Writing English 1B: Fall semester final writing assignment ・後学期期末作文

Hello - and Happy New Year!

How are you? I hope you could feel a little refreshed over the New Year's holiday. Today I will introduce our final writing assignment for the fall semester (後学期期末作文). 

While I have given you the handouts for the final assignment, I will post it here as well as another way to help remind you of what you will do for this assignment. 

Review of topics

For our final writing assignment, you have a choice of themes! This semester, we wrote about these themes:

• Comparison and contrast (比較対照)
• Cause and effect (原因結果)
• Future jobs, careers, lifestyles, and places to live (将来、未来の職業、キャリア、ライフスタール、場所の住んでる)

This was a little different from what I put on the syllabus, but I thought the changes were good ones for you that would be better than what I had for the syllabus.

Task

For the final assignment, I have two very different, but equally interesting themes for you. Choose one (1) of them:

• A review theme with a different concept – comparison and contrast of two different pieces of music that I have posted on my blog as of today. (This post with the music will come after this post!)
• A new theme – opinion writing on a topic or issue you think about (such as something in the news about Japan or the world, or something in your hometown or the place you live in, or something in the university) (I will post with some topic ideas if you need them tomorrow.)

Special note: For this new theme, you can look at Units 11 or 12 in the textbook for hints, ideas, and language such as words and phrases for showing opinions. While we have not done these units in class, they have good points on them about opinions and how to express them. 

Take a look these pages for ideas on what to write about, if you want to do this new topic but need some ideas: Page 87, and 89 Section 2 “Get information” (for Unit 11), and page 93, with a good example of a short opinion paper on page 95 (for Unit 12).  

I know this new theme might be a little more challenging because it’s something we didn’t do in class, but you have shown a lot of development in your writing over the year, and I think you can bring a lot of your own views and ideas to it. You have a lot of freedom about writing on any opinion you choose, but look at these pages and units in the textbook to help you. 

How much to write

I would like you to write as much as you can, around 4-5 paragraphs' worth of writing. 

Deadline (締め切り)

It will be our last day in class next week, on January 17th (1/17), so you do not have a lot of time. I want you to work on your first draft (下書き) in class today in your notebooks in pencil, plus work on this outside of class.

The final version should be typed up on a Word document, with the correct formatting as I have shown you before about name, class, period, and that it is the final writing assignment, with a title and the correct spacing, and handed in on January 17th.

Good luck with this! I'll look forward to reading your great writing!

See you next week!

Image: Copyright-free photograph from Apple.