Welcome to Writing 4!

Hi, everyone! Long time, no see. I hope you had a nice holiday, and that those of you who went abroad had a valuable experience and improved your English!
Let me tell you a bit about Writing 4. I'll talk first about the things that are similar to Writing 3, and then move on to the new things.

Familiar things

Book reviews

Similarly to the first semester, we will write regular book reviews. As a general guideline, you should write at least one book review a week. In fact, at the beginning of the semester, it's better to write more than that, to give you more time for other work at the end of the semester. This semester, you need to get a total of 20 points for book reviews. A level 1 book is worth 1 point, a level 2 book is worth 2 points, and so on. So you could read ten level 2 books, for example, or forty level 0.5 books, or you could read a blend of different levels of book. After each book review, please write:

Points:
Points remaining:

For example, if your first book is a level 2 book, you would write:

Points: 1.2
Points remaining: 18.8

Juppun ha Juubun

At the beginning of most classes, we'll do Juppun ha Juubun. Don't forget to add the tag (spelt correctly). If you come late or cannot do Juppun ha Juubun with everyone else for some reason, use the tag not Juppun ha Juubun to show that you were not absent and are still taking the course.

General blogging

You should write general blog posts about topics that interest you as often as you can. In particular, you should write a lot near the beginning of the semester, before you become too busy with other work.

New things

Topic blogging & Creating a website

We may do an essay or two at the beginning of the semester, but the big project for this semester is to create a website using iWeb. Over the first few weeks, you will decide on a topic, and your task will be to design and create a website that introduces that topic to the outside world.
We'll talk about the details in class, but here are a few important points:

• You'll need to work on the website over several weeks, adding material, editing, thinking about the organization, always trying to make the website a better introduction to the topic.
• You should use your blog to assemble materials for the website. Most of the writing in the website will be recycled and reorganized writing from your blog.
• The topic should be reasonably narrow. The U.S.A. is probably too wide as a topic, for example.
• Remember to save your work! You will need a USB flash memory stick.