Abstract
In order to look into how Japanese undergraduate students acquire academic written language, a quiz was given to them shortly after their matriculation and at the beginning of their junior year to require them to supply sixty written/formal expressions for colloquial counterparts presented. For the juniors, a questionnaire research was conducted on experiences in reading and writing, and those who revealed a remarkable rise in the score were requested to identify factors likely to have promoted their progress. The second quiz revealed rises in most items, and especially remarkable were the rises in items peculiar to academic writing. Experiences of those who showed greater rises included more occasions to write e-mails/letters to their seniors, and significantly more occasions to have seniors/teachers correct or comment on their writing. They contributed their progress to experiences in writing reports; a common reflection was: "I made myself familiarized with written language when I read books and articles for reference when I wrote a report". Thus, it was suggested that undergraduate students' acquisition of academic written language was promoted by contact with academic materials in the process of composing a report, and by awareness of a prospective reader who expected them to use appropriate language.
