In Japanese universities' freshman education, writing techniques in the native language and those in a foreign language (English) are often taught separately. This often poses significant psychological burdens on students and is inefficient. To address this, we aimed to develop an educational program that closely integrates the instruction of writing in both Japanese and English during freshman education. This would help students grasp logical structures and essay creation methods common to both languages. We conducted a two-phase preliminary survey to assess the feasibility of this program.

The specific goals are twofold. Firstly, by introducing awareness of discourse markers and paragraph writing first in a foreign language and then in their native language, students can distance themselves from the writing methods they learned until high school. This approach encourages them to consciously produce logical texts. We meticulously explained to the students the significance of this multilingual perspective and the main focus of our initiative, urging them to engage consciously.

Secondly, by repeatedly prompting students to pose questions to interactive AIs, we aim to deepen their thinking process, thus enriching the content of their paragraphs.

In the first phase of our preliminary survey, we were able to verify the effectiveness of our approach through writing test results and self-assessment questionnaires using rubrics. In our presentation, we will report the results, including the proficiency survey results from the unit introduced in the second phase of our preliminary survey, and discuss future challenges.

Authors:
Misa Otsuka, Jissen Women's Junior College, Japan
Kaoru Mita, Jissen Women's Junior College, Japan
Kiyomi Kushida, Jissen Women's University, Japan

About the Presenter(s)
Professor MISA OTSUKA is a University Professor/Principal Lecturer at Jissen Women's Junior College in Japan

See this presentation on the full schedule – Sunday Schedule

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