April 13 First Class 2002

Welcome to Communicative Writing 2002.

My name is Duncan Dixon and below is my contact information.

• Office Number: 1204
• Office Phone: 054-261-3793
• Contacting me: Home phone/fax 054-264-3554
• e-mail: dixonfdm@tokoka-u.ac.jp

Communicative Writing is online to:

• Make the course as flexible and useful for you as possible.
• Give you a chance to create your own writing course in consultation with me.
• Give you the opportunity to request a certain type of composition in line with your own interests.
• Allow you to keep up with the class if you miss a class. You can access the class Web site from home and submit compositions electronically if you wish.

Classroom:

We will meet each class in 1304.

Materials:

You will need a cassette tape, loose-leaf paper (if you plan to write on paper), a notebook for your journal.

Class Organization:

Go here for information about the organization of the course. I will also give you this as a handout.

E-mail Addresses:

• We will make a Hotmail e-mail address for this class (unless you already have a Hotmail address you wish to use.)
• Go to this page for instructions.

Writing with Computers:

• How many of you have access to a computer at home?
• How many of you are planning on getting a computer?
• How many of you have e-mail at home?
• If you can or would like to do any of your writing on a computer I would encourage you to do so because it will make revision much easier.
• We will spend quite a bit of time revising and rewriting our compositions this year so a computer is handy.
• However, You do not have to write with a computer. You may write with pen/pencil and paper if you prefer.

Overview of the homepage:

• Today we will spend some time exploring the Communicative Writing Web site, so you can get an idea of where things are and how to navigate.
• You can access the homepage from your home computer or from any of the Tokoha computers.
• Today, please write down the 6 types of writing you are most interested in doing.

My Expectations:

This is a graduate level course so I have a number of expectations of you:

• you should have an idea of at least some things you want to study or improve in your writing;
• you should be willing to tell me these things, either personally or in your journal;
• you should be thinking during the year about how you learn to write. What things help you? Part of my job as a teacher is to expose you to new ways of learning so that you have more options when you start to write.

Improving Your Writing

• First, do not expect to see magical improvement in your writing in one year because of one course. Writing is very complicated and improvement takes time.
• Write as much as you can. Re-read, revise, rewrite as much as you can.
• Read as much in English as you can -- newspapers, magazines, anything that interests you.
• Video tape and watch bilingual news programmes first in Japanese then in English.

First Assignment

• Read the letter of introduction I've given you.
• Write a response. NB Make sure it looks like a letter.
• All of your compositions should be double-spaced so I can make comments more easily.
• Usually you should write between one and two B5 size pages double spaced. Don't feel you have to write very long compositions.

Ask these questions:

a. Who is my reader?
b. What does my reader already know about the topic?
c. What does my reader not know about the topic?