The Effects of Integrated EFL Instruction on Japanese EFL Students' Ability to Produce Argumentative Writing

要旨

This study was conducted to examine the effects of integrated instruction on Japanese students' production of argumentative writing in an EFL context. The instruction was designed to bridge the gap between university-level EFL teachers' emphasis on the written mode of English, and secondary school students' preference for the development of their aural/oral abilities in English under the influence of Communicative Language Teaching. A class of Japanese EFL students participated in the study, writing two argumentative essays as pre- and post-test samples. A semester's worth of integrated EFL instruction was given between these two tests. The students' pre- and post-tests were analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively. After receiving the instruction, the students were able to write argumentative essays of better quality, support their argumentative position with objective reasons, include objective evidence, draw on credible external knowledge source materials, and cite external materials properly, though they still tended to overly rely on Japanese source materials. The study calls for more attempts to examine different types of integrated instruction in EFL classrooms in Japanese universities.

主題