Abstract
This article investigates how Chinese Japanese-learners understand Japanese opinion essays in the context of Chinese education, which do not include the genre of opinion essays. There is no preceding study on this topic. In this research, two opinion essays written in Japanese were presented to Chinese Japanese-learners and three questions were asked: (1) “Which genre of Chinese essay would this opinion essay be best categorized?” (2) “Why do you think so?” (3) “What do you understand opinion essays to be?”The findings suggest that an opinion essay may be categorized as more than one genre of Chinese essay by Chinese Japanese-learners.
