Kumamoto University:
Comparative Culture

Rick Lavin

Making your own English-language website, Part 1

In this lecture, we start working on our own websites.

Three aspects of website development

Content: you gotta have something to say. This tends to be very easy for Americans and a little more difficult for Japanese (and British) people.
English language skills: this is usually very difficult if you've got no-one to help you. That's why I want you to take advantage of me. Every week, you have 90 minutes to ask me to check things you have written. Or you can send me some text by e-mail and ask me to check it. Remember that this chance ends with the end of the course in January or February.
Web design and HTML skills: it's easy to get excited about HTML, but this is really the trivial part. You don't have to make the most exciting site on the web, just something that is easy to read. A very small number of HTML constructions (explained later) is enough.

Content

Don't think too much. Just write or type. And don't delete. Just continue writing. You can edit it all much later.

Here's an example of a first draft:

Hi, I'm Rick Lavin. I'm 40. I live in Kumamoto. I'm from England. I teach English. I study, teach and perform the koto. I'm married. I like making cocktails. I have two daughters. In England I taught linguistics at Leeds University. I like walking. I like Macintosh computers. I like watching movies. My daughters are 4 and 2 years old.

This can be tidied up later:

Hi, I'm Rick Lavin. I'm from England but now I live with my wife and daughters in Kumamoto, south-west Japan.

I teach at a University in Kumamoto. My research field is phonology. I also perform the koto. You can read more about the koto here, and more about my language work here [ADD LINK].

The main point here is that you can work on the 2nd draft with my help and using dictionaries, but first you need a long 1st draft.

English language skills

Once you've got your first draft, then you can work at making it readable text.

Does every sentence have a subject and verb?
Do plural verbs have plural subjects?

After checking these points, show your text to a friend. Maybe he or she will find some mistakes. Then show it to me or any other native English speaker.

HTML (Hypertext Markup Language)

HTML is a series of tags added to text to stipulate its layout. Tags we learned are:

Body tags: <BODY>... </BODY>: The opening tag is put at the beginning of the page content, the closing tag at the end.
Header tags: <H2>... </H2>: Use any number from 1 to 6 to make headings and subheadings stand out.
Paragraph tags: <P>... </P>: Enclose each paragraph in these tags.
Links: <a href="xxx.html">... </A>: Any text that you want to use as a link goes between these tags.

Using these tags we can make the basic outline of a page and save it. Then every time we make a page we just open a copy of this file and insert content. Your outline should look something like this:







<BODY>

<H1>... </H1>

<H2>... </H2>

<P>... </P>

<P>... </P>

<P>... </P>

<H2>... </H2>

<P>... </P>

<P>... </P>

</BODY>

First, just write a self-introduction (as long as possible).

Then, break it into sections (basic introduction, hobbies, reaearch).

When you've finished doing that, you can start thinking about HTML.

Course Guide