10/20-10/27 N.Korea and making a plan before writing.

Nukes in North Korea: What stance should Japan take


Today we tried to use a few planning methods.'Bubbles' and 'Listing'
Ss reactions were mixed.

On the positive side that
it made it easier to write,
they were able to write more,
they didn't forget what they'd thought,
they didn't lose track of the order of the ideas they wanted,
a bank of ideas was a good thing to have available,
people who used a pen and paper found it more flexible to graphically represent thier thoughts, (drawing lines, etc) than if it were done with a PC,
those using Japanese found it easier to lay down their thoughts first and then transform into English (Before they had given up from the start when they couldn't do the first E sentence.)


However, on the negative side, the planning took too much time: they couldn't do both with he time allotted, they ended up writing something different from the plan anyway. They couldn't tell if it had a good effect or not.

9/1-10/13 Middle East

There were 2 joined classes with Yamada where we did a gap-fill one side and space for writing a summary on the other. Both topics were about recent middle east events and summarized from wikipedia.
* Interesting feedback technique was to pass the sheets back in a random order and tell Ss to read it and give the paper along with a comment on content (or unclear areas) back to the writer at lunch. It worked nicely!
These texts were used for the test.

Next, back in CAV, the topic asked Ss to offer a solution to the Palestinian problem. Average was 111 words, and answers were very creative and deep.