The meeting on Sunday 10th September saw Takashi Miura, who has had a long association with Toyohashi Chapter, presenting on:
Interactive Writing for Senior High School and College Creative Writing Classes
Takashi Miura
This presentation aimed at tackling two obstacles that stand in the way of teaching writing communicatively. One of the obstacles is lack of the real audience. In a writing class, it is considered very important for students to have a clear image of the intended audience. However, no matter how we pretend, the real audience in a writing class is the teacher -- not a very ideal audience for students. The other obstacle is lack of a learners' community. Because of these two obstacles, writing classes can often be boring for students, and simply tedious for teachers. How can we turn the isolated relationship into a writing community, and how can we let students write to a real audience (their classmates) in a meaningful context? The presenter proposed an answer to these questions based on his college writing classes, together with copies of students' works in various activities.
