There have been some major changes in academic writing education since its official introduction in the 1950s. One of the changes relates to student needs. When academic writing education was introduced in the United States, it was targeted at students who were “underprepared” and lacked competent English skills in academic writing. Thus the primary objective of this education was to teach those students how to write well in English. However, nowadays more and more students, especially graduate students, enroll in writing courses not because they lack the language skills, but because they want to learn how to clarify and support their central research idea in a research paper so that the paper can pass the review for publication. To help the students develop clear and convincing ideas in their writing, it is necessary to incorporate logical thinking training into academic writing education. In my talk, I will explain how this new writing education has been implemented at Nagoya University since 2010.
