.
3. Post a podcast episode (a book review) using Screencastify.
4. Make sure you have posted all your book reviews on your blog (with the book reviews tag), incorporating improvements from the Manaba version.
5. Make sure you've posted other Manaba assignments on your blog, too, with improvements as necessary.
6. Make sure you have at least 10 posts on your blog each month. If you had fewer than 10 posts one month, you can make up for it the following month. But just making up the number of missing posts is not enough! For example, if you had 7 posts one month, you might think that 13 posts is enough the next month to make 20 posts over two months. But actually you need 18 posts the next month (13 + 5) to make up for the shortfall.

* This should include several examples. It should also include recognition of your previous My Errors posts and an account of what you've done since then, for example continuing to focus on the same type(s) of errors, or changing your focus to a different one.

TEST:

• Blog Check
• Short Essay (paying attention to your focus error(s))

Midnight Run

We spent two classes watching Midnight Run. Please write a review of the movie on your blog!

At least 10 posts a month

You probably remember the Writing IV intro from the beginning of the month. Here's a quick reminder as we move into the last 10 days of October.

Writing IV 2018–19

In this class we will focus on writing fluency, as in Writing III. Since you already have a semester of experience, the amount of writing expected will be larger. We are also going to put more emphasis on improving your writing quality. You will need to use the feedback on your writing to judge your own weak points and systematically try to improve.

This semester, in general we will do two assignments a week on Manaba. One is a book review, and one is an exercise from the Trio Writing 2 textbook. After doing them and getting feedback, you should do the assignment again on your blog, using the feedback to improve it.

Please see the handout and future posts on this blog for the details.

Notes on the rest of the semester

1. Remember that there is no class next week.
2. To get a credit, you need at least 10 posts in June and 10 posts in July on your blog (NOT including Speaking posts).
3. Make sure that you have the tags (labels) Book Reviews, Gofun ha Juubun, My Diary, and Trio Writing on your blog.
4. Please finish your list of errors. (Later, we will talk about how to classify and prioritize them.)

Writing 3 (May 7th)

Hi, everyone,

I hope you enjoyed Golden Week.

This week, let's work mainly on book reviews. We will read a book and write a review of it during the class time. We will start by doing it in Manaba, and then transfer the work to the blog.

You will notice that Book Review 3 is now open in Manaba. Unfortunately, there are several students who haven't done Book Review 2 yet (and even a few who haven't done Book Review 1 yet!). I am worried that people who have fallen behind so early in the semester may be on course to fail the class.

If we have time, we will do some more work with the textbook.

TRIO

Please remember that May 14th is the deadline for finishing the Chapter 1 exercises in Oxford Learn!

Welcome to Writing III!

Hi, everyone. I'm Rick, your teacher for Writing III and IV. I hope you will enjoy these classes, and improve your writing over the year.

Let's talk about Writing III first. The first thing to say is that we will use a textbook, TRIO Writing 2, published by Oxford University Press. The second thing I want to mention is that we will use three different online tools for this course. In this way, while improving your English, you will also learn more about using computers, and I think this will be useful for your future. We will learn about them little by little, so don’t panic! Just remember to make notes of URLs (web addresses), usernames, and passwords!
The three online tools are:

1. TRIO Writing 2 Online Practice: This is a companion to the TRIO Writing 2 textbook.
2. A blog: Most of you already have a blog. Let’s use it regularly. We will often do timed writings on the blog. You will also post book reviews, after writing them in Manaba. In addition, you will post your corrected essays on your blog, after first writing them in Manaba. You will use Tags (called Labels in Blogger) to organize types of posts together.
3. Manaba: I will ask you to write 3 essays (in Microsoft Word) and upload them to Manaba.

Class schedule

April

9th: 1th class

16th: 2th class

23rd: 3th class

May

7th: 4th class

14th: 5th class

21st: 6th class

28th: 7th class

June

4th: 8th class

11th: 9th class

18th: 10th class

25th: [This will probably be cancelled, and there may be a 補講. To be confirmed later.]

July

2nd: 12th class

9th: 13th class

16th: 14th class (海の日) (regular classes)

23rd: 15th class

ACTIVITIES

TIMED WRITING

Fluency is important in writing, just as it is in speaking. To help you learn to write faster and more confidently, we will do an activity called Gofun ha Juubun at the beginning of most classes. You will just write for five minutes and count the words. At the end of the first semester, and at the end of the year, you will make a table and a graph of the number of words you wrote. (The number of words will not affect your grade; the purpose is to know how your fluency has changed.)

WORKING WITH THE TEXTBOOK

We will use the textbook in Writing III and Writing IV. It has 9 chapters. We will do 4 or 5 chapters in Writing III. You will also do some of the online practice. You will notice that the book contains the Oxford 2000 vocabulary list. Those are the most important 2000 words of English. It’s important that you learn not only what the words mean, but how to use them together in a natural way.

BOOK REVIEWS

In order to improve your writing, it is important to read as much English as possible. To practice reading and writing together, you will need to read a book and write a review of it every week. You can write them in Manaba, and then post them on your blog after getting some comments from me.

ESSAYS

You will write three essays during the first semester. The first one is a self-introduction. It should be a corrected version of the one you submitted to Mr Tomei and that he commented on. You should submit it to Manaba, making note of the deadline. After I have commented on it, you should write an improved version on your blog. I will tell you about the other 2 essays later.

Your Block Check post

Things to do before the exam

Order of adjectives

Please check this page on the order of adjectives.

The Musical Box, by Genesis

Here is a video of Genesis performing The Musical Box, with lyrics!

NOTES

If you forget your student card, please get a paper from the kyoumuka and bring it to me on the day in question or in the following week's class. I will adjust the attendance records I get from the kyoumuka accordingly.

Note that posts after August 8th can be counted in Aug/Sept/Oct.