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Topic
- Me and My Family
Level: Senior Secondary |
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Step
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Step
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Topic:
Me and
My family / Level: Junior-Senior Secondary |
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In
our last issue we focused on the development of writing skills, the
construction of coherent sentences and the effective use of conjunctions
in the context of 'Me and My Family'. Please have a look on
our website at the new on-line exercise for practicing conjunctions
using Swarthmore Makers authoring tool! This site also allows you
to edit the text, and make similar exercises by just copying and pasting
in your own text. It is very quick and easy.
Go to http://lang.swarthmore.edu/cloze/dearsensei1_page.htm
to try our exercise and if you would like to make your own exercise,
try http://lang.swarthmore.edu/makers/index.htm
In this issue we would like to focus on writing compositions. You
may think students know all the sentence patterns and vocabulary to
complete the task, but it is not always obvious to students what to
write if they haven't learnt to break down the question and haven't
practiced constructing a composition. At senior level, students are
required to write in different text types such as letter, report,
e-mail etc. Students not only have to know what to write, but also
what style they should write in for a particular text type. The writing
process involves several steps which students need to be aware of,
and which they need to go through whether they are doing a writing
task as schoolwork or in an exam. |
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Step 1: Analyse the question |
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Write
a personal profile to attach to an application for a short-term
scholarship to Tokyo.
[from: HSC Online, Continuers, Writing Personal World
Part A
http://hsc.csu.edu.au/japanese/
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This
is an example task from the NSW DET HSC website.
I have chosen this task as it is simple and easy to break down and
most of the students are familiar with the topic. However, the procedure
can be applied to any writing task.
First of all, analyse the task with your students by asking questions.
For example: What is the text type? What is the topic? Who are you
writing to? Who will read it, and therefore what Japanese style should
be used? Formal or informal? and so on. You may make a chart like
this and ask your students to fill it in.
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Text
type
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Topic
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Target
reader
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Style
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about
me
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Japanese
coordinator
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Step
2: Brainstorm |
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Ask
students to discuss in groups what kind of information should be included
and make a list of sub-topics / key points. They may do this in either
English or Japanese.
If your students are struggling to come up with ideas, you may give
them a sample composition as a reference. But this is only for the
purpose of picking up an idea or some keywords, not for copying the
content. For this task you could look at Yamamoto Takayuki's profile
from the Japan Forum's Deai resource kit and write out the sub-topics
/ key points. |
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[例] なまえ、学年、生年月日、うまれたところ、すんでいるところ、学校、趣味、将来、...etc |
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You
may discuss with your students if additional information needs to
be included. In this case, it could be information such as a reason
for applying for the scholarship or a history of your Japanese study. |
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[Review
relevant language] |
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After the students have decided what to write, they can focus on the
grammatical expressions needed. |
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talking
about future plans - 〜たいと思っています。/ 〜つもりです / 〜よていです。 |
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giving
reasons for applying for the scholarship - ので |
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