Based on anecdotal evidence it was thought that the academic writing curriculum at a Japanese university was failing to meet student needs and expectations. In order to explore the students’ beliefs about L2 writing in general and the academic writing curriculum in particular, a questionnaire was distributed to 228 second year English major writing students and was qualitatively analysed to search for significant trends. Results supported the initial hypothesis that despite a clear need for English writing skills among the student body, there was widespread negativity towards the urriculum which was seen as not engaging the students’ intellectual interests, or second language acquisition needs. This suggested that a wider and more diverse curriculum was required.
Iain Maloney (Tue,) studied this question.