In 2002 and 2003 Japan's Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology introduced new guidelines for junior and senior high school teaching, respectively. The amount of time devoted to English writing activities decreased in line with an increased focus on training in aural/oral communication skills, with the result that many university newcomers are now perceived to have insufficiently developed writing skills. At the same time, society's need for people with high levels of proficiency in English writing has grown, so over the last four years, several top-level universities, recognizing the importance of teaching written English for Academic Purposes (EAP), have set up Writing Centers and inspired other universities to follow suit. It is widely recognized that the proficiency gap is widening between average university students and those who take advantage of these Centers. University lecturers of the English language need to explore activities that will inspire ordinary university students to write and acquire language skills. In this context, an appropriate non-EAP writing activity for university students may be writing about themselves. No student can claim to lack materials for writing on this topic, and it is commonly believed that students are already accustomed to writing about themselves in Japanese, and even in English, having done so at the primary and secondary school levels. In addition, increased opportunities to study abroad mean that many students need to write about themselves when preparing personal statements. To maximize the educational benefits of this kind of writing activity, combining it with reading activities is a sound idea. Reading passages from autobiographies, for example, can be expected to raise students' linguistic awareness by helping them to identify differences in presentation techniques, paragraph organization and stylistic features, ultimately facilitating their own attempts at writing about themselves. The validity of this expectation has been examined through a "Writing about Yourself" program given to 98 students at Nippon Medical School and 16 in the Faculty of Letters, Keio University. All the students were requested to read short passages from autobiographies by Charles Darwin and Ellen Glasgow, and from Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre. The three passages vary in linguistic level and present contrasting styles. After discussing in class various important elements embedded in the texts, the students were requested to write in their own time about any memories or experiences of their choosing and to submit their efforts in typewritten form. They were also asked to complete a questionnaire on their experience of writing about themselves and the benefits, if any, of reading the three passages prior to carrying out the writing activity. The questionnaire results showed that as many as 77 of the students had, in fact, not previously had the experience of writing about themselves, and 45 felt the topic was not an easy one to write on. This suggests that more preparation than one might expect may be necessary for this type of writing activity. As a whole, reading the different passages appeared to have been helpful, inspiring students to express themselves freely and offering them hints on structure and differences in linguistic level. However, the students who were less competent in expressing themselves both in Japanese and English could be assumed to find it more difficult to introduce the grammatical and stylistic elements they observed in the reading passages into their own writing. The results of this teaching project offer suggestions as to how a "Writing about Yourself" program might be introduced into university English classes to increase student exposure to writing and help them develop strategies for expressing themselves in both Japanese and English.
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