Reflective practice of research writing instruction : suggestions drawn from critical incident analysis

This paper seeks to explore a first-year instructor’s experience of teaching a Research Writing (RW) course at International Christian University (ICU) by reflecting on and analyzing the critical incidents observed in the RW course, which cover issues concerning plagiarism and assignment rationale. The suggestions regarding the specific changes for future course revision are provided following the analyses and are complemented by the findings in the term-end student course questionnaire. The critical incident analyses indicate that writing skills, especially paraphrasing, summarizing, and referencing, should be taught more extensively and that research skills for finding appropriate sources should be taught at an early stage before choosing a topic. The limitations of this study and the aspiration for further research are also mentioned at the end.