Japanese EFL Learners’ Development of Grammatical Competence and its Influence on Critical Writing

Abstract

In the age of globalization at home and abroad, it is important and meaningful to reconsider English education in Japanese universities so that students can advance as social citizens in a global society. In considering the local appropriateness of English education for native Japanese speaking students, this study provided university students with grammar learning opportunities for one semester and then investigated the effects of this training on the development of grammatical competence and the influence of their enhanced competence on criticality in writing. The results demonstrated that grammatical competence increased after grammatical training, despite varied results according to the specific measures, and the enhanced grammatical competence had positive effects on criticality in writing. The study thus concluded by arguing for a certain effect of grammar learning and suggested the importance of grammatical competence for practical writing, which has increased in demand due to accelerating electronic written communication in an increasingly globalized society.