抄録
Traditionally it has been the usual practice of Japanese universities to have students join a seminar (zemi) in their third and fourth year and produce a graduation thesis upon completion of this seminar. This graduation thesis is considered to be the culmination of their 4-year university experience and is supposed to provide students with great educational experiences. Recently, universities have been allowing a wider range of students to enter and it seems therefore, there is an increase in the number of students with low academic skills, low motivation levels and unclear study goals (Kimura & Tatsuno, 2017). This can lead to a gap in the academic skills that students have acquired which are necessary to write an academic graduation thesis in their fourth year. The Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) has also called for a more active learning approach in English education that includes an emphasis on 21st century competencies (Kimura & Tatsuno, 2017). The aim of this practice report is to introduce a hybrid form of graduation research that was added to a private Japanese university’s required curriculum as a possible model to help develop alternative options to the traditional graduation thesis paper.
