Fostering Academic Writing Expertise in Students: Spanish Program at ICU

Foreign language education in Japan has been widely criticized in the literature for not producing students capable of authentic language production. Spanish language education in Japan has not escaped this criticism despite its being far less established than the predominant second language, English, which students generally study formally for six years. At International Christian University (ICU), Japan, Spanish is an elective subject students may choose, and teachers have at most two years to develop a syllabus that allows students to develop their speaking and writing skills with limited exposure to authentic language. In this paper, the author demonstrates how to develop a syllabus that promotes writing in Spanish designed mostly for Japanese students starting from short easy texts and culminating in simplified academic texts. The syllabus has been designed from an analysis of the most common errors taken from a specialized corpus and from own experience and takes in consideration practical needs in the classroom. This paper will be of interest to teachers of other elective languages with limited contact time in which to develop student fluency and writing expertise.